5 Top Tips for Surviving and Succeeding at a 48 Hour Film Challenge

After seeing DVMISSION regular Tippers Pritchard post a thread on Twitter offering advice on how to succeed at doing a 48 hour film challenge. We asked if he would turn it into a blog post for us and what follows is part 1 of 5 part series that we will be releasing over the coming weeks.

You can follow Tippers’ original Twitter thread HERE!

Don’t forget this year’s challenge is currently open to team registration and you can enter your team by following THIS link to Filmfreeway. Just submit to DVMISSION and name your project as your team name.

Part 1: Prepare!

This is a pretty obvious one, but of course, you need to put your team together and divvy up roles. As a basic, you’ll need someone to work cameras, and of course, actors. I’d also recommend making sure you have someone dedicated to sound – but we’ll get on to that. If you can have others dedicated to lighting, or a runner or two to help grab whatever you need/make tea, then all the better.

Have a think about locations. Ok, the instructions might throw a spanner in the works, but I find it’s easier to write a story around a pre-arranged location than to find somewhere to shoot the next day. For Deception Point, Connor and I sat up till about 2 am on a video call searching Google Maps to find a secluded bench we could use… We found it, and it worked, but it’s easier to have somewhere in mind already.

5 Top Tips for Surviving and Succeeding at a 48 Hour Film Challenge — *_{On location with What are the Hours}*

Collate all your equipment. Whether it’s iPhones or high-end cameras, get everything charged up and cards emptied etc. It’s easier to write when you know what your capabilities will be.

Ok, so you have a location and a crew, but you might now be thinking that there isn’t much else you can prepare, knowing that all the instructions are given out on Friday evening. Well, I’d disagree a bit. I don’t mind telling you that my DVMISSION writing process literally starts months before filming. I’ll be falling asleep thinking of ideas. Obviously, most of these get binned, but there’s often something that fits, or that can be adjusted.

The “behind the scenes” idea for “A Dragon’s Shadow” was an idea I’d been kicking about for some time, in a different guise. It just so happened to fit with this and worked really well.

_{DVMISSION21 Dragons Shadow – Tokyo Noir}

DVMISSION 2021 was mid-pandemic. We knew we’d have to shoot outside and I wanted to face Covid head on. My main character, Todd, started out as a “Covid Marshall” – thus the hi-vis straps and orange top.

Whatever the instructions were, Todd was going to come in and ruin filming, shutting down the set for Covid rule violations. I had it pretty much all written, and whatever instruction we got I would make it fit… As it happens, the instruction came out and we came up with a new plan – but Todd stayed. The reason I kept doing an English accent in the bloopers is that I’d been workshopping that character for a while – I even bought a wig.

_{What are the hours? – DVMISSION21 Blooper Reel…}

For the hammer horror film, 2 days before starting I was literally on my own – no crew. I thought to myself, this is going to be a disaster. But, I contacted some friends, got a super small crew together and we went for it. When the instructions came I thought “this is going to be a disaster…” and so that’s what I wrote. A film that didn’t work.