The Competition: 48 Hour Film

The Conditions: * Minimum of 4 minutes; maximum of 5. * All team members (cast & crew) must be volunteers. * Film must conform to a randomly chosen genre—teams select cards labelled 'sci-fi', 'western', 'comedy', etc. out of a box. * Film must feature some landmark unique to its city of production. * Film must include randomly chosen prop—in Brisbane's case, a parking ticket. * Film must include bizarre line of dialogue: 'Why is there no wasabi in this sushi?' * It's, erm... due in 48 hours. No extensions. * You aren't the only team. Oh, and only one from your city is going to NYC in 2005. The rest of you will have wasted your time, and could have spent that 48 hours reading the first three volumes of Remembrance of Things Past or getting drunk.

The Crue: DOP/editor Clint Brice, director David Herse, writers Ryan Petie & Darren Masters, art director and co-producer Wendy Johns, and co-producer Claire Chapman.

The Cash: No.

The Creation: It's called WASABI LOVE, is five minutes long, and details the beautiful (okay: doomed) relationship between a bearded dude with anger management issues and a girl with a fetish for bearded dudes with anger management issues.

The Can't-Believe-It: WASABI LOVE won the Brisbane leg of 48 Hour Film, and will screen in competition with entries from 31 other cities in February 2005. In Times Square. Which, to people in Brisbane, might as well be Saturn.

VELVET spoke to DOP/editor Clint Brice and director Dave Herse...

RH: What was your budget? Who paid?

Clint: It was about $300-400 all up.

Dave: The budget was 'whatever was in the wallets of the most generous people on the shoot'.

RH: Did you sleep?

Clint: Around 5 hours in the 48. And not only that, but we’d worked the Friday before the competition began, so in 60hrs or so, we slept 5. After not sleeping for awhile, you begin to question really simple things, like, ‘is that shot out of focus or is it just my eyes?’ Luckily for me the shot was in focus. Otherwise I would have had to convince everyone that that was the style I was going for…

Dave: At about the 36-hour mark I could still think straight, but the words wouldn't come out of my mouth properly. I'd go to say, "That shot sucks! Who directed this pile of tripe?" and I would say, "Dang! That's the finest piece of film I've ever seen." I remember giggling a lot but I can't remember what it was at. And then my back stopped working. It's really hard to walk when your back doesn't work. And I think I had some sort of breakdown when there was 15 minutes to the deadline and we were still outputting to tape. But other than that I was fine.

RH: What was your initial reaction upon being dealt the 'romance' genre?

Clint: Ryan was the one who went up and picked the genre (out of a box), and I’d specifically told him not to pick romance or western, but we were all on the same wavelength in that we didn’t want to do a stereotypical ‘Mills & Boon’-style romance. The six of us stayed up all Friday night brainstorming ideas until we realised we’d run out of time and had to pick one! All my ideas involving girls playing beach volleyball in really small bikinis seemed to get no interest when it came to a decision, so we ended up choosing something with a plot. Ah, next film perhaps….

RH: What are your favourite 'romantic' films?

Clint: Definitely AMELIE; that’s really the only one I can think of. Or perhaps the French film ROMANCE, but hang on... is there a difference between ‘romantic’ and naked people?

Dave: Yeah, AMELIE's good. But you just can't go past YOU'VE GOT MAIL or SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE, or maybe that other Meg Ryan film with that guy that she just keeps missing because she turned her back when he drove past in a cab, and they are different but are meant to be for each other but they just don't know it, and they fall in love with each other's silly little idiosyncrasies and—

RH: Dave.

Dave: Sorry.

RH: Did fists fly at any point throughout the process? How did you settle 'creative differences'?

Clint: There wasn’t time to fight! Everyone knew there was a job to do and we just went about and did it. The group banded together really well and—[sniiip!]

RH: Okay, okay-- let's talk filth. What restrictions applied to sex/violence/language etc. onscreen?

Clint: You couldn’t show graphic sex or nudity. There weren’t really any restrictions regarding violence.

Dave: I don't think we were meant to say 'fuck', but I was so tired I forgot to tell the actors not to say it. I'm pretty sure the organisers weren't keen on porn or snuff films either.

RH: Why didn't you act in the film yourselves?

Clint: I was holding the camera.

RH: How much of the dialogue was improvised by the actors?

Clint: There was a basic script plotted out with how we wanted the story to progress, but the actors obviously brought their own ideas on the day and of course they improvised the dialogue – keeping in mind, they only saw the script on the Saturday morning just as we were about to shoot. In fact, we had a dozen or so actors on standby and only let them know whether we needed them or not early on the Saturday morning.

Dave: We were lucky we even had a script.

RH: How did you procure a soundtrack at such short notice?

Clint: Pete Jones and Mirko Vogel did the post sound and composed a music track at the eleventh hour after I’d finished cutting it. I seriously don’t know how they did it so quickly. And while they were doing that, we were busy grading and doing titles!

Dave: We happened to have some very good musician friends. The whole crew we had on board were fantastic. They all brought something to the film and made it a wonderful experience. That may sound like a load of fluff, but it's the truth.

RH: You know, Dave, that sounds like a load of fluff.

Dave: But it's the truth.

Clint: Stop saying 'fluff'.

RH: Would the team consider making a feature under similar constraints?

Clint: If by similar constraints you mean a truckload of cash and an endless supply of cocaine, sure, where do I sign?

RH: Answer the question, Cl--

Clint: In 48 hours? Without cocaine? Sure, well, if that’s a dare, I’ll do it...

Dave: There is something to be said about setting boundaries for yourself. You draw a square and you have to produce something in that square. I think it helps to push you creatively. Of course, we would want more than 48 hours and zero budget to create a feature film. Just a little more.

RH: What are you expecting from your impending New York trip?

Clint: A three picture movie deal with a major studio.

Dave: 10 minutes of fame in Times Square...

RH: Careful.

Dave: ...and a few drinks. Oh, and hopefully we'll bump into some loaded movie producer who will take one look at our 5 minute film made in 48 hours and say "here, take this blank cheque book, go make movies."

RH: I hear Steven Soderbergh's good like that.

Steven Soderbergh: You know... that may sound like a load of fluff, but it's the truth.

RH: Did Robert Rodriguez's '10 Minute Film School' on the ONCE UPON A TIME IN MEXICO DVD prove helpful at any point?

Dave: Um... no.

Clint: Okay, I confess: that’s where I learnt everything I know.

RH: What about his '10 Minute Cooking School'?

Dave: I suggested we make puerco pibil for the cast and crew lunch, but I was outvoted by ham and salad sandwiches.

RH: Does your film make more sense than ONCE UPON A TIME IN MEXICO? [Hint: Yes. Yes, it does.]

Dave: It all depends if you're reading into the subtext of Robert's film. But on the other hand, yes. Yes, it does.

Get hot and sweaty with WASABI LOVE here.

Talk to the film's Director Of Photography and Editor, Clint Brice, at cutesushi_lunches@hotmail.com.

P.S. We all love you, Robert, you crazy bastard.

Robert Rodriguez: That sounds like a load of fluff.

But it's the truth.

Next Week in VELVET: A Retrospective-- The Hit & Shit List 2004! (Scoop: There are 2 hits; everything else is shit. But don't you want to know why?)

© Reuben Ham

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