‘It is fun, but it's also serving a real purpose’
Your mission, should you choose to accept it is to make a short film from scratch in 48 hours. You will be given its genre, its title and a line of dialogue to include in your two-minute opus.
How you fulfil the brief is up to you…
The DV Mission 48-hour film challenge, now in its 17th year, is the largest of its kind in the south and it attracts entries from seasoned filmmakers to total newbies – and all are equally welcome.
Last year’s ‘obstructions’ (as the organisers call them) were ‘Cold War spy movie’, the title Deception Point, and the line of dialogue: ‘Do you know what love is? I’ll tell you: it is whatever you can still betray.’
This year’s obstructions will only be revealed at the start of the 48 hours. Previous years have delved into a dizzying range of genres including sci-fi, Tokyo noir, zombies, and asked: what if David Lynch directed La La Land’?
DV Mission co-ordinator Roy Hanney says: ‘Everyone talks about why they do it as it's because it’s really good fun, and the experience of the awards night itself is very different, it's electric.
‘It's not like other film festivals and there's a real sense of shared community. That's a really powerful motivator and what keeps people coming back again and again – that sense of spirit.
‘We even have an award for The Spirit of DV Mission, and very often it goes to the film which isn't necessarily the one that's best made, but it encapsulates that passion for making films in a DIY way – it's one where you get a real sense that they loved making it.’
It’s Roy’s job to come up with the obstructions, which are a closely guarded secret until 5pm on Friday, February 18.
‘It is difficult,’ he admits. ‘Sometimes you don't get it quite right, and the filmmakers find it hard. I was talking to one filmmaker last night, and a few years ago we had Tokyo noir, and he said that was the hardest one we'd done – he didn't quite get it.
‘We did cold war spy movies last year, and I thought we'd get lots of Bond pastiches, but we didn't – everyone really ran with the concept and we had some fantastic spy movies that really got into that genre.’ Revealing the obstructions at the start of the 48 hours is so that teams can’t prepare.
‘It's what they call a pedagogy of restraint – it basically means that creativity comes through solving problems. It comes from a film by Lars Von Trier with a teacher of his, called The Obstructions.
‘This is one of the ways DV Mission is a really valuable learning experience, people are forced into a situation where they have to solve creative problems. It's like a mind gym – training your creativity.
‘DV Mission is a talent incubator’
‘People's primary motivation for doing DV Mission is always: “It's fun”, but we also get to practise our craft. We get better at what we're doing, we refine our skills and techniques over the years, and that's really valuable as well.
‘DV Mission is a talent incubator. It is fun, but it's also serving a real purpose.
‘It also helps build an identity for the creative industries in the city – people realise there's something going on there. There's nowhere else on the south coast doing anything like this at all – it's a real value that DV Mission brings to the city.’
A week after filming wraps there is a gala awards evening, but not just any awards night, it combines screenings with live theatre to create an immersive experience.
This year's gala awards night takes place on February 26 at The Wedgewood Rooms in Southsea, with the deliberately obscure tagline: ‘DV Mission returns: The 26th day.’
The 2020 awards night was dubbed The Night That Pompey Stood Still – complete with giant robot. Last year they were forced to do things virtually thanks to Covid restrictions, so they're hoping to return this time with a bang. And all things being well, build for next year.
‘We have a plan for next year that will enable us to build on the immersive side of things. Over the last few years we've been making the awards night more of an immersive experience – you have a show where all of the films have been made specifically for that night, so it's like cinema, but it's also theatre, it's also like a club.
‘We want to broaden the audience so the films can be seen by more people.’
Film student Kalina Atanasova is taking part this year for the first time after hearing about it from her lecturer.
The 20-year-old says: ‘I think the whole challenge idea is very interesting. I don't know if I will be able to achieve something amazing, but it's a great challenge for any creative person to at least attempt something in that timeframe.’
Kalina says she's worked on several projects, but nothing quite like this before, and she’s planning to get her team together in the coming weeks.
‘Right now, I only have a cinematographer, but we will be gathering a team up, and I'm planning to talk to some of the actors I've worked with before. I can work with drama, fantasy, sc-fi...’
This year, videographer Ross Sterne will be back for his fourth DV Mission with his team A Step Too Far.
‘The first time I did it, I'd finished uni and had just moved back to Portsmouth from London. I didn't know that many people in the industry and I was quite an inexperienced filmmaker at that point.
‘My degree was in drama and theatre arts, but I really wanted to get into film – that was my passion. I saw about this, and a few of my friends recommended it, saying the main thing about it is that it's a laugh.’
That first year they took home the Best Story trophy. ‘It was a big confidence boost. Ever since then I've signed up every year, and I'm a professional videographer now. When I started I was just a guy messing around with a camera – I can't turn that into a career. Then when we won an award, I thought, maybe I'm not actually that bad at this...’
‘It's not like other film festivals’