Track this SA team’s bid to make the fastest film ever made online

A good, feature-length takes time. The path from concept to writing, filming and theatrical release can take months, sometimes years. But what if you could do it in 11 days?

That’s exactly what a team of South African filmmakers are trying to do. The team, comprising members of Johannesburg-based production houses Team Best, Localala and Ghost Sheep will attempt to beat the current record, held in India and go from script writing to screening in 11 days, 23 hours and 45 minutes.

The restrictions of the project meant that it didn’t have a name by the time the team came together on 1 May. There was also no concept, no characters, story-arcs or a solitary page of dialogue, because none of those are allowed either.

In fact, the only thing the small production team has is gear, lights, cameras and lenses. It also claims that it has “the best crew no money can buy and commitment from some of the biggest names in stage and screen”.

That might explain why its ambitions for the project are fairly ambitious:

“With all of this at our disposal,” say co-producers Bryan van Niekerk and Asher Stoltz, “the team’s mission is to not only to break the world record, but also to make an awesome film. Come May 11th, we are going to present a minimum of 75-minutes of gripping, blockbuster”.

If you’re keen to check out how the project’s going, you can follow the action on the project’s site. There you’ll be able to get a daily progress of cast, scripts, music, posters and the trailers.

The previous record-holder, entitled Sivappu Mazhai, is a musical, action flick made in Kolkata, India with a crew of over a thousand. The two hour-three minute long feature was made in a world record time of 11 days, 23 hours and 45 minutes, from script to screening. According to Wikipedia “The the artists who worked on this film, are very satisfied with the results and very proud of this achievement.”