Ideate, script, shoot and edit. In short, make a film in just 48 hours! Sounds impossible, isn’t it? But this is exactly what a team from Mumbai did, when they participated in the 48 Hour Film Project.
The project’s mission is to promote filmmakers, and it uses the festival to get them to work within a time limit. The 48-hour deadline for the festival emphasises creativity and teamwork skills and focuses on “doing” instead of “talking.”
Filmmakers are given a genre, a theme, a character’s name and a dialogue for their film. From the time they receive this information, filmmakers are given 48 hours to complete it. “When I received a mail saying the genre is horror, I was horrified because that is the only genre I don’t like,” says Alok Sharma, a cartoonist and animation artist,who directed the film.
The 12-member group, that calls itself ‘Limboo mirchi’ productions, won the national competition in May and has recently made another film for the international meet.
Adtalis Ghantey is about a cook who finds a suitcase loaded with cash. It shows how the suitcase turns his bland life upside down. “It was crazy but a great experience,” says Sharma.
Despite many hurdles — the team’s film editor backed out, and another fell sick; Sharma persuaded friend Devang Kakkad to edit the film and completed in the nick of time.
“It was undoubtedly very hectic, but at the end we all had complete creative satisfaction. That’s what really matters,” says Kakkad.
In 2008, Sharma’s team had made The Can Man, the winning entry in the national level meet of the project. It was India’s official entry in the Filmapalooza category in the Miami International Film Festival.
The 48 hour film Project was started eight years back by Mark Ruppert and Liz Langston in the United States. They started it as a sort of experiment, but expanded it after receiving a good response. “This is the first time we brought the event to India. The Mumbai team is very good and it has a good chance of stealing the show,” says Liz.
