Slade's American Grill

The Best 48 Hours Ever
Also appropriate: The most exhausting 48 hours ever, the must enjoyable 48 hours ever, the least sleep I've had in 48 hours ever.

So as you've already read at Dennis's blog, and at David's blog (w00t! Behind the scenes pictures!!!), a bunch of us participated in the 48 Hour Film Festival, which for the uninformed is basically where teams of filmmakers turn up at the most difficult to find location in Auckland, tred carefully down the most treacherously bumpy downhill path in Auckland, and receive a genre, a prop that must be used, a line of dialogue that must be spoken, and a character that must be used. So we, Team Squiid, were set the task of creating a Puppet film featuring a mirror, the line "that's what I'm talking about!" (delivered by Mr. Michael Trevelyan) and our character - Robin Slade, an eternal optimist (ie. a Ken doll that can't not smile by virtue of being plastic).
















While the zombie children above made the cut, a large black military vehicle with a big gun which was intended to be helmed by similar dolls during the beach scene never made it to filiming due to bad light

So we ran into a few difficulties. Our first story idea saw a superhero getting ready for an important mission to save the day but, upon realising he had five minutes still to spare, stopping off for food at a restaurant and getting squashed by a giant baseball, leaving his important task in the hands of the patrons nearby who were to assume the responsibility of what seemed like an important and easy thing to do - only to encounter dinosaurs and military and discover the task wasn't as important as they thought... maybe. We didn't really have an ending. Or a good arc. Or characters. Fortunately we ditched it and came up with something much better, if entirely silly and occassionally incomprehensible. Oh and the restaurant, dinosaurs, miliary and YES even the giant baseball stayed.
















Blink and you'll miss it: The director's cut (probably done this weekend) will feature a bigger bang here and possibly slowed down motion, because the bombing of the dinosaurs is a tad quick and it's actually possible not to catch it :(

So yeah, the screening is at 7:40 at the Civic Theatre on Queen Street. If you worked on the shoot, you need only turn up. If you aren't, turn up with $10 so you can get in. It's sooo worth it.

Actually I just want to say I co-directed a movie that grossed money at the box office.
















The verdict? Well, according to a test screening of my Mum, Dad, Sister and Sister's Boyfriend: funny, good, entertaining.... abrupt ending. Ie. everything up until the very end is great. Feck. I see exactly what they mean - the meaning is there, but its not as coherent as it was when we did a rough cut of the final shots on Sunday afternoon, and I think our last 4 seconds would have better been served without a long SQUIID logo at the start and with like... 2 credit titles at the end and instead put in the 2 shots we needed. I think the ending has killed our chances of getting anywhere, if it was good enough to otherwise (pass), which is a shame after all that work. But there's always the 30-seconds longer version at 15 Minutes Of Fame where we will sweep everything because we rock. Oh and there's ALWAYS NEXT YEAR. BECAUSE WE WILL BE BACK.

Thanks to everyone who gave up so many hours of your weekend and helped out, I hope you like the final product on Thursday.