Frankie the Weblog: April 2008

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be in the film industry? Actors memorising lines, being attended to by personal stylists, sipping champagne at fancy premieres. It's a life of action, parties and glamour, right? Or is it? I decided I wanted to find out.

I was invited to the filming of a short film to be entered into the London International Festival of Science Fiction and Fantastic Film. With free entry, aspiring film-makers are in the running for loads of great prizes including the opportunity to be featured on the Sci-Fi channel. The catch? The entire film has to be written, shot and edited in 48 hours. Madness.

In order to ensure people weren't entering pre-prepared material, participants were called to a briefing at 10.30am on Saturday where they were given an envelope containing the title of their film and a prop and line of dialogue to be included. The team I was observing were called The Mind Is Buddha, and their little white envelope revealed:

Title: Owls of the Forest
Prop: Chrome desk lamp
Dialogue: You wanna know who I love? Well it's a different person every day.

The producer/directors had already sourced a restaurant in Farringdon in which to set the film. They also had some rough ideas about plot, but it obviously needed to be

flexible enough to incorporate the random title, props and lines that would be thrown at them. In the end, the story went a little something like this: an entrepreneur has invited some movers and shakers of the food world to preview his new restaurant. Exploiting the latest in Japanese aromatechnology, he's purchased a machine that allows you to experience the taste of food without actually eating anything (that's the science fiction part). So you have an empty plate in front of you, and at the flick of a switch your taste buds suddenly experience the sensation of medium-rare steak, a 1986 shiraz, or maybe potatoes with garlic sauce. Mmmm. Never mind that this sensation could pop into your mouth while you're in the middle of a sentence, this is cutting-edge technology and, in the words of the soulless investor invited to the meal, imagine how much money you could make selling this to Ethiopia!

While everything starts well, it wouldn't be interesting unless something went drastically wrong. In this case, a recently-fired chef who resents the restauranteur for replacing his specialised craft with a machine sneaks in and messes with the settings so that our glamourous and influential guests in the restaurant get some rather unpleasant gastronomic sensations. And unlike actual food that you can spit out or stop eating once you realise it's rotten, there was no such relief for our virtual-food diners. The scene in which the posh guests start being 'fed' rancid food was truly hilarious. With no time to script this film, all the lines are improvised and the actors didn't hold back. I had tears of laughter rolling down my face while this scene was being shot. I won't spoil the end of the film (and don't look too closely at the next photo unless you'd like to make a very educated guess), as those of you based in London should come along and watch it at the Apollo West End in a few weeks' time. For my overseas readers, I'm hoping it will show up on YouTube or somewhere after the competition has closed so you don't miss out on the action.

So is this film going to win? Well, 87 teams showed up to receive their briefings on Saturday morning and by the time the Monday deadline rolled around 18 of those had realised the immensity of the task and were no doubt cowering under their duvets in the foetal position. That left 68 filmmakers still in denial who managed to submit a completed short film by the 1pm deadline. The competition results will be known in about 2 weeks (which is a bit of a rip off as I think the judges should have a 48-hour turnaround as well) but all films will be screened at the Apollo West End in a couple of weeks' time. I haven't seen the final cut of Owls of the Forest, but in my humble opinion there's definitely enough nutritional goodness in there to warrant a Michelin Star if the ingredients are mixed properly. Bon appetit!!