Tag filmmaking

Cinematographer, Valentina Caniglia has worked on over 60 film productions, documentaries, music videos commercial work and more. She is known for her work on the film “The Stand” where her astonishing lighting and camera work caught the attention of American Cinematographer magazine which featured an exclusive article in March 2017 issue.

As a DP (Director of Photography). Valentina is the real deal and brings her positive attitude to her work and life. We discussed the challenges of shooting on location in Palestine to being snowed in in New Jersey. Her eye for coloring and lighting are what makes Valentina’s work unique and why she’s won so many awards. As a female cinematographer her journey to success has not be so easy.

“Pomegranates and Myrrh” winner of the Golden Dagger for Best Cinematography, premiered in USA at Sundance film Festival and received the Audience Award at Doha Tribeca Film Festival handed out by Robert De Niro.  “Madeline’s Oil” was the winner of the Best Cinematography award at the Louisiana International Film festival.

Keep up with Valentina Caniglia on Social Media

Website: http://valentinacaniglia.net/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/valentinacanigliadp/

Twitter: http://twitter.com/ValeCanigliaDP

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/valentinacanigliadirectorofphotography

Valentina’s philosophy on Film Making

“I always adapt at filming each project with versatile visual style that best translates each story’s unique concept into breathtaking moving images that unravel the characters’ state of mind throughout the progression of the storytelling. Cinematography represents a concept of beauty that stands beyond the aesthetic aspects, something more intense that supports, follows and enhances the story where the camera can capture and show the transparency and the awareness of visuals drawn by the emotions.” – Valentina Caniglia

Where did you catch the filmmaking bug?

In reality, my father wanted to be a Director so I took a lot of inspiration from him. Then I realized his dream became mine.

Is film school in Italy difficult to get accepted to?

I didn’t go to film school in Italy.  I came to New York after London and majored in film at New York University.

What filmmakers inspire you?

I think it was mostly paintings coming from a country where art is important. There was a lot of influence when I saw these paintings in Italy and all over Europe. I realized I wanted to be a cinematography because I wanted to work with lighting. I wanted to recreate what these artists were doing on the canvas.

How did the film Blindness include your love of art?

Blindness was interesting because it was about a woman who was losing her sight. We had to tell the story with visuals and not many words. The camera was capturing what she was seeing but not very well. It was a long journey because I had to see beyond what we see normally. What I said to the director was sometimes what you don’t see is more powerful than what you do.

I like European film because isn’t a lot of dialogue and there’s more visuals. It’s also nice to see how independent films are being done in the United States as well.

What is your relationship with the lighting crew?

When I decided I wanted to be a DP (director of photography) I made a point to meet all the lighting rental businesses and owners. I knew I really cared about lighting so I wanted to explore how I could get them to give me what I needed and also new equipment that’s becoming available.

It’s also important to say you don’t need a lot of light, you just need the right light to make it work.

How much interaction do you have with the director on set?

We do a lot in pre-production where the director will tell me what he or she wants in terms of mood and movements. I anticipate and interpret what they want while reading the script and translate the words into visuals. I write my notes and compare each scene and character. Sometimes I give each character a color to identify them because I see their personality.

It’s a visual way to tell the story and the director how I see it. During pre-production they have the final say and that’s when they’ll let me know if they like my idea or maybe need to go another way. It’s important to listen to what the director wants.

How important is still photography for setting up your film shoot?

It’s actually very important because I like to capture the moment. Things may look very well lit but sometimes I just observe what’s around me and I just snap it. It depends on the situation as well. If I shoot a documentary I like go and explore right in the moment. To be honest, I’m coming from a culture where everything can be done in the moment and I’m not afraid of that. Basically we live day by day and I like to take this approach to film as well.

Maybe in that moment even though you do a lot of pre-production, it may not work the way you and the director thought. You have to be ready to have a plan B, plan C, and plan D as well. Maybe the actor doesn’t want to do certain things so you just have to come up with an idea.

I shot a movie in Palenstine behind the wall. In a place like that where theres a lot of bombing, I realized to get the story out there you have to think in the moment.

What was the most challenging shoot you had to film?

Every shoot you do is not really difficult because you love what you do. One of the most challenging was definitely another Palestinian film. Not because of the crew but because of the situation. I shot a movie in Italy that was complicated because we shot in Sicily and difficult to get to the location. I shot another movie all in New York called Without Grace that just opened. It was a small crew with an emmy nominated actress Ann Dowd. We shot in Jersey during the winter and it snowed like crazy and couldn’t move it so we were blocked in the apartment we were shooting in. We had to just stop and go home and come back in two days because we couldn’t put up lights or do anything

I always translate the worst into the best. It’s survival. You have a lot of support and never give up because you want to make something good. Even if you have a big budget, it’s not going to be any easier. The producer may be afraid to take more risks.

What award did Madeline’s Oil win at the Louisiana Film Festival?

Madeline’s Oil was a period piece about slavery and racial discrimination. I loved it because we shot all over the fields and in the mud and every swamp in Louisiana after the hurricane. In that moment you will see people were all united including the actors. It’s challenging because you really have to deal with what you have at that time even though we had a bigger budget.  The film won Best Cinematography at the Louisiana Film Festival. I’m very happy about it and love Louisiana.

I actually shot another film in Louisiana called The Stand. It was interesting because it was all shot on a bus and there was a terrorist attack with Christians and Muslims all together. They had to make it look like they were all the same people. We shot in Louisiana where it was supposed to look like West Africa. Big fields with dirt roads. I really relied on natural light and worked a lot with mirrors.

I say it was easy but it really was not.  Buses are wider in the United States so I thought I could put up a light but I didn’t count on every seat being occupied. I couldn’t put up any light whatsoever and the windows were small. I actually put the mirror on the ceiling creating triangles of light using what I had.

You have to worry when you see the faces of your Gapher, your Key Grip and First AC go pale and they don’t actually know how to tell you the problem. When you see that you start to see there is a problem.

What challenges did you face breaking into the industry?

As a woman cinematographer it’s difficult to break in because especially when I started in 1998, I was one of the few DP’s around. Every time I was on set I was the only woman on set. I had discrimination but I didn’t have much because I also had a lot of people that believed in me and supported me. I’m bothered by women who don’t support each other as men do.

I used to have a big shirt over my shoulder but I’m a boxer and they didn’t know. A lot of women would start to panic wondering if I could do it. If you train it’s not about the strength it’s about the power you have from your legs as well.

What is your go to camera?

I think it really depends on the project. I can’t always say I want to use a particular camera. I do prefer the Alexa. My work is not all the same. Every story calls for a different cinematography style. You have to go with the story. You can use any camera really, it’s about the story.

I shot a TV pilot with Joseph Sikora. I thought I wanted to shoot with an Alexa but I did some tests and showed the director how it looked with a Red anamorphic lense and we just liked that much better.

What is your new film Amytal Therapy about?

The short film I just directed and DP called The Amytal Therapy. It’s about a woman who has a double identity looking for the murderer of a companion.

She’s a psychiatrist, living in New York that spies on her own patients, though the security cameras she’s personally installed in their homes. She knows what they do. She knows what they want. She knows how to stop them.

The good thing is if I wanted to put someone in the darkness I didn’t have to turn around and ask someone. The bad thing is I didn’t have a companion. I really did miss the collaboration between directory and cinematographer though.  It’s amazing because you have someone who covers your back. I think my next move I want to continue to be a DP (Director of Photography).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnTye4YrxUk

This week’s Imperfect Podcast guest is Manon de Reeper, who is the Editor in Chief and founder of independent film magazine Film Inquiry. Manon is also a screenwriter currently shopping her Screencraft Fellowship quarter finalist MORAL TREATMENT. She has two academic degrees and currently lives in beautiful Perth, Australia. Starting as her own personal blog, Film Inquiry has grown to having over 100 contributors.

Film Inquiry is an independent, crowd-funded magazine with which purposefully steers away from the current online journalism trends of meaningless click bait. Instead you’ll find long-form reviews and articles, as well as in-depth resources that are interesting to cinephiles and filmmakers. Film Inquiry also supports women and minorities in film and behind the camera.

Since December ’16, Film Inquiry is a Rotten Tomatoes approved publication and all of our reviews are counted towards their tomato-meter. To support Film Inquiry, you can join the Film Inquiry Society that will grant you complete access to all of their archives, as all posts older than 30 days (aside from a few freebies) are locked. Once a member, all the content is ads-free. Members also get a 10% discount to the Film Inquiry shop, and more.

Keep up with Manon de Reeper and Film Inquiry:

https://www.filminquiry.com/about/
https://www.facebook.com/filminquiry/
https://www.instagram.com/filminquiry/
https://www.twitter.com/filminquiry/

Watch How To Get Your Independent Film Reviewed by Film Inquiry

Interview Highlights with Manon de Reeper Editor in Chief of Film Inquiry

How did Film Inquiry get started?

I founded Film Inquiry as my own personal film blog where I was doing my own amateurish film reviews. I had just graduated from university and was doing some research while studying criminology. It’s still the most geeky thing ever, where I studied how a science fiction film effected the future effects of real life policies.

It was the best time of my life and I wanted to keep doing it because I always wanted to do film. Film was my biggest passion but friends and family recommended I not go to film school but I ended up making everything about film anyway.

I moved to Australia with my partner and he got a job here and I was hoping that I’d be able to do something with my criminology degree and it didn’t turn out the way I wanted. I’m not one to sit still so it was my chance to jump into the whole film thing.

People liked the blog and I wanted to involved more people so we could do more. The ball started rolling in early 2014. Every since, we’ve been steadily publishing. I don’t want to publish too much because I get too overwhelmed with how some of these magazines push out content. We want to keep the content schedule minimal but the actual articles bigger. It gives us the opportunity to go more in depth and explore one film more. More and more people are joining us to write.

People have told me they are pretty disillusioned with the current online film journalism. We really want to be able to talk about film in a context more than Marvel’s easter eggs. It’s fun and more people are picking up on it. I’m stoked an excited that all the hard work is paying off.

How do you decided which films you write about?

Honestly, at this point I have the luxury of having a team of 100 people so I have a combined amount of a time. I personally don’t review many films anymore. I’m trying to get a YouTube series going for myself but even choosing the films I’m going to watch every day is becoming a challenge. It’s starting to get so busy but I feel like I have this responsibility to watch movies.

What does a typical day as editor in chief at Film Inquiry look like?

I have to say I set it up pretty smoothly. What I do is coordinate when film makers ask us to review films, then I make sure that my team knows this film is available for review. They let me know if they want to review it, I request the screener, send it to them, they write the review and it’s reviewed by a few editors. I’m always the final review before publishing. We have a pretty strict schedule we adhere to so I make sure all the time slots are filled in. For general feature articles, its mostly all the writers pitching their good ideas. It’s a lot of work but it’s also fun.

Where does your love of films come from?

My Dad was very much into films and my Mom too actually. They would always take me to the movies. For instance, on Christmas we wouldn’t go to church, we’d go to the movies. That was our thing and it just stuck with me throughout life. I started exploring film myself when I got a little older.

What was the first article published on Film Inquiry?

I think it was a review of the film Elysium, by the South African director Neil Blomkamp. Everyone was raging on how incredibly poor it was and I thought it was pretty good. I wrote a little essay on how the criminological aspects of it were interesting.

How does your degree in criminology influence your writing?

It definitely taught me to look further than just the actor’s performances or the visuals. I always want to explore the idea of the film more. What are the film makers trying to tell us. We learn so much from film. Most of the situations these characters find themselves in, we wouldn’t ever find ourselves in. Seeing those things it teaches us a lot about life.

The way a camera is used and how a scene is framed adds to an idea. If you shoot someone from below, it elevates the person and adds meaning.

What is your screenplay Moral Treatment about?

I wrote a story influenced by academic background. It’s about a woman who is a British Royal set in the late 1800’s. It’s a Victorian era script. She has the privilege of receiving education in the UK and is married off to a rich guy in the US, an industrialists son. She starts to work at a local asylum because she’s a psychiatrist. It’s quite fascinating to me because there are so many terrible horror films set in these type of asylums. I wanted to do the opposite and give a very realistic portrayal of mental health and how these people were treated back then.

How does it differ from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest?

In a way, it was quite influenced by One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I personally really love that one because it’s a realistic portrayal of mental illness and what a mental hospital was like back then. It does have a big twist in the end like Moral Treatment does. I say it’s a mix between One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Shutter Island.

Is Moral Treatment your first screenplay?

No it wasn’t but it’s the first one I fully completed and edited. It was a challenge for me specifically how do you get into the mindset of writing. You need to put a lot of creative energy into writing which I did for 30 days. If you don’t keep at it every day, it’s easy to get out of that again. I adapted the National Writing Novel Month for my own needs. I was traveling and working during that time but because I had this goal of writing 3 pages a day, which is doable, I finished writing 90 pages in that month and had 30 pages before that. If you’re just focused on writing you don’t have the time to go back and edit it constantly.

Watch Manon’s video on “How I Wrote a Script in One Month”

I had seen the deadline for the Screencraft contest and gave myself that concrete goal. It was my first complete script and I wasn’t thinking I would ever win. Considering there were over 2000 submissions I was completely stoked to have made it to the quarter finals. It doesn’t even matter how good your screenplay is at that point. It’s more like a game of luck because there are so many people that submit great work. I still think there may be an audience for my script and winning one contest isn’t going to win you the Hollywood game.

What did you learn as Editor in Chief of Film Inquiry?

I learned it’s more about the people you know. I feel for the people that believe they need to win a contest to make it because that’s not the way it works. I’m in Perth Australia and trying to get to know people in Hollywood. Film Inquiry has definitely helped with that in a very casual way. Knowing people is the most important thing.

How can film makers get coverage at Film Inquiry?

Everyone can send their request to info@filminquiry.com and I will always put their requests in front of the team. It’s up to the team whether they pick it or not. It happens sometimes that nobody is interested. We also cannot guarantee a positive review.

I try to put everything out there. There is an audience for every film so I don’t filter it. I offer it up to my team for them to decide.

Tony Germinario is a writer and indie film director behind the award winning feature film Bad Frank. Born and raised in NJ. Tony went to school at Fairfield University where he initially began his screenwriting career. Since then, he has always been involved in creative outlets. At first, he focused on music and became one of the lead songwriters for a touring band called Jel, but then turned his writing skills from songs back to scripts roughly eight years ago.

Since focusing on film, Tony has written 9 feature scripts, several shorts, and has experienced increasing levels of success with his film-making. His first feature film “Wingman, Inc.”, starring Kristopher Turner, Erin Cahill, and Reid Ewing was picked up by Lion’s Gate/Grindstone and was released in April 2015.

Tony’s latest feature film Bad Frank, featuring Kevin Interdonato and Tom Sizemore has people talking. It’s won 11 awards on the film festival circuit and recently picked up a distribution deal with Gravitas Ventures. We learned a lot from Tony this week about transitioning from short films to creating feature films. The devil’s in the details and preparation can be the difference between success and failure. Surrounding yourself with a team you can trust is also the key to making big things happen on small budgets in the indie film world.

Keep up with Tony Germinario and Bad Frank

Twitter: @tonygerm & @badfrankmovie
Instagram: @tonygerm
Tony on IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm4894287/
Bad Frank on IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3362238/

Watch Bad Frank

Director Tony Germinario Interview Highlights

Where are you from?

Born and raised in Bergen County New Jersey. We actually have a big New Jersey contingency on this film. Kevin Interdonato, Russ Russo, Lynn Mancinelli and about ¾ of the cast and crew were from New Jersey. Keeps down travel expenses.

How long have you been making independent films?

For about 6 years now. In my younger days I was a touring musician for a number of years in NYC and the northeast. You reach a certain age and have kids where you can’t drive to Maryland at 11pm on Wednesday anymore. I wound up transitioning out of that into film.

Probably about 8 or 9 years ago I wrote my first script and it was awful. Then I wrote my second script and it wasn’t as awful and it progressively got better each time I wrote one. I was hired by a gentleman, Choice Skinner to write a script for him. He had written an advertisement looking for a writer so I sent in a few samples and was hired. I was paid all of $100 and I was a professional screenwriter so I was thrilled. We hit it off. Choice is New York guy himself even though he lives in Los Angeles. The script is still sitting in development limbo on some executives desk.

We hit it off after that and I went to one of Choice’s acting classes. If you’ve never been to an acting class, go! It’s insane. I met a couple of people there and I wrote a couple of short scripts that they could use for class and he said why don’t we just make them ourselves. I had no idea what he was talking about, I had never produced anything. I just wanted to write.

We ended up raising a little bit of money and shot two short films over the course of a weekend. That was really the start of it. I made another short film after that. Then I wrote a feature film that we produced called Wingman Inc. A professional wingman falls in love with a professional cockblocker. That was more of a comedic film than Bad Frank.

I wrote Bad Frank and wanted to see if I could do it all myself with the feedback I had been getting from people like Choice Skinner. I had worked with Brandon and Kevin before so we decided to do something really low budget. We were very fortunate to get great performances from great people involved. I feel very lucky to work with all these people and am beholden to them. Whatever I do next, any success I have is due to the people I worked with. I’ll do anything I can to help them out as well.

What is your philosophy on working with the same team for your films?

It helps you get a cohesive set. Especially for Bad Frank, we shot the whole thing in 12 days. If we didn’t have a good working knowledge of how we all fit together, there is no way we could have pulled it off. As you work on projects you determine this is someone you can work with again so you keep them in the fold and there are other people that may not fit. You know pretty quickly who fits your model. I like to think I don’t have much of an ego. I don’t really care as long as it comes out good. As long as everyone is working hard and doing what they are supposed to they’re good with me. That’s why I like keeping these people close.

Look at Judd Apatow who uses the same guys or Kevin Smith who uses Ben Affleck even though he’s one of the biggest actors in the world now.  That’s who I aspire to be. I bring Kevin Smith up because we were lucky enough to work with Brian O’Halloran. That was surreal. Clerks was one of those movies growing up I was like how did he do this. Brian walked on set the first day and I probably came across as a little jerky but I was really just intimidated. Probably more intimidated by Brian than Tom Sizemore.

I said it recently to a friend of mine. My next project I do, I want to have him back to give him more time to do what he does. He had two great scenes in the film but it wasn’t very much screen time.

Why did you start with short films?

I’m a kid out of Jersey. I just had to figure out a way to make a calling card. There are  a lot of festivals out there and if you start winning some awards you start to get your name out there. Maybe now it’s a little easier if you get on a Vimeo channel or something like that and you might find a way to monetize it but you’re never going to make your money back. I didn’t go to film school. If I was going to learn, that’s how I was going to learn. Still money well spent.

How did your process change from making short films to a feature film?

For the first feature, Wingman Inc. I was just a writer and showed up on set to watch and learn. Choice was the director and I kinda sat on his shoulder and watched how he did things. What I learned is, if you hire the right people, the director doesn’t have to do much. It’s all in the preparation beforehand. You’re going to setup your shot lists and work with your director of photography to do that. That was a learning process too but fortunately my DP was great, Mike Heachanova.

It’s about figuring out how do you get the right people in the right spots and letting them do what they do. My process is typically I’ll do a couple of takes and not say anything. On the 3^rd take I might say here’s a little note to guide them. If you’re working with talented people which every single person on our set was, you don’t have to do that much. Make it an easy place to work and the rest takes care of itself.

What is Bad Frank about?

It’s a love story…just kidding. It’s about Frank who has impulse control disorder. In his younger days he ruined all of his relationships with his family and friends. Years later he has himself straightened out and he’s medicated and trying to repair his old relationships. Just as he’s going to do that he meets up with someone from his past who sucks him in to his old ways. That’s when “Bad Frank” is reborn.

This film is all about performances. There are no special effects, no crazy car chases, we’ve got a couple of fights we shot but it’s about performances.

If you notice, one of the cool things throughout the film is that there isn’t much music but there’s a lot of sound design. We mixed these eery creepy sounds as things start effecting Frank and it gets stronger and harder as things progress. That’s something a lot of people don’t think about as well in the post production world. If our sound guy didn’t do a good job on that part it wouldn’t have been as intense. As good as Kevin is, you have to have the audio with the video. If it’s not there it would have been more challenging to keep people interested in it.  It keeps the intensity going and its such an integral part of the film.

What are the details of the Bad Frank shoot?

We shot on a RED EPIC. It was a two camera shoot. We didn’t really have that many takes. If we got 3 or 4 takes that’s it. If got a good performance we don’t have time to mess around. We probably had 20 to 30 minutes of film we cut. We had very fortunate circumstances. It was a 12 day shoot, 6 days on 1 off then 6 more days of shooting. I still have a regular job. I took 4 days off to shoot and while everyone else had a day off I was still working at my regular job. It was a total of 8 work days for me but it was well worth.

When you can pull something like this together and see it on screen I was stoked.

What was the budget for Bad Frank and how did you get funding?

The budget for Bad Frank was $80,000. Myself and one of my other producers put up the money. Fortunately, I have a very understanding wife. We filmed at our house. Every single room in our houes the furniture was moved around. The final scene in the dining room where the big fight breaks out, we smashed everything in our dining room. If you want to do it cheap  you gotta use what you have.

What was it like being the writer and director on Bad Frank?

I had the original idea for the script and then Brandon and Russ added their input. It was a collaboration in the way we did. From a director’s standpoint it really helped. I knew the script inside and out. I knew the motivations of the characters in every scene. That’s one of the reasons Kevin and Russ were able to give such great performances. It’s all about the preparation.

I think I’d find it more challenging directing something I didn’t write. You then have to intrepret what the writers motivation was and you could be off the mark if you don’t have enough time or money. I’m planning to direct the next two or three projects of my own unless someone wants to give me $1 Million to pay for it. These are my babies at this point.

How did Tom Sizemore get involved with Bad Frank?

Tom Sizemore was great. We knew someone who knew him and him the script. He loved it and wanted to be a part of it. The great thing about Tom is, he’s just a regular guy when he’s on set. In one of the scenes where we’re throwing him around in the mud, asking if needs a mat or anything. He just said fuck it, lets just do it it’s gotta be real. You don’t expect it from guys like that.

When we originally started the schedule, Tom Sizemore was going to show up for filming on the 3^rd day. I was going to have 2 days to get my legs because I never directed anything before. I wanted a couple days before we bring in Academy Award Nominee Tom Sizemore directed by Steven Spielberg and Oliver Stone and then this schmuck Tony Germinario. Schedules changed and there we are day 1 of shooting with Tom Sizemore.

After some travel complications, Tom actually admitted he was nervous about showing up on set. He said he didn’t know any of us. Tom just wanted it to work out good and put on a good performance for us. He did everything we asked of him, rolling around in the dirt and mud. When we were done he actually could have taken off but he stuck around for another day just to hang out and have dinner with us. You can’t say no to having dinner with Tom Sizemore. He’s a legend.

With Tom we could give him the framework and he just says whatever he wants. I don’t know if you caught it but he talks about something that happened in real life based on some research he did for a film. He actually brings it up saying someone else did it but he tied it to a true person.

What is the distribution strategy for Bad Frank?

After winning 11 film festival awards we just signed our distribution deal. We are getting the dates set but in early July it looks like we are going to have full domestic distribution through Gravitas Ventures. Bad Frank will be available on Amazon, iTunes, DVD and probably Netflix 6 months later. We also work with Lotus Entertainment who’s our sales agent and international distributor. We have already sold to the Middle East, Turkey and Japan.

Kevin knew them and they had liked the script from the onset. They were pretty much onboard before we made the film as long as we didn’t fuck it up. We’ve been very fortunate at festivals and with the backing of Lotus Entertainment and now Gravitas Ventures I think it’s really going to help launch this film. Even though it’s a small it doesn’t look like a small film in my opinion. The proudest thing for me is to get the performers recognition. They all did it for peanuts and I know the reason they do it, just to work but I want to see them succeed and not have to worry about taking the $100 job.

What did you learn from the making of Bad Frank?

Number 1 is preparation. The preparation is going to guide the end result. I spent months working on locations and shot lists. You can’t just show up and hope the magic is going to happen. You gotta be prepared for any contingency, sun to rain, lighting goes out. What do you do when things go wrong? As a director you can never show fear. You always have to be calm and be able to pivot.

Next I’d say, think smart. Know what your capabilities are and how you can handle them. Work with your team. Find people you can trust that you work well with. I’m extremely loyal to the people I work with and if I didn’t treat them well they wouldn’t by loyal to me as well.

On this week’s Imperfect Podcast, we talk about our experience at the 2016 Winter Film Awards 48-hour Film Challenge. There were 21 teams chosen to demonstrate how well they could create a 2-7 minute short film based on a given genre, tag line, and a prop. Each team was called into a conference room and asked to pick a genre out of a hat. The genres were Horror/Slasher or Monster, Romance or Comedy, Martial Arts or Super Hero, Buddy film/Chick flick, Spy/Cop, Zombie/Musical, Science-fiction, Western, Thriller/ Suspense or Film Noir.

The tag line for this year’s 48 hour film challenge, which every group had to incorporate into their short film, was the following quote from Oscar Wilde: “This is New York and there’s no law against being annoying.” The last requirement and most challenging was the prop, Grand Central Station. Each group was issued a permit to film in that location for 1 hour.

We discuss the difficulties inherent in a challenge such as this as Heckler Kane Creations was one of the participating teams. Here are all the films submitted on YouTube.

Find out more info about the Winter Film Awards 48 Hour Film Challenge on twitter @winterfilmawards

Watch Our Short Film The Drop Off

Us creative types can be really insecure and we need to know you care. Please Take some time to show us how much we mean to you. If you like what you see hit us up at Twitter, check out our behind the scenes at Instagram, and our YouTube is the best place to find all of our videos. If you don’t like what you see, mamma always said if you cant say something nice…