The 48 in Review

I originally sat down to discuss the 48 in extreme detail, but I lost momentum on that, and other scenarios in my life took precedence. And who knows who would have read such a long, obtuse diatribe anyway. So, I reformulate tonight, and summon my skills of summarizing, and hope for a succinct analysis of the 48. In conclusion, we had a TON of fun. StumbleMuse Productions really stepped up this year, and we produced a 7 minute film called "The Brownward Spiral." Our genre was "dark comedy," and this thrilled me. I sat at my house all day on June 24th, ruing genres, and I kept coming back to Dark Comedy. Maybe it was a divine act of providence, or pure dumb luck, but we pulled that genre. We were given "crayons" as the required prop, the required character was "Don or Donna Hastert, Plumber," and the mandatory line of dialogue was "Where did you go?"

My screenwriter, Matt Williams, did a wonderful job for me on Friday night. He generated two different screenplays, and we moved forward with the second. I appreciated the narrative sense of the second, and it used our resources effectively. It only took 4.5 hours of production to capture footage for a 7 minute film, and my actors delivered excellent performances. In managing a crew of over 30, everyone had set jobs, and that worked nicely. In years past, my main Techs, the wonderful Brothers Vang, had spent all day on our film set, and then would be up all night sorting and editing footage. This got to be a Herculean work load, and I could see their tired expressions more and more each year. Well, this year, they focused on Editing, and nothing else, and that made for a Fresh Editing crew at 7pm on Saturday. The value of such cannot be underestimated. When I reported to Louis Bekoe's house (the editing HQ) at 9 am on Sunday, we had a 7 minute "rough cut" that just popped.

We turned our film in at 6:20, which was a record for me, and we could have turned it in around 4:30. Such was our leisure 48. I will probably never get so lucky again. But it was truly wonderful, and we had more fun than anyone else in Greensboro that weekend. We had a couple of documentary filmmakers, Jonathan Butler and Herb Britt, follow us throughout the weekend, and two pictures of me were put in the Locals section of the Greensboro News and Record. After turning our film in, we Raged it in the parking lot, celebrating each other team's arrival.

Our screening went very well the following Thursday, and we were the next-to-last selection in our screening group. I have always been placed Early in the session, so it was an awesome feeling to be placed near the end. If you believe that they save the Best for Last, that is... I surely believed it. Two weeks pass, and we find out that we were selected for the "Best Of" screening, which was my only goal for the Project. I had said that if we made the "Best Of," I would be proud. I had hoped for a "Best Use of Prop" award for our film, which we ultimately didn't win, but we were awarded a "Best Acting - Honorable Mention" and that was a great feeling, and a great testament to all my actors, who did such amazing jobs.

So, I'm done with the 48 for another year. I've been working on two other films for Louis Bekoe and Cari Hopson, in the meantime, and have other irons in the fire. But after this process, I decided to go back to school and study Medical Transcription, in the name of finding a better job. So that changes my parameters for the next year. I will be producing other films when the time is right, and working on adding another piece of paper to sit beside my Bachelor's degree. I'm excited for the next steps in my artistic and professional life. Life has been a challenge, but worthwhile, and I'm excited for the next steps, wherever it may lead me.