Well, that's cast rather a gloom over the evening, hasn't it?

Shut up, you American. You Americans, all you do is talk, and talk, and say "let me tell you something" and "I just wanna say." Well, you're dead now, so shut up.

A couple of weeks ago I worked on a film as part of the 48 Hour Film Project. It's a contest in which groups have literally 48 hours to make a movie. The organizers provide a character, a prop, and a line of dialogue that must be used in the film. The group then draws a genre out of a hat, and has from 7 p.m. on Friday night until 7 p.m. on Sunday to write, shoot, edit and deliver a film no longer than 7 minutes (excluding titles and credits). Obviously it's a pretty hectic weekend, but usually a lot of fun. (yes, even a cynical sausage maker can have fun.)

The images are some poster concepts I was messing around with for our film. This year's character was Glen/Glenda travers, house painter; the prop was a flag; and the line was, "I can't remember everything." The genre we drew was road movie. So we did a movie about a bumbling death.

The movie is a little rough, but that's to be expected with only two days to do everything. The cast and crew were really good, as evidenced by the number of awards we won this year: Audience Favorite-Group A; Best Use of Genre; Best Theme Song (congrats Brad); Best Graphics; Best Actor (congrats Jim); Best Direction.

There was a lot of footage that we shot that had to be trimmed down to get the film under the allowed 7 minute mark. It's a shame some of it couldn't have stayed in the picture. All the dialogue was improvised, and the actors came up with some really good stuff. Who knows, maybe someday someone will take the time to put together a slightly longer "director's cut."

Anyway, you can check out Dead End for yourself here at funnyordie.com. If you enjoy it, vote it funny. If you don't enjoy it, vote it funny anyway. You can also check it out here, at the youtube.