Film Title: Medium Hard
We’re so lucky and honoured to have taken part in the Manchester edition of the 48 Hour Film Project, (massive thanks to Danielle, Nicholas and their team for the invite and for the amazing opportunity).
Producer Aatif Ati Zafar and Director Wes Rashid (with background in short form content and community films) set out with three missions; expand our narrative storytelling skills, make a film in 48 hours that looks and feels bigger than it is, and shed more light on the diverse talent in the north west indie scene: helping represent overlooked communities and creatives.
We pulled together a really strong crew; Amanda Rochelle who is make up royalty in the north west, award winning Andrew Rush Walker as DoP who has an innate ability for cinematic vision and Philip Shaun McGuinness – who is so humble and laid back it’s easy to overlook that he’s been in various big name projects like the likes of The Batman and BBC’s G’wed and The Responder. Philip and CJ had great chemistry on set and were a joy to work with bouncing off each other all saturday.. Producer Aatif won a council seat for the Green Party at the local elections; thankfully his commitment and organisation persevered and he was able to continue with our mission.
We had some immediate hurdles in our Pre-Production – the competition took place on the same weekend as two big political protests and the FA cup final. Thankfully in the end we had a crew full of enthusiasm, diversity and experience – a perfect example of the strength and depth of the Manchester and Liverpool film industry. Some crew members were neuro-divergent, trans/gender fluid, LGBTQ, from underprivileged backgrounds, mixed ethnicity and across a broad age range; some even having their first entry into the film ‘biz’.
They say the more fun you have behind the camera it doesn’t always translate on camera. That was far from the truth on this occasion. The way the crew and talent bounced off each other in Saturday morning rehearsal and supported each other was a sight to witness and we were in hysterics all day – Just what we needed when running off zero sleep. We are so proud of our crew’s determination and passion for our film, with their constant energy and work ethic – by solving problems on their feet we truly proved that in “Manchester we do things differently!”
On the launch night, once we were given our category and elements – we were so impressed at how quickly we were able to put things into place and go into the shoot day with 80% confidence that our late night ideas and frantic scrambling were going to work. It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows though, Post Production was our downfall – everything from technical problems to unwanted software updates to angry mothers on the phone, it made everything twice as hard. Sadly we had to hand in an unfinished first cut one minute before the deadline after the editing program refused to play ball.
We are super proud and grateful to our team to have achieved a final film in 48 hour and with zero budget.
Competitions like The 48Hour Film Project are crucial for helping unheard voices, unseen faces and overlooked communities to get on the radar in an extremely competitive industry. Regardless of what happens on awards night; we’ll be taking part in the future!
Warning Bad Language – Medium hard Trailer