"Woolf" by Chinese Takeout

Best Film of the 24 Hour Film Race 2011

FR:  Congratulations on being named the Best Film of the 24 Hour Film Race 2011 out of the 350+ teams that participated!  Your team has participated in past film races, how was the experience of the competition this year knowing that everyone across the world was participating at the same time? 

Tim Hahn of Chinese Takeout (CTO): It was really exciting to know that this year’s entire competition was taking place simultaneously throughout the world. We also loved that it meant we didn’t have to wait very long to find out about the later rounds of judging!

FR:  Tell us about your team, Chinese Takeout.

CTO: Chinese Takeout was formed 3 years ago as a fun way for a few of us to practice/learn filmmaking skills. Thanks to a friend (Keith Boynton) who has also been participating in the 24 Hour Film Races for a few years, we discovered speed filmmaking contests for ourselves and were hooked. We are a mixture of filmmakers, writers, artists, entrepreneurs, and non-profit do-gooders who like hanging out together and forcing ourselves to finish little projects whenever we can.

Chinese Takeout was formed in 2009 over pork buns and fried rice with the goal of making short films as quickly as possible. Thankfully, the goal expanded to the making of short films that were also watchable. Cutting its teeth on speed filmmaking contests, Chinese Takeout has proudly collected 4 Audience Awards, 1 Best of City Award (2011 San Francisco 48 Hour Film Project), and 1 Best Film Award (2011 24 Hour Film Race). The team looks forward to future creative endeavors with deadlines that are crazy and/or truly insane, but where we at least get some sleep with our dim sum.

FR:  Break down the production schedule of “Woolf”.

CTO: We probably spent the first 4-6 hours nailing down the story and then the script (essentially a voiceover narration). After about 2-3 hours (once we figured out the basic outline of what we were doing), Abe (our After Effects ninja) began constructing initial characters in After Effects while we finalized the story/script. The final 1-2 hours of pre-production (while we were writing the script), most of the team was drawing storyboards that we then pitched to the team and then culled down into the final shots. These were handed to Abe to start animating/producing the shots. While he kept working in After Effects, a few of us started scanning different textures for the film. A few of us also split off to record the voiceover narration (done by Tim Hahn). Sometime in the middle of the night, with the voiceover recorded and first shots coming in, Tim started assembling the short in Final Cut. The rest of the time was dedicated to shot production by Abe, picture and sound effects cutting by Tim, and music gathering by the rest of the team. The final short was scored, mixed, finished and uploaded with about 30 minutes to spare!

FR:  What equipment and hardware/software was used during the pre-production, production and post-production of “Woolf”?

CTO: We used Adobe After Effects, Photoshop, Apple’s Final Cut Pro, an HP Scanner, a camcorder with wired lavalier mic to record voiceover, and a lot of paper, pens & pencils. And we never left the comfort of our home except for food and coffee!

FR:  On top of the theme and time constraints, you took on another difficult challenge in animating the entire film.  Did you plan on animating your film, regardless of the assigned theme and elements?

CTO: We didn’t plan on doing animation, but knew that it was on the table since we had completed an animation film in a previous speed filmmaking competition (which won an Audience Award). Our team likes to brainstorm story without limitations or expectations and then determine, once we’ve found an idea we like, whether we should animate or shoot live-action. Once we landed on the wolf in sheep’s clothing fable as our core story idea, we quickly decided/realized that animation would work the best because of its storybook qualities and that working with real animals (especially a wolf!) would have been IMPOSSIBLE!

FR:  Did you run into any road blocks during the animation?   What was the most difficult part of “Woolf” and creating a film in 24 hours?

CTO: To be honest, we didn’t have any major roadblocks other than some nervousness with the time limit (obviously!). Ultimately, the biggest challenge was creating all of the assets and Abe animating so many shots and with such great detail! He didn’t sleep a wink.

FR:  Any good behind the scenes stories?

CTO: As we were nearing the end and waiting for Abe to finish making the final shots, an impromptu dance party started up in the living room. After a few minutes, Abe (who hadn’t slept at all and who is the nicest person in the world) demanded we stop… But you really had to be there for this to be really funny. Bottom line, after 20+ hours of little to no sleep, delirium starts to set in. An Easter Egg: the silhouette of the cat in the farmhouse’s window is the actual silhouette of crewmembers’ Lauren and Brian’s cat Shadow.

FR:  Your team took the audience award at the premiere screening in San Francisco and received the Best Film in New York City at the Gala Screening and Awards Ceremony at the Galapagos Art Space on July 16^th.  How were your experiences at the screenings in San Francisco and New York?

CTO: We loved both screening events. There were so many talented and nice filmmakers in SF and in NYC and so many awesome films that we felt extremely honored and proud to receive the Audience Award in SF and then the Best Film in NYC. The venue in SF (The Roxie Theatre) is such a historic film spot that it’s always a pleasure to see something you made on the screen there. And then the Galapagos Art Space in NYC had to be one of the coolest spots to see a film. We sat next to the team Robotic Raptor (who made the film “Mistaken Identity”) and had a great time getting to know these amazing and young filmmakers. It was a blast and we were super happy that a few of us could make it out to NYC from California!

FR:  What were some of your favorite films from this year’s 24 Hour Film Race 2011?

CTO: We were blown away by so many of the films, but were particularly partial to a few: our fellow San Franciscans’ beautiful and subtle film “Are You Still There?” by Lost Lands Productions, the hilariously written and acted “Mistaken Identity” by Robotic Raptor, the tightly edited and pitch perfect genre send-up “Pacciu” by Hourglass Films, the amazing true story film “Today __cks” by Homeward Bound, the very cool bullet-time shots in “The Desk Job” by Fenix, and the gorgeous look and production design of the films “Moonlighters” by Sneaky Boy and “Schnitzel or Spaetzle” by 11thirty.

FR:  Do you have any ongoing or upcoming projects you would like to share?

CTO: We’re excited to be working on an animated short film with JAMS (http://jamstories.com/), but we can’t reveal too many details. We encourage people to stay tuned to chinesetakeoutfilms.com and facebook.com/chinesetakeout for the latest from us!

FR:  Will you be back to defend your title in 2012?

CTO: Definitely! Speed filmmaking is this group’s first love and we don’t see ourselves stopping anytime soon!

CREDITS FOR “Woolf”

Producer/Director – Tim Hahn

Editor/Animator – Abe Dieckman

Story/Art (alphabetical order):

Brian Goodman, Lauren Grau, Brian New, Dian Pan, Cass Phillipps, Chris Smoak, Winnie Tong, Chris Vennemeyer, & Eric Vennemeyer