Press Club Award
We’ve been working with San Diego Magazine for a little while now and recently had one of the films we did for them recognized by the San Diego Press Club. In second and third place were pieces from ABC and PBS. Next year, we’re aiming to take home some awards for SavorSD.com!
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Just Launched SavorSD.com
We’re thrilled to announce that our new online food magazine, Savor San Diego, is now live! In partnership with our good friend, Vy Baker, we started planning about 6 months ago for a new kind of food magazine. We wanted a place where San Diegans could go to find fresh, unique content about all things food related in San Diego. Granted, we’re not the first on the scene. Not by a long shot. However, we noticed that existing sites and publications lacked the resources to produce good media. Everyone has great articles. No one has good videos. Needless to say, we were (and are) excited to flex our creative, editorial muscles in producing short films for the magazine. So, we gathered together a top-notch team of writers, photographers and filmmakers to collaborate on this new food vision. If you haven’t already, go check out the new site (SavorSD.com) and watch our first film about Brian Malarkey and his new restaurant, Burlap. You can also watch it above 
Just Sweeping Up!
Not too long ago, the 48 Hour Film Project held its “Best Of” awards ceremony at the Hazard Center Ultrastar Cinema. Unfortunately, 3 of our team including myself (Matt Jensen), Matt Mangham and Steve Cachero were unable to attend since we were out filming another project in LA. However, about half of our film crew was able to make the ceremony. Needless to say, we were anxiously checking our phones every few minutes for word from those guys. An hour and a half passed by after the ceremony had begun and we still hadn’t received a single text or phone call. We were definitely freaking about a little.
Finally, we get a whispered call from Jaime Mangham as we’re driving back to San Diego informing us that the ceremony is still happening and that they have really bad cell phone reception there. That explains the lack of communication. Before her call completely cuts out, she hurriedly tells us that I won “Best Director”, Matt Mangham won “Best Cinematography” and Omari Bobo won “Best Actor”. Then the call drops out. We all look at each other for a moment, eyes wide. Then the car erupts in cheering, laughter and general relief.
Then the realization hits us that the call got cut off. Does that mean we might have won more? We try calling Jaime back but it goes straight to voicemail. The tension comes back and the car goes silent again as we wait for the phone to ring. She finally calls 10 minutes later. The ceremony is over. We won “Best Film.”
It takes a moment to sink it and again the car erupts in joyous cheering and disbelief. Within minutes, the results are plastered all over Facebook and we start getting calls of congratulations from friends and family. Eventually we reach the Cinema in time for the tail-end of the after party at the brewery next door. What a night!
Thanks so much to our film crew and amazing actors! You guys (and girls) were awesome and we look forward to working with you all again next year for a repeat performance!!
After a brief stop at the Temecula Film Festival, our film will now move onto the national stage for judging against the winners of 100 other cities around the world. That happens at the Taos Shortz Film Festival, March 4th, 2012, in Taos, New Mexico. Crossing our fingers…
48 Hours of Madness
This past weekend our team participated in San Diego’s 48 Hour Film Festival. As you may have guessed, the basic premise is create a short film from scratch in just 48 hours. So, all competing teams received a genre, character, prop and line of dialogue on Friday at 7:30 pm. From there we had to write, shoot and edit a 4-7 minute film and hand deliver it by 7:30 pm on Sunday. Yeah, we know. Crazy.
Here’s how it went down:
| Friday, August 5th | |
| 6:00 pm | Writing team arrives at FortyOneTwenty office. Matt & Matt arrive at Hazard Center to receive genre. |
| 7:00 pm | Matt draws “Musical or Western” then promptly returns it for a wildcard draw. We get “Coming of Age”. Not sure how we feel about that… |
| 7:30 pm | Matt & Matt phone the assignment to the writing team to get the ball rolling. |
| 11:30 pm | Still no concept agreed on by the team. Panic starts to set in. |
![Final draw. \](http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6130/6013498624_5bf7caeb1b_s.jpg "Final draw. \")
| Saturday, August 6th | |
| 12:20 am | Concept locked in! Now, we lock Ryan and Dave G. in an office with 2 laptops and tell them not to come out without a finished script. |
| 3:30 am | Ryan attempts to come out for a bathroom break but we tell him, “Not until the script’s finished….get back in there!” |
| 5:30 am | Ryan and Dave G. emerge bleary-eyed with the first draft. We review and send them back in with revisions. |
| 6:00 am | Actors arrive for initial script read-throughs and rehearsals. |
| 6:30 am | Script is finally approved and printed for the cast and crew. Rehearsals begin. Location scouting begins. Crew begins loading up the caravan. |
| 7:30 am | Make-up extraordinaire, Ashley Jameson, arrives and gets to work on the actors. |
| 9:30 am | Team arrives at the first location in La Jolla, sets up and begins shooting the outdoor scenes. |
| 2:30 pm | Omari & Clark kick ass. All outdoor scenes wrapped. Crew packs and caravans over to Mission Gorge for the hospital scene. |
| 3:00 pm | Team arrives at hospital location to find the location manager, Jack Rowell, playing hide-n-seek with the security guards. |
| 3:30 pm | Team hides in a patient room, quietly prepping for the shoot. |
| 5:00 pm | Hospital location abandoned due to permission complications with hospital. Crew rallies in parking lot trying to figure out a back-up option. |
| 5:30 pm | Decision is made to shoot the hospital scene in our photographer Evan Yamada’s bathroom. Nice. |
| 8:30 pm | Bathroom shoot wrapped. Turns out way better than the hospital would have been. Very “Requiem for a Dream”-esque. |
| 9:00 pm | Arrive at third location in Hillcrest for waiting room scene. |
| 11:30 pm | Wrap waiting room scene. Caravan hits the road for the fourth and final location in Encinitas. |
| Sunday, August 7th | |
| 12:00 am | Crew arrives unscathed in Encinitas despite claims of dozing off and hallucinations from lack of sleep. Dangerous. |
| 4:00 am | All indoor scenes finished. Filming complete. Crew packs, says good-bye to actors and heads back to the FortyOneTwenty office. |
| 4:30 am | Ryan pounds his fifth 5-hour energy drink and “focuses” on editing. |
| 1:00 pm | Somebody realizes that we forgot to record a phone conversation scene with Mona, one of the actresses. Crap. |
| 1:30 pm | We call Mona and have her perform her lines over the phone while we record it. Comes out perfect. Crisis averted. |
| 2:00 pm | Editing complete. Matt M. begins color correction and grading. Dave K. begins audio mastering. |
| 5:30 pm | Complete film is exported for review by the team. |
| 5:37 pm | Team gives feedback and Ryan grudgingly begins making changes. |
| 6:30 pm | Film finalized. Export process begins. Crew crowds around computer watching the progress bar anxiously. |
| 7:00 pm | Export complete. Thumb drive and paperwork given to the runners, Dave G. and Matt M. |
| 7:25 pm | Runners arrive at drop-off point and turn in film with 5 minutes to spare. |
| 7:30 pm | Phone back to office to confirm on-time deliver. Receive collective sigh of relief from the team. |
And that’s all it took to make a film in 48 hours. Easy, right?
If you want to see the final product, it’s being premiered on the big screen Monday, August 15th at 9pm at the Hazard Center Ultrastar Theaters. Here’s a link to event on Facebook with all details: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=197421316983931. Tickets are going to sell out fast, so go buy yours now!! The audience will be voting so we need you there!
Top Restaurants Feature for San Diego Magazine
We’re currently working on a third video for an upcoming issue of San Diego Magazine…but I can’t give you details on that just yet. So, while you’re waiting, I thought I’d recap the last two videos we did for their last two issues of the magazine. Neither of these was posted on our blog which means there’s a good change you haven’t seen these yet!
Feature Story: Top Restaurants in San Diego
Feature Story: Top 50 People to Watch in 2011 (in San Diego)
