Elizabeth Ong Is Missing...

Elizabeth Ong is Missing

Elizabeth Ong's absence is essential to your story

Elizabeth Ong does not visually appear in your film

Elizabeth Ong has a connection with characters in your film

This was the THEME that was posted on the 72 Hour Film Shoot Out website at 8 PM Eastern Standard Time on Friday, June 22, 2007.

It's kind of funny, I figured this was going to be a cake walk compared to shooting "The Green Candidate" because this was only going to be 5 minutes long.

Okay, so it wasn't a cake-walk...but it wasn't as hard as shooting "The Green Candidate."  I figure the easiest way to tell you about the weekend would be via time line.

5:00 PM - Friday, June 22, 2007
After the announcement of the theme, I dashed from work back to the house, where I met up with Gene and Jessie.  We immediately began batting story ideas around.  We figured practically everyone would attempt to do a noir, crime-thriller, detective, missing persons idea, and we wanted to stand out from the pact.  So we decided to go with something very different.

8:00 PM - Friday, June 22, 2007
All of the brave souls that volunteered to be a part of this mad project arrived, minus a few stragglers.  We continued brainstorming until around 10pm our time, when I finally decided to go with Jessie's idea of a suicide cult obsessed with the green flash, whose leader, Elizabeth Ong, goes missing on the day of their mass-suicide.

We handed out parts and crew assignments and sent everyone on their way.

Room mate Vicky kicked butt at making cult sashes out of my old green screen felt

10:00 PM - Friday, June 22, 2007
Next, Gene and Greg debated and compared story ideas and structure until about midnight, after that there was even more debate and arguments about other things concerning the story.

12:30 AM - Saturday, June 23, 2007
Gene and I finally started the script.

2:00 AM - Saturday, June 23, 2007
Gene passes in and out of consciousness, and I finally send him home for shut eye

4:00 AM - Saturday, June 23, 2007
Half way through the script, and I've consumed a six pack of Red Bulls, 3 beers, and a pack of smokes.  Have I mentioned that I only had about 4 hours of sleep the night prior?

7:00 AM - Saturday, June 23, 2007
Finished the script, and then drove back to work to burn copies for everyone

7:30 AM - Saturday, June 23, 2007
Made it back to the house, and began packing up equipment for the shoot

8:00 AM - Saturday, June 23, 2007
Mark, Jessie, Kelly, and I begin loading up vehicles to head over to Kelly's place (the location for the shoot).

8:30 AM - Saturday, June 23, 2007
Unloading equipment, and cleaning lawn chairs with a garden hose and scuzz brush (they were props that were going to be used in the film)

Rita is already on set and starts picking on me because she's just mean like that...just kidding, Rita's awesome and very very nice!  :)  She's kind enough to stop by the grocery store to pickup stuff for the shoot.

The rest of the crew shows and we begin setting up for the first scenes

11:30 AM - Saturday, June 23, 2007
The rest of the cast arrives and we begin shooting!!

8:30 PM - Saturday, June 23, 2007
It's A Wrap!

9:00 PM - Saturday, June 23, 2007
Load up the equipment and head back home

9:30 PM - Saturday, June 23, 2007
Shower and grab some food

10:00 PM - Saturday, June 23, 2007
Watch the dailies with Jess, Kelly, Tone, Mel, Andre, and Vicky

11:00 PM - Saturday, June 23, 2007
Pass out from exhaustion....

4:00 PM - Sunday, June 24, 2007
Begin editing!

6:00 AM - Sunday, June 24, 2007
Editing is done!

And then this is when it turned into a nightmare...

The contest requires that entries be submitted on mini-DV tape cassettes.  My camera shoots everything onto memory cards.  So I had to find a way of exporting the film I had just edited onto a cassette.  The program I was using was supposed to make this an easy proccess and of course it wasn't...

Finally, Jessie came to the rescue and loaned me a fire wire cable for me to offload the movie onto tape.  Then ran to the FedEx and sent out the cassettes and entry forms for over night.

I had to cut SOOOOO much out to make the 5 Min run time max for the contest.  I decided to make another cut and will be throwing a party for the cast and crew to check that one out.  Keep your eyes and ears peeled.

So here it is:

Thank you to everyone who helped to make this possible!

Rockstep On One,
Charlie