On 16 September we had two teams from Otago Girls’ High School enter the HP 48 Hours film making competition. It is an incredibly busy, yet rewarding weekend. All ages can enter, watch out for next years dates and see Ms Joyce.

Honor Sandall reports back on her experience this year.

Recently a team of five year 13 students Natasha Whyte, Tiahli Curran-Hogg, Danielle Marriott, Mia Te Tana and I competed in the 48 Hour Film Competition. This is pretty much what it sounds like, a nationwide competition where film making teams of all ages and levels of experience are given exactly 48 hours to make a short film. No one knows what genre they will be given until the start of the competition at 7pm on Friday evening. By 7pm on Sunday evening each team must have written, filmed, edited and added finishing touches to their final creation.

To add to the chaos, as well as being given a specific genre, everyone also had to include a compulsory prop, character, line of dialogue, and shot type. We were given the Mistaken Identity genre and had to include a thoughtful character called Charlie Flowers, the line ‘one more time’, wool, and a rack focus shot (admittedly, we had to turn to google to find out what this was).

Friday night was spent brainstorming and writing our script. Our ideas started off relatively serious, although we eventually scrapped them in favour of a mockumentary-style film about a Shrek the sheep enthusiast. On Saturday we made an early start as we had a lot of filming to pack in. It was a busy day, but we were pleasantly surprised by how lucky we were that everything went to plan. We even managed to finish ahead of schedule, meaning we could get stuck into editing by late Saturday afternoon. By Sunday evening, after a long day of editing, we were all ready to hand in. We exported our finished film onto a USB stick and drove to the hand-in point at Harbourside Grill restaurant where we were met with a round of applause by the other teams as we handed in our entry.

The heats were a week later and our film was screened at a University lecture theatre to all the other school teams in our heat and the team of judges. The city finals will take place later this month and we are excited to seeing all the other Dunedin entries.

It was a super busy weekend, full of late nights, constant time-checking and heaps of fun! For most of us, it was our second year entering and it is always a rewarding and unforgettable experience. I would highly encourage anyone with an interest in film making or a crazy imagination to get involved in future years! You will learn a lot about not only film making, but also about time management, creative thinking and teamwork. A huge thanks to anyone who helped us out over the course of the weekend.