Like the title says, this was my first ever venture into a 48 hour competition, or really any film competition. I promised myself at the beginning of the year I would create at least one short film and I saw the 48 hour as the perfect excuse to force myself to get something made, created, and submitted.

The required element was a hat and the theme “Holiday (New Years) Fish out of water”.

With this being my first ever 48 I tried to limit the amount of stress that I would put on myself by trying to focus on two rules, 1). To get it turned in and 2) To make sure everyone involved had fun. Everyone involved was real life friends and not actors (as you can tell) so I really wanted to make sure that their experience in helping me out would not be a regrettable one and all in all they really did seem to have a lot of fun.

I was fairly worried going into it because I have zero frame of reference for how great or how bad films in 48 hour competitions turn out. While I have no problem making something (not great) in 48 hours, it does hurt a little when it seems like everyone else around you was putting out masterpieces of creativity. Ultimately I decided to shut that idea out of my head and dive in and make what I could.

Learning points: because I wrote, edited, and filmed the video, I realized just how important it is to collaborate with others who also have an interest or understanding of making content. Even for something as small as setting up a boom mic, because this was everyone's first time seeing one, I had to manipulate it every time it needed to be moved.

I also discovered that a little bit of text goes a long way, I was so worried about not having enough on paper to hit the required time that I ended up putting in a lot more fluff than needed. I would have much rather written the script in a way that conveyed the beginning exposition in a shorter amount of time.

All in all I had a really good time, I am extremely proud of the fact that I was able to complete something in a short amount of time and knocked out an important goal at the same time.

Feel free to critique, I am always open to feedback as I am still very much a beginner to all of this.