Greg And The Luck Factory

Alan Friel talks about how he pulled together a  short film in 48 Hours:

‘Poor old Gregg is the unluckiest man in the world, even though he works in a factory that produces luck’. ‘Greg & The Luck Factory’ is a product of Smoke & Mirrors 48 hour’s film competition that takes place yearly in London. Anyone working in the film/advertising business in Soho can enter the competition and it involves the entire crew working on a voluntary basis to make a 5-minute film from conception to delivery within 48 hours.

I had pulled together a couple of actors and by chance Ted, who plays Greg in the film, has an uncle with an engineering factory – so that was our location. On the Friday evening when the theme was posted on the Smoke & Mirrors website, I gathered the actors, Tom our writer and Vanessa our producer at my house with pizza and wine – the theme was ‘luck’ and by 2am we had a script. By 7am we were shooting in the factory and I didn’t sleep much for the next 36 hours, I think I managed to snatch an hour or two while editing but that was pretty much it.

It was a great lesson in arriving on a location without a shotlist or boards and making it work. Everyone mucked in and although there was a lot of pressure because of the time constraints it was a great shoot.  We got lucky by finding some great music and it all fell together really nicely in the edit. I was amazed what you can do in 48 hours, particularly if you and the editor don’t sleep.

350 films were entered into the competition and ‘Greg’ got into the final showcase of fifteen films – since the competition the film has been graded and some small visual effects have been added.

To view the film click here.

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