Things that can happen in 48 hours

This past weekend. Madness I tell you. Madness. This year's 48 Hour Film Project gave me my first stint at being wardrobe/art/production designer on a film set. I was in my element. So how it works is, you literally get given a weekend to create a short film. On friday night at around seven, the team awaited That Phone Call with bated breath, the one where they assign us a genre which was pulled out of a hat, as well as a line of dialogue, character and prop that need to be written into the story. First joyful moment, we pulled the genre Western, the genre our writers actually wanted. Our first hurdle: the character. We needed to include a stylist, Neil Msimang. Way to throw us off, but with our team of sterling writers, we managed to seamlessly write him into the story. Our prop was an envelope and line of dialogue, "You gonna learn." I would have preferred a grammatically correct line but hey, you roll with what you get. I can honestly say, the writers outdid themselves.

I spent the first night planning outfits for specific characters, as well as props for different scenes. This included intense discussions with the director and lots of brain power on my part. We were going with a 1940's setting, good thing I know my fashion history. At about 3am I finally crawled onto my mattress in the corner but alas, my brain was buzzing with way too much thought and excitement to allow me the luxury of sleep.

4:30am: I brush my teeth and gather all the props and wardrobe into my car, it's time to move on to set. We decided to shoot on an old steam train, last used in the 1920's. It was absolutely gorgeous and the colours of the interiors really complemented the wardrobe I'd chosen out. I had a walk around the train to get a feel for things, a rather spooky experience in the complete dark, and went to set up my dressing area. A much needed breakfast followed and before we knew it the sun was up and it was time to start dressing.

I was literally thrown right into the deep at this point. The first scene being filmed had about ten extras in it and I was needed on set to check out production design at the same time. It was, "Try this dress, does that fit? No? Okay this one! That hat doesn't match, take hers. You can't go like that you need shoes! And you need a tie, that one is the wrong colour!" Etc etc, whilst running off in between to plan props and look and feel on set.

I thrive on adrenaline, it was amazing, however, adrenaline is like a little bubble that keeps you floating and at some point, it pops, and then it's all systems down. For me that happened prematurely when I overheard one of our most charming actors say something awful about one of the outfits I had so lovingly put together. Taking into consideration how exhausted and overwhelmed I was at this point, it was literally enough to make me sit there (luckily alone for the moment) in tears, contemplating leaving the whole lot and going home for a nice cup of tea and bed. All thanks to Jesus at this point, I took a moment out to pray a bit and get my emotions in check, dole out some forgiveness, re calibrate my thoughts and get back to work. That was probably the toughest moment of the entire weekend for me, but I guess that's what industry is like. Not everyone is going to appreciate your creative point of view or hard work, and people say mean things without realising it far too often for me to allow myself the luxury of a breakdown every time it happens. Besides, within five minutes I had the assistant director on my case about the next scene.

I learnt a lot about myself this weekend. I'm far more detail orientated than I've ever realised before. I had an entire scene stop filming when I noticed an extra with her hair done in a way that was not consistent with 1940's styling. The same thing happened with a man in a blue tie when everyone else in the scene was wearing brown and green, and when I spotted an actor with the wrong shoes on. It must have been rather annoying for the rest of the crew, but hopefully they'll appreciate it when they see the finished product, their movie with meticulously accurate styling.

We had planned to wrap up filming by 6:30pm. Come 2am, we were still shooting. People were getting cranky, but I'm so touched by the camaraderie and how everyone pulled together, stayed awake and kept giving their all til the very end. By 3am we were packing up, I was stock taking wardrobe and props and we were on our way back to the office. Then it was one last cup of tea for me, some paperwork and I was done and dusted, by 5:30am Sunday morning I was in my bed having a rather solid and dreamless sleep. The post team, however, were still in the thick of things, with about eleven hours work still ahead of them. I am amazed and so impressed by the calibre of people on our team, and the work ethic and effort everyone so willingly gave up after days without sleep.

I still have yet to see the final product, but I'm confident and excited. I'm willing to bet we offered up one of the best entries in our region for this year's brief. I'm proud of myself for what I managed to pull together under huge pressure. This was truly an eye-opening and unforgettable experience, and I hope this is not the last I see of the film and wardrobe industry.





























P.S. these images all come from Kyle Peters' Instagram, thanks Kyle!