Life In London: February 2004 Archives
The BBC recently tackled one of the great questions of the modern world: do Americans get irony? And, no, they weren't joking. Or, at least, not as far as my feeble, irony-deprived American brain can perceive.
(Continued from Part I)
When I discover that my film is not on the screening schedule, I write a panicky note to the event organizers. They respond by telling me that a number of films failed to follow one of the challenge's few rules--all films must begin with a title card featuring the assigned film title and the team name. If my film wasn't included, I must have disqualified myself by leaving off the title card. I write back to assure them that I did, indeed, include the title card. I ask them to check again.
To be honest, though, I am beginning to wonder whether I want my film screened at all. I have now had the chance to watch it again with a good night's sleep, and it is, frankly, pretty crappy. Everybody else's contribution is just as good as I remember--the acting, the music, and the backpack wrangling all hold up extremely well. The only problem is the writing and the directing. The first 30 seconds of the film are nothing but a slow pan over a still image of a garden. That's 11% of the film's entire running time, taken up with the dullest possible image. The next 30 seconds aren't much better; it's not until a full minute into the film that one of my actors actually appears on screen. And once the action starts, the shots I've chosen often aren't the best ones to tell the story.
In just a few minutes, the clock will start ticking, and I will have 48 hours to write, shoot, and edit a complete short film. But that's not the hard part.
