48 Hour Film Project - Melbourne

I just saw the 48 Hour Film Project, Melbourne awards night. The twelve best films, each made in 48 hours. Participating teams were given a prop (earrings), a line (I never thought I'd say this) and a character (Jenny the Pharmacist), and an individually drawn genre (ranging from horror to musical to film de femme).

It was immediately apparent that the event was by filmmakers, for filmmakers, when the opening video was a showcase of the RED 4k playback device, using references to 2001: A Space Odyssey. I felt bad for the people in the audience who weren't filmmakers, as they'd have no interest - then I realized that was maybe five people. My frustration is that these events don't really help us get any closer to building an industry based on audience appeal and commercial success. To put it bluntly, it felt like one big circle jerk. The category-sweeping winner was a meta-film that crunched eight different genres into a story about a writer who is living a delusion of his own script and has to be as random and convention-crossing as possible. Yup. As Shirley says in Community, "That sounds very appealing to filmmakers."

I was there hoping to see some of this new anti-auteur, pro-commercial aspiration filmmaking we're apparently starting to see more of in this country, that Screen Australia's new head is all about.

For me, the stand outs of the night were:
Touched, a webcam dating site video with a great pace that held one shot. I loved this (full disclosure: Ben McEwing and Hannah Moon are good friends of mine, but that wouldn't stop me tearing it apart) because the team spent some 80% of their time on story and concept, so that they could create a script that really worked. There was a good rhythm to the jokes, and attention paid to the interplay between anxious sincerity for a final pay-off punch line. The AWG bang on about how important a script is as the fundamental base for any project. The team of Touched took this on with admirable strength. For once, it was great to watch an Aussie film that didn't spend all it's time wanking off over cameras, lenses and cinematography, and just let acting and story star. A lot of the audience as I moved about were muttering how great the performance was, with the lady beside me exclaiming her glee to me immediately after.

The One Up was a sexy, slick short about a group of girls who ensure women have the upper hand in relationships by faking the male's adultery. The idea is the guilt will always keep the guy in check, while the girl knows nothing ever happened. The plot got a little convoluted, but the gags were sharp and the pace was quick. The acting again strong, and although there were some character idiosyncrasies that didn't hit the mark, there was a confidence and sexiness that an adult audience could appreciate.

It's The 90s was a sitcom set in 90s Australia, with a trio of boof head twentysomethings riffing on nostalgia. This one was a little loose, but it had a bit of a punk Young Ones vibe, in that the cast didn't give much of a shit, they were just having fun. That came through. The camera work was a little off, but that seems to be the trade-off for good concept. It felt like if the writers were given more than 48 hours, they'd polish up a great script. Apparently YouTube is already serving that purpose.

Last, I liked Two Minutes, a straight up comedy of errors about a guy at the edge of sex, who needs to journey to find a condom. It was easily the roughest, with lots of out of focus shots and some pretty messy audio, but it had heart, goddamnit. A cross dressing prostitute with more status than the protagonist showed me they weren't after too cheap a laugh. And the visual humour, relying on no words, showed they had some sophistication as far as applying comedy to film.

These four were films that audiences outside of the little theatre at Palace Kino might like. Incidentally, they also received the least amount of kudos from the judges. Based on the feedback we heard from the judges, it seems the gatekeepers are just as clueless as the rest of the industry. I hope the filmmakers of my four picks show their work to a broader audience, and that the teams spend some proper time on some more scripts.

As for the event, you could really tell that almost everyone in the room knew all the teams and that it was a very filmmaker-heavy event. It was a soft, easy audience. Great for them, not good for the rest of us.