Most weekends are for sleeping in, relaxing, and catching up on the latest Netflix shows. This past weekend, however, some of the Motion Source team joined forces with friends and creative collaborators to compete in the Four Points Film Project, a worldwide film competition, challenging teams to complete a short film in just 77 hours. That’s correct: write, shoot, edit, and submit a short film in a little over 3 days. There was little sleep and relaxing, but we did it. Here is a behind-the-scenes look at the making of “The Ballad of Bloodfist”.
The Four Points Film Project competition kicked off at 7pm on Friday, November 9th. Teams were randomly assigned story elements: two genres of which to choose from, a character name and occupation, a prop, and a line of dialogue. Our team, “The One For Alls”, was given:
Genre: Western or Mockumentary
Character: Arnie or Amanda Abella, Hacker
Prop: Artificial Flower
Line of Dialogue: "Look at that thing go!"
We chose mockumentary as our genre. For those not familiar, a mockumentary is a mock documentary, usually comedic, and uses a fictitious story to make a comment on society, current events, or issues.
As we began to brainstorm ideas, we stumbled upon a question: “What would it look like if someone became the character they created for a role-playing game in the real world?” Some of our resident nerds are fans of the tabletop role-playing game, Dungeons & Dragons, where players create a character and work together to complete adventures or campaigns.
For our idea, a dedicated player of a generic tabletop role-playing game (as to avoid any lawsuits), decides to fully embody his character, no longer in the confines of the game, but expanded out into his everyday life. This individual could make for an interesting subject in a documentary! We took this a step further. In most documentaries or docu-series profiling a subject with a particular habit or hobby (think shows like My Strange Addiction), the “strange” behavior is mocked or frowned upon by most. This spawned another question: “What if this man’s strange lifestyle was actually for the better and accepted by his community?” That would really be something! Enter “Bloodfist”, formally known as Christian Peterson, the protagonist of our short film. He is a noble man who fights for good and challenges any evil he encounters, all to complete his quest.
Two days of production, Saturday and Sunday, were dedicated to capturing our mock interviews with Bloodfist, his friends, locals, and even his ex-wife and her new husband. We captured Bloodfist going about his day, working at his office job, drinking coffee at the local cafe, and even attempting to rescue the love of his life, all while dealing with the legal ramifications of his alternative lifestyle. He is a busy guy!
The footage came together Monday and, in just 24 hours, was cut, graded, and scored. “The Ballad of Bloodfist” came to life and the story of this eccentric character was shared with the world. Congratulations to the amazing cast and crew on successfully completing their quest!
Check out a few BTS photos from set and then the final, submitted short film:
