Flash Sanders: Funk Detective

He's TDF... Too Damn Funky

This was my first proper go at the V 48 Hours furious filmmaking competition. Perviously, I'd refused to participate in it or any competition until the year before where I unwittingly found myself in a polar bear suit to help out a friend (a much longer, uninteresting story). I was also slightly hungover and it was a pretty hot day, so that combination would be more than enough to make me not want to do anything of the sorts ever again, but I guess I never learnt and have kept coming back to do it every year since.

How the competition works is that teams from around the country all at the same time recieve a randomly picked genre that has to incorporate three elements: a rope as a prop, a line of dialogue ("what do you call that") and a character Jerry Reid, a hypochondriac. Then everyone has exactly 48 hours to write, shoot and edit together a short film within these guidelines that's no longer than seven minutes.

We got Grindhouse as our genre and needless to say, we had a lot of fun making this one. Production was plagued by the fact we had not just one, but two very faulty mics and had to MacGyver it at best and it really shows in the final result how much the audio sucks. While this has the worst audio ever and makes me cringe to listen to it again at times, I still really like this 48 short above the others we'd do later on. Probably because it's got funk, but don't tell the other shorts that.

To our surprise, we were awarded the runner up prize and a couple of nominations for Sash in his role as Flash Sanders but no wins for him, which is a shame cause I thought he was great and should fully grow his hair like that in real life.



The Film




Awards

Hamilton Region Awards 2007
First Runner Up
Best Editing
Best Costume Design
Best Film (nominated)
Best Actor - Sasha Nixon (nominated)
The V Most Manic Actor - Sasha Nixon (nominated)
Best Art Direction (nominated)
Best Score (nominated)



Cast and Crew

Cast
Sasha Nixon
Ben Woollen
Ross MacLeod
Fabian Takiari
Chris Tan
Thomas Bullock
Phillip Bell
Bronwyn Williams
Gina Broom
Catherine Winfrey
Flash Sanders
Art Squareland
Jerry Reid
Mr Big
Smith
Will
Heim
Foxy
Roxy
Sexon Leegs

Directed by
Chris Tan

Written by
Ross MacLeod

Produced by
Chris Tan and Ross MacLeod

Origial Music by
Ben Woollen

Cinematography by
Chris Tan

Edited by
Chris Tan

Foley
Sasha Nixon