48 Hour Film Project | Festival Publicity & Copywriting

I directed the PR and communications for the 48 Hour Film Project Melbourne 2011 in a campaign that saw the festival garner more press coverage than ever before. With coverage across Melbourne media outlets including Beat Magazine, mX, Time Out Melbourne, The Age, Film Ink, Only Melbourne, PBS, Film Vic, Screenhub, Encore Magazine, Everguide and Artshub, the festival culminated in a sold-out Awards Night at Palace Cinemas.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 29 November 2011

LateNite Films overcome sick horses, grumpy flatmates and a sick co-director to take top 48 Hour Film Project Melbourne prize with highly praised short film, ‘The Script Machine.’

An esteemed panel of judges has chosen LateNite Films’ ‘The Script Machine’, as the winner of the 48 Hour Film Project Melbourne 2011, beating 37 other teams to the coveted prize of a trip to Taos, New Mexico to compete in the 2012 international 48 Hour Film Project competition Filmapalooza and leaving director Nicholas Colla ‘truly overwhelmed and humbled by the experience.’

LateNite Films’ winning entry ‘The Script Machine’, came close to sweeping the board, with wins for Best Film, Best Director, Best Script, Best Cinematography, Best Editor and Best Sound Design. The Best Actor gong went to Tim Potter for his performance in ‘Gore Street,’ the Best Use of Prop award went to period piece ‘It’s The 90’s’, while our first animated entry, ‘The Difficult Customer’, scooped the prize for Best Use of Character.

The coveted Audience Award went to the Fresh Baked team for their mockumentary ‘Touched.’ A hugely popular entry which was an unprecedented 42 hours in the writing and only 6 hours in the shooting and was perhaps riskily filmed entirely on a webcam, in a gamble that paid off handsomely for the talented team.

2010 Audience Award winners The Cameralla were runners up in almost every category, with director Julian V. Costanzo commenting on the ‘very high standard this year’ and singling out this year’s Audience Award winning film, ‘Touched’ as being his favourite, remarking upon how ‘really well done, simple and perfectly executed and performed’ it was.

Winning team, LateNite Films was led by Swinburne graduates Nicholas Colla who produced, directed and acted in the film and Chris Hocking who produced, edited and contributed the sound to the entry; alongside Michael Shanks (director, visual effects, acting) and editor/filmmaker Jacqui Hocking who nabbed the Best Editor award in this year’s competition.

A young Melbourne filmmaking collective inspired by industry heavyweights such as Peter Jackson, George Lucas and Robert Rodriguez, LateNite Films’ ‘The Script Machine’ was a satirical take on the sometimes formulaic nature of Hollywood’s blockbusters, remakes, sequels and prequels which drew on the unconventional work of people like Edgar Wright and Christopher Nolan in an effort to make the kind of film ‘where immediately after people saw it they wanted to watch it again’.

LateNite Films succeeded in making a film at once slick and irreverent with more than a little of ‘The Mighty Boosh’ or ‘Monty Python’ about it, with the team’s 48HFP Melbourne win and the film’s upcoming appearance at Filmapalooza promising to further LateNite Films’ goal of getting ‘Australia back on the map as a country that makes films the world wants to see.’

Over the 48 hours during which all 38 entries were made, LateNite Films overcame a litany of obstacles including unavailable locations, ‘a very upset horse (they ain’t lying when they say never work with children or animals), a sick co-director, a very late dash to the finish line and an unfortunate housemate who I’d forgotten to tell that we were filming at the house’ confessed Colla.

LateNite Films have big plans for the future with the team being accepted ‘into the Emerging Producers Scheme by the Screen Producers Association of Australia’ along with having a number of projects in the pipeline including ‘an exciting new web series in the works with fellow filmmakers (and 48HFP sponsors) Inspiration Studios; a couple of feature film ideas at scripting stage, and a number of other projects to take us into the New Year with a bang.’

Well, that and a possible appearance at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival next year, with the 10 best films from Filmapalooza due to hit Cannes in 2012. In the words of LateNite’s Nick Colla ‘watch this space.’

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 9 November 2011

48 Hour Film Project Melbourne Gala Screening & Awards Night this Friday 11 November at Kino Cinemas

2011 has seen an incredible 100 cities on 6 continents host a 48 Hour Film Project weekend as part of the world’s biggest short film festival; where teams of filmmakers – both amateur and professional – write, shoot, edit and score a 4 to 7 minute film in just 48 hours.

All 38 films made as part of Melbourne’s 48 Hour Film Project in 2011 were screened over the weekend of 4 – 6 November at Kino Cinemas on Collins Street, with the 12 finalists revealed over the course of the weekend and the winners due to be announced at a Gala Screening of the contest’s 12 best films this Friday 11 November at 7pm at Kino Cinemas.

The 48 Hour Film Project Melbourne 2011 is being judged on criteria including ‘Artistic Merit’, ‘Technical Merit’ and ‘Adherence to the Assignment’ by an esteemed panel of judges including Peter Krausz, Chair of the Australian Film Critics Association; writer and producer Robert Lo Bosco; Matrix and Star Wars actor Chris Kirby, and award-winning writer and director Grant Scicluna.

This year’s grand prize for Best Film is a trip to the Taos International Film Festival, where the winning film from the Melbourne competition will compete in the international 48 Hour Film Project competition, Filmapalooza. While the 10 best films from Filmapalooza 2012 will be screened in the Short Film Corner of the hugely prestigious Cannes Film Festival later this year.

This year’s winning film from the Melbourne competition will also win a SPAA Fringe ticket, offering invaluable access to some incredible speakers from the Australian and international film industries, with other prizes including a CS5.5 Production Premium (valued at $2,350) for Best Editing, a one year membership to the Australian Writers Guild for the winner of Best Script, and a one year membership to the Australian Directors Guild for the winner of the Best Director prize.

48 Hour Film Project Melbourne producer Jen Farrow said “This year’s competition – our biggest yet – continues to support emerging filmmakers, and it’s clear that Melbourne has once again raised the bar and shown the world just what we are capable of.”

Tickets to the 48 Hour Film Project Melbourne Gala Screening & Awards Night at Kino Cinemas, 45 Collins Street are available through the Palace Cinemas website at: http://www.palacecinemas.com.au/festivals/48hourfilmproject or call Palace Kino on (03) 9650 2100.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 18 October 2011

44 teams registered, 40 teams showed up at Kick Off, 34 submitted their film on time, four missed the deadline, two didn’t make it through, one broke up over ‘creative differences’ and one almost had its grand filmic plans dashed by a very brazen thief.

Just another eventful year for the 48 Hour Film Project Melbourne; an adrenaline fueled film competition/short film festival where registered Melbourne filmmakers both amateur and professional are given the chance to write, shoot, edit and score a 4 – 7 minute film in just 48 hours over the weekend of the 14 – 16 October 2011.

Kicking off in Melbourne’s Fed Square on Friday 14 October, this year’s filmmakers were allocated a genre along with a prop, a line of dialogue and a character mere moments before the 48 hours commenced, which they then had to integrate into a short film due by 7.30pm sharp on Sunday 16 October.

Ben McEwing from the Fresh Baked team, which opted to spend 42 of the 48 hours writing their mockumentary which they bravely shot entirely on a webcam observed that this year’s 48 was ‘great, and a reminder of what can be achieved with the right team, a truckload of chutzpah and a ridiculous deadline!’

Amy Hoogenboom of Ursine Productions said the most unexpected part of the weekend was ‘maintaining some kind of positivity within the team and not having a nervous breakdown or strangling each other along the way!’ While other teams came away from Melbourne’s answer to the world’s biggest short film competition with new professional contacts and even latent production companies.

Bec Haining from Penguins in Armour was thrilled that participating in the 48HFP had seen her team emerge with ‘a pretty cool soon-to-be production company name promising even bigger and greater things’ while Blue Canoe’s Nikki Lee said that her team ‘started out as a group of 11 strangers on Friday night and finished as 11 good friends.’ Summarising her team’s experience by saying that the only downside to the weekend was that ‘that were only 48 hours in the 48 hours!’

Tamasin Simpkin whose intrepid No Man’s Field team drew horror as their genre on Friday night and had an aptly grisly wrap party complete with fake blood and balloons after delivering their completed film to Fed Square just before the deadline on Sunday, listed her team’s most unusual 48 experience as:

‘Waking up on Saturday morning after one hour’s sleep to find someone in our house trying to rob us. Luckily Ben, the director, was up super early and scared them off by running downstairs wielding his laptop like a weapon, so they dropped the camera and laptop in the driveway and ran off. It was a close call that nearly threw off our whole weekend!’

Our youngest team this year, Illusionary Films, comprised entirely of 14 and 15 year old Year 9 students and led by team leader Michael Franklin, successfully submitted their film just before the deadline on Sunday and said that the ‘best part of the weekend was watching the completed piece…we were surprised we got it in on time!’

All 38 films will be screened over three nights at Palace Cinemas Kino Cinema on Melbourne’s Collins Street on the 4, 5, and 6 November 2011 with the competition’s 12 best films being shown at a special gala screening on awards night on Friday 11 November, also at Kino Cinemas.

The 48 Hour Film Project Melbourne 2011 is being judged by Peter Krausz, Chair of the Australian Film Critics Association along with esteemed writer and producer Robert Lo Bosco, Matrix and Star Wars actor Chris Kirby and award-winning writer and director Grant Scicluna.

The winning film will compete at the international 48 Hour Film Project competition ‘Filmapalooza’ in Taos New Mexico early next year, with Filmapalooza’s ten best films going on to be screened at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival.