Eleanor Polak photos
48 Hour Film Project team director Zach Fox: “Ketchup is harder to clean up than I thought it would be.”
The scene of the crime.
In the middle of the floor of director Zach Fox’s parents’ kitchen lay some fake blood, a real knife, and an avocado.
This was a crime scene, and the crime wasn’t only the murder of a helpless victim. It was also a crime against fashion.
Luckily, the fashion detectives were on the case. And soon, everybody would be watching them — as part of an annual competition to make a short movie in just two days.
The as-of-yet untitled short film was one of 26 that would be written, filmed, and edited over the course of one weekend, during the 48 Hour Film Project. In its 14th year in New Haven, the 48 Hour Film Project is an international competition open to amateur and professional creatives.
“The mission would be to encourage creativeness in the film industry on a local level,” said City Film Producer Lorna Rodriguez. “It’s a great springboard for filmmakers, it’s a really amazing opportunity.”
On Friday night, during the kickoff ceremony at the Armada Brewing Company on River Street, Rodriguez announced the requirements for each film. She gave the pre-established teams, which were formed prior to kickoff but not permitted to do any other creative work, a choice of two genres to work in. She also assigned a character with an occupation (this year, treasurer), a prop (an avocado), and a line of dialogue (“She left you a message”), that must be used in every film.
Fashion Detectives Latoya Agnew and Allie Bee.
Eamon Linehan served as team leader for one of the film crews, and Rodriguez gave his group the choice between the genre of film noir and that of disaster. They chose film noir. The team consisted of Linehan as cameraman, Fox as director, Sophia Florence as writer, and Rebecca Bergman, Florence, Allie Bee, Latoya Agnew, Giovanni Carizales, Michael Cummings, Shay Nowak, and Heidi the dog as actors. They decided to use a more comedic angle on a classically moody genre: two fashion detectives (Bee and Agnew) attempt to solve a fashion crime while two other detectives (Fox and Florence) solve a murder.
“It’s a play on the joke ‘I wouldn’t be caught dead in that outfit,’” said Carizales.
“People talk about the fashion police all the time, so I thought, what are they like?” added Florence.
As it turns out, they were slightly bumbling, very ridiculous, and more than a little fun. Linehan’s team were old hands at the 48 Hour Film Project, as most of them had competed in it before. This year’s competition was their first year competing under Linehan’s production company, Free Artists Production.
“We’re just going to have a fun, silly time,” said Linehan.
The short time window provided by the competition, and the small size of the teams, meant that everyone in the production took on multiple roles. They provided their own costumes and props — most notably the fashion police, who wore tape measures at their belts and carried scissors in the place of guns. Actors were also encouraged to pitch in by holding the boom, setting up the scene, and adapting the blocking and lines as they went.
“In festivals like this, because of the short time frame, we all sort of wear different hats,” explained Linehan.
First up on the shooting schedule: the scenes where each pair of detectives discover the crime scene. Florence suggested filming with very few cuts to mimic old-school movies and minimize editing. The group also debated the pros and cons of transatlantic accents.
“I did throw in the word broad, because I thought, ‘Why not?’” said Florence.
Fox was hilarious in his role as a film-noir detective, improvising a bit of business where he ate a piece of pizza off the victim’s countertop. He then tasted the fake blood on the floor, to determine if it was real blood (for the purposes of the fiction, it was declared legitimate, though in reality it was ketchup).
Eamon Linehan acting as cameraman.
Filming in such restricted conditions brought up its own set of challenges. Real food props got eaten, and the actors had to take care to leave enough left for repeated takes. Sometimes, that worked to their comedic advantage, as in take two of the opening scene, when Fox was shown to not only bite into the victim’s pizza, but bite into a slice that was obviously already half-eaten.
They also had to contend with the outside noise, like leaf blowers and the neighbors blasting Jay‑Z. “It’s not a 48 Hour without it,” joked Linehan.
After the kitchen scenes were shot, Fox went to work cleaning the set before the group moved on. “Ketchup is harder to clean up than I thought it would be,” he said.
“Well, maybe someone shouldn’t kill Becky with an avocado,” said Linehan.
Linehan, who has participated in the 48 Hour Film Project since 2019, enjoyed the opportunity to flex his problem-solving and creative muscles. “For me, this is like a creative marathon,” he said. “It really forces your creativity.”
Florence felt that as a writer, the project was the perfect way to create art within specific boundaries. “I’ve wanted to do a fashion detective sketch for a while,” she said. “It’s an eight-minute joke, not a multi-year joke.”
Linehan also praised the community of the festival. “I really enjoy the part where we get to see how well the audience received it,” he said. “That’s one of my greatest joys.”
He added that the first few scenes were often the hardest to shoot, and after that, the company would establish a rhythm. The next scenes took place outside, in the backyard, and involved one of the most talented yet fickle actors on the crew. Heidi the dog played herself as a seller of boots legs (not boot legs), which were the upper portion of boots, and were also in violation of the U.S. fashion code.
Shay Nowak giving Heidi a treat on set.
Despite the prospect of treats, Heidi had little interest in sitting with her legs up on the table. “Heidi, you’re being a diva right now,” Linehan joked. She did eventually agree to sit on the ground beside the now-lowered table.
The team decided to film Heidi separately from the other actors, and splice the scenes together. Linehan filmed her barking, and decided to edit Nowak’s voice as Heidi over it to make it look like the dog was talking. Then, they filmed the other actors interacting with Heidi, from Heidi’s perspective, so that she wasn’t forced to be in the shot.
Day one was more than half-way through, and the team still had a long way to go. Fox and Linehan intended to stay up most of the night editing their film, to be ready for the Sunday night deadline.
The finished product will be shown on Aug. 2 in the Bijou Theatre in Bridgeport, along with the other movies from the other participants of this event who completed and submitted their films on time. On Aug. 30, the qualifying films — those which have not been disqualified due to missing one of the required components — will be included in an award ceremony at Armada Brewing where awards like Best Picture and Best Actor will be appointed. The winning team can then go up against the other 48 city winners in the United States, and the best twelve films from the U.S. will be shown at the Cannes International Short Film Festival.
“We have a lot of creativeness in New Haven,” said Rodriguez. The 48 Hour Film Project was both proof of that fact, and a place to let that creativity flourish, grow, and shine. It provided the perfect motivation for filmmakers to improvise and challenge themselves: how else would you end up with films involving avocado murders, talking dogs, and illegal half-boots? The project certainly offered this team of creatives a chance to come together and create something fantastic. This weekend in New Haven, filmmaking is definitely not going out of fashion.