The 48: “Dedication”

For our 48-hr film this year, Jenni’s Angel’s got the genre ‘revenge movie’. The requirements were a rock as a prop, the character Alex Puddle who was an exaggerator, and the line “It doesn’t fit.”
We had a big group at Indigo City to brainstorm when this info came in. My job as head writer was to pull some direction out of this process and winnow down to a solid idea we could all get behind and execute well. I found it really hard. There were a few new things we did that seemed to work well but we ended up spending a long time going almost in circles. It was my job to push out of the circles but I just couldn’t see a direction – not one of the ideas felt right to me. We eventually seized on one idea because, even though I couldn’t see how to make it work, I had a good feeling that we could find a way. Sure enough, we did, with some pieces falling into place in the final stages of the brainstorming session and the rest on the way to our writer’s retreat.
While everyone else slept, the writers punched out a screenplay. We were a new writing team – me with Jackie, Jenni and Steph. We had one person drive the laptop while we talked our way through the outline, then broke the outline into story beats, then turned the story beats into script. We were pleased to find that this went smoothly – the idea unfolded well into the space available, and unlike previous years we weren’t struggling to chop out whole characters and plot twists to fit into the time limit. Finally we went through the whole thing and challenged every word in every line of dialogue, which improved the final version a lot. We sent it out to the troops around 2.30 or 3.00 – which was somewhat earlier than anyone had expected.
We ate mostly healthy-type food while we worked. Mostly.
I was on site at Indigo City about 6.30am as the troops started to arrive. Talked through the piece with our directorial team and the actors, then sat down for a proper read-through where we identified a few dialogue changes to make, most pretty minor, but also adding one extra conversation between our main characters – I scurried into a corner to write that, producing what I think ended up as one of the best exchanges in the whole film, at least from hearing the actors run their lines.
As we set out to the first location I rushed home to write and print a prop, a page of half-written manuscript from an old-school typewriter (thank you free font libraries). After delivering that I hung on set for a few hours and kept working with actors and lounging in the sunshine, until finally bailing when Jenni appeared.
The plan was to go home and sleep but that didn’t work, so I just sat around in a daze for a few hours then went back down to the second location to help get that set. Mostly I was just furniture here as well – the well-oiled Jenni’s Angels team didn’t have much need of an extra pair of hands at this stage. When we broke for dinner I went home and that’s where I stayed while the rest of the team got it done.
We ended up handing in our ‘safety cut’ – the precautionary early version we send down to the hand-in venue in case our final cut runs late. Our safety cuts have always been solid versions of the film so I’m not worried that it wasn’t the intended hand-in version.
Now we have to wait for our heat on Thursday, which is when we’re allowed to watch the film for the first time. I’m looking forward to it. The 48 is a fun challenge every year and I have a good feeling about this year’s film. Its name is “Dedication” (chosen by Jackie) – appropriate to all of us, I reckon.
Thanks team, and especially writing team. You guys are great.