Bryan Mitchell as Ronnie Wilkins in See You Soon
Nikki Smallwood and Ted Hogeman on the set of See You Soon.
A couple of weeks ago, laughing with the storm ran a team in the 2024 Washington DC 48 Hour Film Project. For those who are new to the idea, the 48HFP is a yearly film event in cities all over the world where teams have a single weekend to write, shoot, and edit a short film based on several prompts (we’ve done it a few times before).
This year, I wanted to flex my writing and directing muscles with a darker, more dramatic story. I had also just met an actor that I was really excited to work with, Bryan Mitchell, on a shoot the previous week (Lobsters at Beach Party Point, directed by friend and frequent collaborator Brian Terrill).
The cover image for Lobsters at Beach Party Point, directed by Brian Terrill
Bryan Mitchell as Crabacus in Lobsters at Beach Party Point
This was an experimental project in a couple of ways, both the style and tone of the short (normally we aim for more comedic and cartoonish stories under such tight time constraints), and also with the technology. Almost all of the short is filmed on an iPhone 15 Pro Max, which actually made filming much faster and easier.
The iPhone 15 Pro Max used as A-Cam on See You Soon, with the Blackmagic Camera App.
I also wanted to explore a visual effect that I’ve been playing with for a few years now, that I call the sketch effect. It’s not quite roto-scoping (and takes a lot less work), but has a bit of that look and feel. We did a pretty in depth look at how it works in the Behind the Scenes for our short Five One Three last year (Sketch effect stuff at 00:50):
Bryan Mitchell as Ronnie Wilkins in See You Soon
The resulting short from this weekend, See You Soon, premieres tonight at the AFI Silver Theater at 9:30pm. Really curious to see the audience reaction to this one, and I’m pretty happy with how it all turned out!
