We made the Houma Courior

48 Hours: Local team competes in fast and furious filmmaking
By Laura McKnightStaff Writer
Published: Sunday, August 10, 2008 at 8:00 a.m. Last Modified: Friday, August 8, 2008 at 2:47 p.m.
HOUMA – A burst water pipe, an exploding wire, crashing computers, bad barroom lighting and an unexpected “road trip” assignment were just a few of the obstacles faced by a local team of amateur filmmakers in their mad dash to create a masterpiece in 48 hours.

Emily Johnston
Houma chiropractor Rory White, second from right, and Houma horse-farm owner Mark Fanguy, background left, work with other crew members on a film for the 48 Hour Film Project in New Orleans. The contest, held in late July, requires participants to make an entire film in 48 hours. For the project, White led a 50-member team that included his son, Easton, as well as locals Troy Liner and Fanguy. To view the team’s film, “Wish I’d Known You Better,” visit www.houmatoday.com. To offer feedback on the film, e-mail Rory White at cajunchiroman@netscape.net.
The team, led by Houma chiropractor Rory White, eschewed sleep the weekend of July 25-27 to throw together a short film as part of an international rapid-fire filmmaking contest.
The 48 Hour Film Project aims to advance filmmaking by pushing filmmakers and would-be filmmakers to “get out there and make movies,” according to the project’s Web site.
The competition requires teams to make an entire movie – write, shoot, edit and score it – in just 48 hours.
The wild and sleepless weekend begins with each team receiving an assigned genre, character, prop and line of dialogue to include in the film.
The last-minute assignments prevent teams from making movies in advance. Last year’s contest involved about 30,000 filmmakers in 55 cities worldwide. This year’s competition spread to 70 cities.
White’s 50-member team, known as Team Spineless, created the short film, “Wish I’d Known You Better” for the New Orleans contest.
The nearly seven-minute film follows a set of twins as they travel to a wake for their misfit sister. The movie didn’t capture a major prize in the contest, but did teach its creators valuable lessons.
White said the team hopes to turn the movie into a full-length feature film.
The 50-year-old White’s team included locals Mark Fanguy, 50, a horse breeder from Houma; Troy Liner, 44, a pest-control worker from Bourg; and White’s son, Easton, 14, a ninth-grader at Vandebilt Catholic High School in Houma.
The team also featured a mishmash crew of writers and other creative folk, mostly from New Orleans, and about 30 actors from the city, including a random assortment of Marigny barflies recruited onsite.
Team Spineless worked to get as many professionals as possible as team members, finding most through online meet-up groups, Fanguy said.
The team’s writers and video editor are experienced in their fields, but Fanguy said he was unsure if they had worked in film before.
The lead actress, Audrey Lynn of Kenner, has held small roles on television, and lead actor Carlos Gonzalez of New Orleans has appeared on stage in the city.
The team’s behind-the-scenes workers had not worked on films before, but the entire team gelled quickly, with everyone from actors to camera operators helping beyond what their roles usually require, they said.
“Everybody pitched in and did whatever needed to be done,” Rory White said. “If we hadn’t had the people we had, we wouldn’t have made deadline.”
The team’s local leaders boast some video-production experience. White and Fanguy run a production company that’s working to create bull-riding and car-racing shows for television.
Liner also operates a video-production business that focuses on taping weddings and other special occasions. White said he has taped behind-the-scenes action on movie sets for use in promoting the films as well as behind-the-scenes footage during last year’s 48 Hour Film Project in New Orleans.
Rory White said last year, he saw competitors melt down when faced with unexpected problems, mostly equipment failures. As a result, Team Spineless arrived in New Orleans laden with backup mikes, cameras, batteries and other equipment.
White’s team also prepared for multiple movie genres, toting truck loads of mannequins, swords, fake guns, fake blood, smoke machines, puppets and dozens of costumes ranging from Halloween outfits to karate uniforms to bridal gowns.
The team even staged a practice shoot with the main actors and writers in New Orleans’ City Park two weeks before the contest. But in spite of intense preparations for various scenarios, Team Spineless ran into unexpected challenges. The first came in the genre, randomly assigned to the team the Friday night of the contest.
The team had prepared heavily for a horror movie, a western, a children’s show and other possible picks, but not for the somewhat ambiguous “road movie” genre.
The group was assigned a bouquet of flowers as a prop in the film, a character who is a twin and a line of dialogue that says “I know a thing or two.”
At 6 a.m. Saturday, the group received the script from the writers and by 8 a.m., started shooting the movie at Nighhawks a Bar and Diner in the Marigny area of New Orleans.
Bar patrons, still reveling from the night before, became impromptu actors.
A Nighthawk’s patron known as Stix duh Clown, a name repersented on his skin by triangles tattooed around each eye and a clown tattooed on his arm, agreed to let the filmmakers use his original music for the movie’s soundtrack.
Time management was an issue for the group, Easton White said. The team thought the bar scene would take two hours, but it took almost all day due to tricky lighting.
Then there were problems loading footage into computers.
The group’s decision to shoot in high-definition format instead of standard definition cost extra time during editing.
Then there was the explosion. The group tried to connect IBM and Apple computers using a FireWire device, which lived up to its name and caught on fire, resulting in both computers crashing.
“We thought we were just done,” Rory White said.
But the computers came back on, and the footage remained.
Then came the water. Rory White had nodded off for a catnap at a team member’s home when he heard startled profanity.
A water pipe had burst, costing more time. “I could see the water was inching toward the computers,” White said.
The group continued shooting footage at various locations in New Orleans through 4:30 p.m. Sunday, just two-and-a-half hours before the contest’s 7 p.m. deadline.
Editing started Saturday and continued through Sunday evening, when the film had to be chopped for length.
The team had to cut some of its most-beloved scenes, including a part featuring a prominent New Orleans drag queen, who arrived at the bar at 8:30 a.m. in full drag and “interchanging hair” just for the shoot.
Yet the most challenging part of the weekend came in simply remaining conscious.
The team leaders estimate they snagged about five hours of sleep in the 48 hours.
The film wound up at six minutes, 59 ½ seconds, a half-second under the contest’s limit.
Team Spineless submitted the piece one and a half minutes before the 7 p.m. deadline, becoming one of the 13 teams eligible to win out of the original 26.
The other 13 were disqualified, mostly due to technical problems.
The New Orleans films were screened July 31.
“Wish I’d Known You Better” missed out on the main awards, but earned “best use of character” and “best use of dialogue.”
Team members garnered an even more important lesson from the fast-and-furious competition – the contest showed they could churn out a decent product in minimal time, White said.