48 Hour Film Project: The QWERTY Kid

If you ever want to suspend your reality for a bit, if you want to feel like you're at an amusement park for the entire weekend, if you want to meet incredibly talented, interesting, witty people and laugh your ass off. . .I would highly recommend working with a team like the one I was lucky enough to be part of for the 48 Hour Film Project.

I cannot wait for the screening this evening! Tickets are sold out, but we may have a couple extra, so if you want to come and can't get a ticket, let me know and I'll see what I can do.

Because who takes the genre fantasy and decides to write a movie about typing boot camp? Besides the team at Flying Turkey Productions, I mean.

I don't know if any of you ever took typing on actual typewriters. I know I did. In India. So our typewriters weren't even electric. I had the cutest little Indian typing teacher named Mr. Mitroo. He was about five feet tall and round, and used to dress in brown button up sweater vests. He would play, I don't know, polkas, on the record player - yes, I said record player - and we had to do our typing exercises to those.

For those of you who have been texting and IM-ing since you were old enough to talk, I don't imagine you can relate. So try and picture learning the keyboard, where to put your fingers. Having to make an actual physical effort to depress the typewriter keys. Having to hit enter so the typewriter carriage dings and resets itself.

Now picture a boot camp. With people yelling at you. With time pressure. Typing the same sentences over and over and over. You are cold, and tired, and miserable. And still you have to type, dammit, type!

And then imagine doing that on film, while trying to keep a straight face even though the camera man is trying not to dissolve in a puddle of laughter right in front of you.

The script was fantastic. The direction was incredible. And the actors did a great job. Everything was so well organized, the sets were great, and the props so perfect. Who pulls four ancient typewriters together between 7:00 on a Friday night at 7:30 Saturday morning?

There were so many amazingly funny moments that I've been giggling over for the past couple days.

After already working for at least 24 hours straight, they had to take a zillion hours of film and edit down to roughly 5 minutes. I do not know what the film will actually be like.

All I am certain of is that it will be hilarious. I will be writing with full details tomorrow.