Making a Musical in 48 Hours!

Almost two years soon passed in Toronto, and it was time for another 48 Hour Film Project. And I decided that’ll be my last time doing this as a producer. Next year I’ll try to direct myself.

We kept the core team the same. In fact, during that time, my main job was very draining and I couldn’t help but feel not able to focus very well on the competition. But thankfully, this time we got four producers in total so the work was much lighter.

I was so surprised that one of the producers, Avery, somehow got a location from a contact from his last short film - it’s a huge, beautiful office that we can use for a very low price. But at the same time, I’m not sure how can we use it as the story is completely unknown yet.

On the day of the competition, I went there supposedly together with Brayen, one of the directors. But the guy told me he’d be 30 minutes late! Every team needs to draw a random genre from a hat. The competition staff were pressuring me to draw the genre now. But my friend was still not there! I don’t want all this pressure to fall on me. What if I draw a bad one? 

Another 10 minutes passed and my friend was still not there. I realized if I don’t draw it now I’ll have much fewer options later. So here we go. I fumbled in the hat for a long time, praying to get a good one. When I saw what I drew, I was speechless. The first option was “Food Film”, and the other one was “Musical”. My heart sank. I felt the competition was already over. When I sent what I got to the group chat, not surprisingly everyone started complaining. I was the sinner who drew a musical out of everything that could be.

How the heck can we do a musical in 48 hours? When my director friend Brayden finally came to the location, we both agreed we’d have to do a food film. Something like Ratatouille? I was reckoning. 

At the same time, the writers are all at my place discussing about which genre to do. And surprisingly they want to go for Musical! One of the directors, Javi was also a writer and he says he is an undercover musician and he can compose songs. I highly doubt how good the songs are tho, at that moment. Even if let’s say we do have good songs? Who can sing for us?

Me and Brayden suddenly remembered a guy who applied to be an actor on our set. He doesn’t have too much acting experience but seems like a professional theatre singer. We didn’t write him back at the start. Now it seems like he’s the one. We gave him a call on the spot. Despite us not knowing if we’d for sure do a musical. Briskly, he said he was down and he’d quit his shift tomorrow to do it. 

The final elements we got were: A character - a professional chef, a prop - a poster card, and a line - “Well who knew”. Well, who knew we had a musical genre? When me and Brayden got to the writers’ room which is my house, the writers were discussing intensely. And Javi has got a guitar somewhere. 

They started talking about the musical idea - a desk jockey wants to become a professional chef but he doesn’t dare to quit his office job. A great combination of the location we got and the chef element. I was still not convinced. But then Javi started singing a theme song he just made for the story. Dang, it was quite catchy too! 

After throwing out some other ideas, we all agreed on the musical one. And here we go, we are doing a musical!

Also, for this film I had to commend our production designer Karan. Because we have only one day for production, we couldn’t have time to switch among different locations. At the same time, the story happens in three different settings: a kitchen, a living room, and an office. Karan used his PD magic - a bunch of second items from thrift stores and pulled this off convincingly. 

For this project, it was also a matter of fact that everything fell into its place. We had all the right people. Another cast for an important character, the chef, is a semi-professional singer too. The original DP flopped last second before the shoot and the new DP was just even more well-versed. 

Javi even composed two new songs on the spot while we were shooting. 

I genuinely felt happy for that set even though I was just the person connecting everyone together. Well, that’s also what a producer has to do.

Finally, the film went so well and it got into the top 15 out of the 108 teams that participated this year and won the Audience Choice award in our screening group.

Writing till here, I know that my filmmaking journey just embarked, and there will be more challenges coming over. I'm ready to say 'YES' to all the adventures in this film world.