Film Title: Her Move
The Rain Check Pictures team first met at the 48 Hour Film Project Networking Meet and Greet event at Home Manchester on Monday 20th April, less than a month before the competition. They’d never worked as a team before, and though there was a broad array of industry experience between them, most of them had never attempted making a film in 48 hours before, but it sounded like fun, so they figured why not give it a go?!
Pictured: Omaymah Habti
The hardy, rag-tag band quickly formed a WhatsApp group to get to know each other and reached out to their wide network to recruited roles they were lacking. Then they scouted locations and booked a fabulous 1970s bungalow; arranged travel; organised catering; and pulled together potential props and wardrobe.
Pictured (left to right): Mark Forrer, Lorna Riley, Omaymah Habti, Eilidh Pollarf, Wade Woods, Sam Richards, Georgina Kerr, Louis Wang, Stephen G. Titley, Scott Dixon and Yan Hui Chew
At the Kickoff event, it felt like an eternity before team Rain Check Pictures were called to select their genres. So many good ones had gone… but plenty of terrifying ones had gone too. When they picked Film de Femme and Inspirational they were pretty pleased, seeing as they had two fabulous female actors in the team already.
The writing team hightailed it to the Sharp Project and stayed late into the night, planning the story, characters and theme before they finally started writing the script. They also had to contend with casting the role of the father – a role that hadn’t been fully realised yet – however, through following various leads and connections, an actor was found. Everything seemed to be coming together.
At 1:30am of the morning of filming, they called time and went to bed, with an incomplete script, and the head writer tasked with pulling everyone’s scenes together.
Pictured (left to right): Stephen G. Titley, Omaymah Habti, Scott Dixon, Louis Wang, Mark Forrer and Eilidh Pollarf
The team were up early – some with under 5 hours sleep – to travel over 50 miles to the location, picking up invaluable cast and crew along the way. On arrival, the writing team had to finish the script, while juggling a million and one other jobs at the same time.
Then the actor who had been secured to play the father dropped out at the last minute…
Suddenly everything was hanging in the balance.
The story didn’t work without the father. Did the script need scrapping altogether? Or would team Rain Check Pictures have to take a rain check on the whole production?
But the team kept a level head. Script edits continued while numerous phone calls were made. And a new father figure was found!
The script was locked by midday, and the director and actors worked together brilliantly to pull off a script they’d barely had chance to read before shooting began.
Throughout the chaos, stress and time pressures, however, the atmosphere on set was always positive. Crew members that wanted the opportunity to step into different roles were able to do so. And the talented cast were given space and support to improvise, allowing them to fully explore their characters and exercise their incredible acting skills.
Filming finally finished at around 11:30pm, and as the team packed up to leave, there was definitely a reluctance to say our final goodbyes. The cast and crew went home and it was all down to the post-production team to pull off the final cut of the film. Music, sound, colour grade, all done in record time to make it to the final deadline.
Team Rain Check Pictures would definitely recommend not taking a rain check on this competition the next time it comes around!
Mark Forrer was the director, the actors were Omaymah Habti, Eilidh Pollard and Stephen G. Titley. The writing team were Mark Forrer, Lorna Riley (also produced), Omaymah Habti, Sam Richards and Louis Wang (also was their script supervisor. Gina Kerr was their makeup and hair stylist, Wade Woods did the sound, Scott Dixon did the lighting and Yan Hui was the camera assistant and unit stills photographer.
Written by Omaymah Habti and Lorna Riley. Photo credits:Yan Hui Chew