Thoughts from Another Simon

Ok so now with 18 hours to go until kick off, some words of harsh realism from Simon Young... This competition will squeeze every last drop of blood, sweat, tears, and brains from your being... it will force teams to make decisions on-the-fly and most importantly - as a cohesive group.  From my experience, the make or break stage (as is the case for all films really) is the writing stage... both times we as a group grinded out and workshopped a story for 9 straight hours until every team member was on the same page and excited about its direction. This then created the foundation for a smooth shooting stage - which is the most testing and gruelling.  I felt that keeping the team happy was key - since we'd all be running on fumes and caffiene 24 hours into it, it was imperative to understand that some members had the potential to get grumpy.  So if the team is divided from the start, it could get ugly and slow everything down.With all that said, the most important aspect of this competition is of course time management.   And from my experiences it was the little things that added up and ate away at our 48 hours.  There could be things you overlook such as your editing software's rendering time, travel times between your shooting locations, if you decide to compose your own music, and getting to the film-drop-off destination.  These all add up; and in the end, you really only have about 45 hours til you have to hit the "render" button.It's not always going to be smooth sailing.  There will be disagreements, hurt feelings, bruised egos, and in extreme cases yelling matches - but it's the nature of the medium.  This is the very reason why this competition exists - to literally push all your filmmaking abilities and more importantly you communication skills to the very limit and see if your team can come out alive after 48 hours.