Film 48 Begins

Production Still from the indie film "The Man In The Chair"

Can a small crew of filmmakers shoot and edit a feature length film in 48 hours?  That's the challenge we are taking on.  The plan is to shoot two 12-hour days  over a 48 hour period (a weekend) and then edit two 12-hour days over a 48 hour period, for a total production time of 48 hours.  If that's not hard enough, we're going to undertake this in 48 days total time for pre-production through rough cut. Did I mention that we won't be spending any money, so we'll have to find people willing to work for deferred pay?  Just from a simply mathematical perspective, we have to get 1 minute of screen time from every 20 minutes of time on set.  That might seem easy, unless you've ever been on a film set!  I've heard of people shooting a film in 11 days, that's pretty impressive, but I'm not aware of anyone ever shooting a film in 2 days. Maybe that's because it's just not possible. We're going to find out.
In "Rebel without a Crew" and his "10 Minute Film School" videos, Robert Rodriguez points out that creativity is the solution to whatever problems occur.  Like his early work, we will not have "name actors", we'll have limited equipment, and even more limited time.  Hopefully those constraints will simply help us find creative solutions to the admittedly formidable problems in trying to make a 70-minute or longer film on this kind of schedule.  And hopefully we'll create something that is at least watchable. Or maybe we're just crazy and it can't be done at all.  Add your comments below and come back to this blog for regular updates on Film 48.