10 years ago, we won 2 awards at the 48 Hour Film Project 🥳🥳🥳 -- the 48HFP is a super fun weekend of amateur movie-making. It was my 2nd year competing, and I roped in a few courageous friends to 'act' in it.
On Friday evening, every team receives the same creative prompt. I went back to the office and started conceptualizing and scripting a story from scratch, with Thomas. I remember it was a very long and sleepless night.
On Saturday morning, we started shooting... but really we were still trying to make sense of the story! Various friends would drop by thru-out the day, and we'd work them into each scene.
Then we spent another near-sleepless evening trying to edit the thing together. All of this took way more time than expected of course, as none of us knew what we were doing.
It was exhilarating!
On Sunday, I think we reshot a few scenes, @urgchop found a piano somewhere and added some original music!
A few weeks later, at the screening, against the odds, we won... "Best Editing" and "Best Use of Prop." It felt like a validation of my underdog hypothesis... that a group of passionate friends could win... we can compete against semi-professional and professional film making teams, and even trained theatre teams... if we come together... if we get really creative... and if follow a few key principles of storytelling.
It was this small victory (and a few others) that helped give me confidence in creating Let's Make Great! a few months later. 10 years later, I'm proud to still carry that ethos, that hypothesis forward 🙌 and hope to continue to bring that forward in Lisbon.
Oh... just to make it even more difficult for ourselves, we also shot the film entirely on iPhones! If you're curious to watch, it's on YouTube somewhere "Listen. Love. Share."
So do you believe in the power of underdogs?