Words by Jon Cole
Edited by James Hillier
The day before the 72 Hour Filmmaker Showdown began, James and I were without camera, audio equipment, and film crew… but full of optimism.
We go to Future shop and buy the Canon 7D camera with plans to return it the following week; the scheme meshed perfectly with the contest’s tight timeline. Next, James and I head to Tom Lee Music with intentions of renting some decent audio equipment. After being shown a few setups that attached easily to our camera, the employee shows us a full external audio setup with telescoping boom mic, pimping headphones, and all. The quality of the audio is supposedly unparalleled. For a reasonable $92 rental fee, it is impossible to resist the sexiness of the boom.
Finding a film crew is another challenge. For the last few weeks I had been trying to get Charlie Ager, the star of the original “BumLife”, to commit to one day of filming. So far he had been completely unwilling because “the snow might be good that day”. With no other options, we are forced to wait until the day of filming to see which of our ski bum friends are available.
The next morning, with a car loaded full of props, we feel as well prepared as we could have hoped. Registration is in an hour, leaving us plenty of time to make the drive from Pemberton to Whistler. James tries the car ignition, and we discover that the battery is dead. We find someone to give us a boost and hope that the issue wouldn’t persist throughout next 72 hours. It would.
The crowd at the directors meeting is clearly far more artsy than myself, several moustaches and thick framed glasses are present… oddly I am intimidated by this. After a short meeting the bell rings and the contest begins.
James and I head up the mountain with our equipment that we are completely unfamiliar with and hope to find some people willing to help. We take over a corner of the roundhouse patio, get out the boom mic, and command respect from all the other patrons… it feels like it has already paid itself off. A few friends show up, I train one on how to use the boom mic, essentially I show him how to turn it on. Filming goes slowly and our buddies are anxious to ski. Some leave to take runs while new ones show up. This results in horrible continuity in the cast of bums for the film.
As I struggle to direct, act, and keep my friends from leaving, some dude sitting nearby recognizes me from doing stand-up comedy in Vancouver. Luckily, he fits the role of ski bum, and was quickly recruited, making it possible for us to film the last few scenes needed for the day.
That evening, at home editing, James and I realize that more shots are needed for the mountain scenes to make sense. The next day we will be forced to go up the mountain again, which will cost valuable time. Hours are spent trying to sync the Video to our external audio system. The audio from the boom mic is too quiet, surely a result of our ineptitude, making the entire audio setup good for nothing except commanding respect… still worth 92 dollars.
Our original intentions of staying up all night editing don’t pan out. James and I both slept for nine hours and take our guilt out on each other that day.
On the mountain again, James makes light conversation about the movie to some strangers on the patio/set. They are drunk and claim they will do ‘some jackass shit’ for our movie. Full of hate, I hope to myself that they die before procreating.
James insists on a shot that I feel is unnecessary. He, being James, is unfazed by my criticism, and maintains that the shot of me crashing while sliding down the handrail is extremely important to the plot of the film, and well worth our tightly budgeted time. We bicker. I crash down the railing a half dozen times, while James insists I make the fall look more real and painful. The shot ends up being one of the first cut from the film.
I am worried that I would murder James before the film is finished. Feelings of despair and hopelessness are running rampant.
Because of my genuine ineptitude on skis, I take the lift down the mountain with all the equipment while James skis down. We intend to get down at the same time, so we can quickly get prepped to film the Bum Camp scenes. I end up waiting at the bottom for a half hour while James skis pow in Khyber’s behind my back instead of heading directly to the car as promised.
Once Bum Camp is set up, we are once again short on bums to film the scenes. Our buddy Graham Haywood goes on a mission to grab more of our friends as we put the final touches on the set. He phones us to say that his bum recruiting mission is a failure and that bummy friends cannot be found at the moment. More despair ensues. Surprisingly, he returns with a truck full of Frenchmen who fit the bum role perfectly. The Frenchmen were hitchhiking to Squamish to do groceries, and Graham told them he would take them to Function Junction (which is arguably a worse spot to hitchhike than where he picked them up) if they came and spent fifteen minutes filming a few scenes with us. The filming takes 2 hours and the grocery store closes soon. Graham drops off the Frenchmen in Function to hitchhike as a group of 3 bummy looking dudes. It is very unlikely they made it to the grocery store before it closed.
We push start James’ car again for the umpteenth time and head to Graham Haywood’s workplace to film the office scenes which happily go well. The mood has changed from the morning and a sense of optimism once again surrounds the making of our film.
That night, we take turns editing and sleeping. Hillier does most of the editing, I do most of the sleeping. The next day, Hillier continues to edit while I go out and get the last few essential shots. Despite a few filming blunders, the film looks great to us and we seem to have budgeted our time to complete the film perfectly.
When I get back and watch the still very rawly edited version of our film, I realize that we have practically pulled it off. I tell James “I can’t believe we did it! I can’t believe nothing has gone wrong!”
Within 10 minutes, James realizes that his laptop - which is about twice the size of any laptop I have ever seen in my life and is appropriately nicknamed The Mothership - has stopped charging and is quickly losing battery power. His 120 watt charger, which is the size and weight of a brick, has broken.
It was Sunday at 5pm, and the video was due the following morning at 10am sharp. As I saw it, our only option was to drive to Future Shop in Vancouver before it closed at 7pm, an impossibly fast drive, and hope that they have a charger large enough to power James’ supercomputer. We rush to the car, get a jump, and hit the road while calling every computer shop and repair man on the way.
While driving and after speaking on the phone with several useless employees at Future Shop and a few very unhelpful computer repair men, Hillier finds our saviour: a company that specializes in solving calamities identical to our own – Laptop911. Saved!
James calls the guy and tells him that we have a full blown laptop emergency! After explaining our extremely tight deadline and dead battery charger, the guy tells us he will figure something out and call us back. Relief flows through my body.
5 minutes later, he calls back with advice: “Go to Future Shop.” Hillier responds “Listen, we are driving to Future Shop, the idiots there can’t tell me if they have a compatible charger, and we probably will not make it before they close. If we can’t get one, we need you to figure something out. Don’t you have friends who can fix this stuff with a soldering iron or splice the wires? This is an EMERGENCY!!!”
He once again tells us he will call us back. He never calls back, and stops answering our calls. Laptop911 definitely did not live up to its name. Hillier leaves him a hateful voicemail.
Stress floods back into the car. My phone rings, it’s my roommate Kenny. I am far too absorbed in the problem to chit chat, and I ignore the ringing phone. Luckily, Hillier answers my phone and has the presence of mind to ask Kenny to go to Future Shop and see if he can figure it out for us. A half hour later, Kenny has managed to do what countless computer repairmen and Future Shop employees failed to do. He looked up compatible chargers on the HP website, and found the right one on the Future Shop rack.
As we cross the Lions Gate bridge, hoping Kenny actually bought the right charger, Hillier prevents a sure car accident with a just-in-time honk to the people in front of us - making the entire ordeal worthwhile on a societal level.
The charger works and we edit all night in Vancouver, drive frantically back to Whistler in the morning, and get the movie in on time.
Turns out it was all for nothing. The movie didn’t make it into finals, probably because it was being judged by a bunch of art fags.
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