TIC - 48 Hour Film Project 2012

One day, while sitting at my desk at the Natural History Museum of Utah, long-time academic collaborator and fellow museum employee Hannah Jones walked by and said something to the effect of,

"We should make a museum team for this year's 48-hour film project."

I thought this was a great idea so I fronted the cash, and registered our team under the name 'Al Kessler Centennial Squadron.' A tribute to former board member and friend of the museum Al Kessler who just celebrated his 100th birthday at giant party at the museum.

I was set to perform "Aliens: The Puppet Musical" twice during the filming so in order to pull it off, it couldn't be a one man operation. Here is the team we assembled:

Producer - Hannah Jones, of NHMU visitor services

Director - Rich Herbert, Hannah's boyfriend and SpyHop alum

Head Writer - Alejandro Stepenberg, a new collaborator
Writers - Nels Jorgensen and John Lunbeck, my best friends
DP - Me!

1st AD - Colin McDermott, an old friend and collaborator

Production Designer - Stuart W. Ford, NHMU employee and friend

Hair/Makeup - Summer Kingdon, NHMU employee

Editor - Kathryn Bessembinder, NHMU employee

Composer - Keir Schmidt, who keeps giving me free music, God love him

We got our prompt which included the genre "silent film" and also included a character named Al Crofton; a friend of a famous person, a watch and the line of dialogue "I meant to tell you a few days ago."

The script was finished by 1am which gave us all a full night's sleep. Bright and early the next day we all arrived at our shooting location, the former Natural History Museum building, which is abandoned and scary. This is what we shot.

Tic - Best Film: Salt Lake City 48hfp 2012 from Connor Rickman on Vimeo.

We set up a pretty legit production office in the basement of the building so the entire production and post-production process took place there. We delivered it on time and awaited the judging.

By now from the title of the video, you've probably figured out that our team won! Here's a list of all our awards:

Best Film, Best Directing, Best Editing, and Best Score.

Every other team that won an award didn't even get more than one! Somehow we managed to sweep the entire competition this year.

I owe it all to the collaborative spirit of my team and I'm very excited to see what happens at the national competition in April!