[The 48] Getting ready for next year

So, I started these posts talking about the Disney vibe, the sense of well-being-happiness-community I felt after finishing the movie. I was not alone in feeling this way. For me, the best quote was Debz': "It is now my firm belief that there would be fewer wars in this world if leaders and politicians were forced to make Disney family movies in 48 hours."

It lasted a full day and a half, and first started to wear off after visiting Pak n’ Save (nothing like a trip to a supermarket to bring idealism and warm fuzzies sinking down to earth). But a big advantage I discovered was that I was also running on the vapours of decisiveness – and I was able to use that to make a lot of calls I’d been putting off – including interviewing the head of the Armed Offenders Squad.

In that spirit of decisiveness, the HODs all got together for a debrief of what we’d learned during the production. I thought I’d built up enough credit to give some honest feedback (and receive some in return), but instead what I did was hurt someone’s feelings. Fortunately later discussion made it (I think) all better.

Finally, the screening … which eliminated the last of my Disney high. We were up first, excited and then discovered that for some as yet untraced reason the sound was dropping out of the tape we’d submitted. This rendered a good 50% of our movie silent – but even so we still managed to elicit one “Oh, that’s cool!” from an audience member when we revealed the price to leave the Fairy Kingdom was a story.

Afterwards, dinner … and I was in good spirits, but after that, while walking home, I threw a HUGE tantie/hissy-fit which basically boiled down to not believing a group of 12 year olds could have produced a more technically proficient film than us. There were tennis rackets involved. In fact, most of my 5-yearly temper tantrums involve tennis rackets, which I speculate stems from too much childhood exposure to John Macenroe.

But that passed … and now the work continues. I do want to make more short films with my new friends and enter the 48 next year and deliver on time (and even hopefully go through from our group – a goal which is, of course, totally outside our control).