James Adams
Dust Bowl was our entry into the 2008 London SciFi festival’s 48 hour film challenge. The premise of which is to make a short, five minute film from three completely random features which are handed out at the start of the 48 hour period.
We once again filmed with our trusty borrowed JVC GY-HD100U and filmed in DV mode for speed of uploading, editing and rendering.
We started at roughly midday on the Saturday after gathering cast and crew from far and wide and drew up four ideas, two of which were shot down and the other two debated at length, eventually settling on the easier of the two to film.
The next seven or so hours were spent arguing endlessly, eating, walking around a field filming the ending, arguing and playing Guitar Hero. As soon as it was dark, we got to work filming the start.
On Sunday we awoke to find the world covered in snow, we gathered smugly knowing we had shot all the footage we needed and could start recording a few sound effects and snippets of forgotten dialogue.
Tasty lasagne based lunch was eaten and all was good, then someone pointed out that we needed to edit the footage in order to make a film.
4am: Editing, colour grading, sound cleanup and sound effects are finished, final output is rendered and output to DVD ISOs, at which point the DVD burner gives up.
Driving back and forth between houses with USB keys full of film achieves shiny DVDs with two .mov copies of the film on.
Much sleep for all, except Iain, who must escort the DVDs to London at 10am.
The finished blob of film has been (un)ceremoniously placed on the SciFi Channel's Website