Hollywood-star Martin Freeman starred in our 48-hour film project

One big name actor. 12 crew. 48 hours. One award-winning movie.

When I was approached by my good friend Joe (the guy who filmed and edited all the Nokia Photo School videos I did for Nokia in connection with the launch of the Nokia N8), saying that he was going to be involved with a 48 hour film project, I declared him insane. My next phrase, I believe, was "How can I help".

One film, 48 hours

It turns out that they needed a stills photographer, both to document the ongoings, as a memory, and to get some shots for the film itself.

Now, if you have never been part of a film production before, you should know that 48 hours isn't enough to make a film. It's completely insane, in fact - and that's partially why it's so much fun. The pressure was up doubly, of course, because we had managed to enlist a Hollywood celebrity to star in our movie. If you've never heard of Martin Freeman before (which sounds pretty unlikely, really - check him out on IMDB, you've almost certainly seen one or more of the films he has been in), you certainly will when The Hobbit comes out in 2012; Martin plays Bilbo Baggins.

For this project, we were shooting with dSLR cameras (Canon 5D mk II's, if I don't recall wrongly), and the results look nothing short of awesome.

At the London 48 hour film festival screening, the film picked up a handful of awards, including Best Film, Best Acting, Best Script, and the Audience Award... And in March, it's off to Miami for the international 48 hour film festival Filmapalooza - where it hopefully will pick up a few more prizes.

Behind the scenes

The unneccessarily talented Sam Sapin was there as well, and shot a behind-the-scenes video documentary, which surfaced on the web a few days ago - it gives some lovely insights about the ordeal of trying to create a movie in less than two days, including some of the laughs and some of the frustration, too.

Behind The Scenes: The Girl is Mime from Sam Sapin on Vimeo.

More production stills

If you fancy looking at some of my production stills as well, they're available over on Flickr, in the The Girl is Mime production stills gallery. I took all my shots with two lenses: My trusty Sigma 70-200 f/2.8 lens, and my Canon 50mm f/1.4.

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