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Annual 48-Hour Shootout Yields A One-Man Team
By: Justin Williams, Kelly Martin
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Fighting sleep, battling exhaustion and saving an entire city from impending doom is far more than an individual should have to bear alone.
But when the credits role on the 48-hour shootout video, “We Need a Hero,” there’s only one name you’ll see: Joe Lalonde.
Ohio University’s School of Media Arts and Studies (MDIA) hosts The 48-Hour Shootout Film Project yearly to give students an outlet for creativity and teach students how to work in teams.
The competition normally sends teams of students on a frenzied mission to write, shoot and edit a short film project within 48 hours.
Most teams consist of four members, but for the first time in the history of the competition a student completed a project by himself.
Joe Lalonde, a junior video production major from Napoleon, Ohio, started the competition Friday night with a group of four students, two of which were his roommates. After working on the project throughout the night and most of the day Saturday, ‘creative differences’ and arguments about how to proceed with the project caused the other members of the group to quit, leaving Lalonde a one-man team.
“We hadn’t made much progress, and we knew we weren’t going to finish a project so it just didn’t seem smart to continue,” said Lalonde. “I just wanted to get something done.”
So, Lalonde regrouped and decided to forge on alone. Twenty-four of the forty-eight hours were already gone but he stayed up a second night working on the project, which included writing, shooting all the shots by himself, starring in multiple roles and editing the final project.
Lalonde says the biggest challenge was making sure all the angles and framings were right and making sure he could get the editing done in time.
He did complete the project with 20 minutes left to spare and attended the screening of all the Shootout projects on Sunday evening.
Awards are given during the screening, but Lalonde didn’t qualify since the awards are for groups. What he did get is a standing ovation, and organizers gave him an “Audience Choice Award.”
“The audience appreciated my work. I learned a lot about perseverance and not giving up," Lalonde said. “It feels really good.”
Ohio Compass: Winners chosen in annual 48-Hour Shootout
For additional information about the School of Media Arts and Studies click here.