48 hoursTerraqua Productions, an all-female and all LGBTQI team, entered the global film competition, the 48 Hour Film Project.

Creative Producer Holly Marie Boulind figured that it was definitely viable, considering the Covid Pandemic had forced the cities to do an online kick-off rather than the usual in-person one.

“I figured, why not?” Boulind said. “We are creative people, forced into isolation, which stifles our ideas. I needed to do something, anything to get those juices flowing again.”

The 48 Hour Film Project brings filmmakers together for a caffeine-fuelled weekend of non-stop writing, filming, editing and mixing.

At the kickoff event at 6 pm on Friday, each team is given a genre, a line of dialogue, a character and a prop and sent off into the world to create a Tarantino-esque masterpiece in 48 short hours.

Although Boulind and her wife, Director Kathi Henriksen, had already entered the competition in 2017 – creating an award-winning short film – they had several hurdles trying to do the same from their new home in South Florida.

“In Johannesburg, we had a full team of professionals in our corner. We had all the equipment we could possibly want or need. On this side of the world, there was none of that” Henriksen quipped.

However, this didn’t deter our intrepid heroines, who put on their big girl panties, called up a friend and audio guru Reanne de Klerk in California to get her on board and started writing a script for a “Film de Femme”, the genre they drew out of the proverbial online hat.

Boulind put on her Art Director, Prop Master and Wardrobe Mistress hats and set out creating props, sets and wardrobe, Henriksen wrote and created shot lists for each scene and De Klerk started composing music suitable for the genre.

The fun part? Boulind had to portray three different characters interacting with each other on-screen.

“Setting up the shots and creating those invisible lines for Holly to act within was a challenge by itself,” Henriksen said. “Doing it with only one camera made it even more difficult!”

“We had so much fun”, quipped Boulind, “I even managed to hit my wife in the head with a bottle during one of the scenes!”

Hours later the two women sent the rough cut of their film to California where Reanne de Klerk started working magic with her sound editing, adding effects, audio tracks and original music to bring the whole story together.

The film was uploaded to the drop-off site with about an hour to spare.

The 448 Hour Film Project is the world’s oldest timed film competition and is in 130 cities worldwide.

There are several spin-off competitions including the 4-Points online film project which happens worldwide at the same time.

48 Hour Film Project  South Africa is launching a competition aimed specifically at scholars to try and grow and promote the love of film in South Africa’s youth.

This year, 71 teams entered the competition in Johannesburg, a world record for entries in any city, 65 uploaded films and 52 finished within the time frame and are eligible for awards.