We (Pia and I) recently worked on a short film for the 48 hour film project, and things went a little off track this time.. but here is a short trailer... have been asked to write it into a feature. Not sure if I will or not..

STRINGS
An old man changes the life of a young thug intending to rob him by loaning him his prized violin.

Looks like it might have some legs. Good luck with it.

So, this 48hr thing is kind of insane. You have 48hrs to write a script, shoot the film and edit. Not only that, but you also have to follow certain parameters. Kind of like the OWC. In our case we had to have one fold-up chair in the film and a self help author AND the line of dialogue, "I'm looking for something special. IMO, this makes some things feel very shoehorned in.

Anyway, keep those parameters in mind and then consider our first shoot we waited 2hrs for the guy to show up to let us shoot a scene with a stage and he never showed. Dena had to stress all day trying to find an alternative place. We never really did. We ended up with half of the film shot underneath an interstate overpass!!! Hence the sound issues.

Then our editor bailed...  Our DP ended up cutting it. But...

So, it's rough, but I think the core of the story is good, thanks to Dena. Our plan is to re-shoot some of the stuff and also get rid of some of the stuff that were shoehorned in for the comp.

My personal thought, it was a lot of fun, but I don't think these 48hr things are for me.  

If you guys can do all of that in 48 hours, you would make some seriously good filmmakers. I love the idea of this story, the story itself not so much, but I still like it. I love the sound of the violin... even when it played Twinkle, Twinkle, I liked it.

Was the kid actually playing? I also liked his acting.

What I didn't like about the story was the way in which the two met during a robbery. It seemed out of character for the youth and was a little hastily done. You did well with the sound issues. The DP was good. I felt the direction lacked a little too. There were none of those special tricks that define a good director... but that comes down to the final edit as well and without an editor's input, there's a piece missing.

Weaknesses aside, this is exceptionally well done and you should all be very proud of it. Nice work.

Thanks Dustin!

As you know, it's hard enough to put together a good film without the constraints of such a competition. Dena did all the planning on this one. If it wasn't for her, this wouldn't have happened at all. I think she's planning on a re-shoot of the final scene and maybe a couple of other scenes as well, now when the comp is over.

The kid in the film, AJ, is the one playing the violin. It's his violin. I think the violin cost 12K, so we were extra careful when even getting near it. Dena found a smashable one on Craigslist for 10 bucks. We shot the flower shop scenes first and the smashing late afternoon. That's why the two violins don't match. We didn't know the smashed one was going to explode into tiny little pieces, lol.

Thanks for checking it out.  

That's a mighty fine effort for 48 hours - I think there is a feature there.

Thanks!

And Dustin, I forgot. AJ is not an actor. This was his first time. I thought he did great considering.

Very impressive for 48hrs, that’s a tight deadline.

Congrats to all involved.

The three most talented people I know are women. And this work is from two of them! Great job.