Amateur Hour Productions – 48hr Movie Project Cape Town

During the weekend of the 12 November to 14 November 2021,  a combined team of Year 12’s (Masé, Sophia, Joab) and Year 11’s ( Bella, Arin, Liz, Julia, Michael) created  AmateurHour Productions and entered the Cape Town division of the worldwide 48 Hour Film Project. The participants are tasked with writing, planning, shooting, and editing a 4 – 7 minute movie all in 48 hours. They are given a line of dialogue, a character, and a prop that must be present in all of the projects. This year it was “this time will be different”, Tania/Travis, the salesperson, and a tennis racket. All teams are also given different genres for their films with AmateurHour being given Soap Opera/Telenovela.

 Almost all of the competing teams were made up of professional production companies, 3rd, and 4th-year university students, and other people working in the film industry, making it all the more impressive that our team managed to be the first team to submit their film and the project Lover’s Racket was eligible to be screened at the Labia Theater on Saturday 27 November to crowds of other participants. 

The AmateurHour team decided to camp out at Sophia’s house and do all of their filming and editing there. We are very thankful to Mr. Wim Kluijfhout for allowing us to take over his house as we created this project. 

We discovered many challenges during this process.

Due to there being no time for proper planning we had to write our script in 20 minutes and gradually refine it throughout the shooting process, plan our shots minutes before shooting, and at 2 am on Sunday the team discovered our film was too short so Arin and Masé had to come up with a new scene on the spot that was written and shot in an hour. 

The time constraints forced us to survive on minimal sleep and energy drinks, therefore, causing many mental breakdowns. It got to a point where Mase was convinced she saw the ghost of an old man, twice, but turns out it was just Bella’s reflection in the office window. 

The teams learned a lot and gained valuable skills and experience including teamwork, working under pressure, flexibility, and being able to react quickly even when severely sleep-deprived.

On 24 November the nominations were announced, with AmateurHour being nominated for best use of prop and best writing. Screenings of all the films including Lover’s Racket took place on 27 November, followed by the awards the next day. With the entire team red carpet ready, AmateurHour headed to the Labia Theatre where they discovered, much to their excitement, that they had also been nominated for Best Original Music Score. To round off an amazing experience the team won the award for Best Student Film and received numerous compliments and congratulations from the other teams, with many people being surprised that the team was made up of high school students. AmateurHour Productions have already decided that they will be aiming to compete again next year in the competition being held in August. 

Article by Masego and Bella 

Please support the movie by giving it a watch! You’ll find the link below.