Over 2016-2018 I helped the amazing team at the Naenae Clubhouse with a series of entries for the 48 hour film competition.

The Naenae Clubhouse is a centre for youth to gather after school and build their skills in tech, music, crafts, and loads of other things. It’s an incredible place and I am honoured to have met the great people there, both youth and adults!

The 48 Hour Film Contest is a longstanding NZ competition where teams are challenged to make a short film from scratch in 48 hours. It’s a lot of fun and I’ve been part of some great efforts over the years.

For the 2016, 2017 and 2018 competitions I came in as a screenwriter/story leader. My role was to step in on Friday night, lead the conversation with everyone about what our story would be, and then hash out a shooting script to start work on Saturday morning. The rest of the team would then do the actual hard work of filming and editing without me – they all worked about a hundred times more than I did!

Here’s the 2017 entry, The Way of the Cube. I think this is absolutely great and in a different year would have been a city finalist. It’s a sign of the incredibly high standard of the competition these days that it wasn’t! It did win Best Song for the Wellington region and was nominated for Best Song at the national awards – the two performers wrote and laid down their tracks in a couple of hours, and it was incredible to watch them work!

Here’s the 2016 entry, Chasing The Beat. This is a bit less polished, and I kinda messed up by sending the team out with a script that was way too long. But the climax is phenomenal, and this film was winner for Best Song not just at the Wellington awards but also at the main event, the National awards held in Auckland!