MUMBAI: Uniting bands and film-makers for one of a kind competition, 48 Hour Music Video Project provided a platform to amateur film makers to showcase their talent. The challenge revolved around making a music video in 48 hours inclusive of the song and location provided by the jury.

The idea originated from the 48 Hour Film Project held annually in India and worldwide, where various teams from respective cities are given the challenge of making a short film within 48 hours. The props, character, dialogues, genre is provided by the jury of the event to test the skills of the teams.

Taking forward the concept of short film, the India producers of the event Preeti Gopalkrishnan and Yogi Chopra conceived the idea of the 48 Hour Music Video Project. The project encouraged teams to make a music video in 48 hours featuring compositions of the best music directors. The music video project was held for the first time at the Kala Ghoda fest this year in Mumbai.It was headed by an eminent jury comprising of Ken Ghosh, Leslie Lewis, Marlon Rodrigues and Sumanto Chattopadhyay. The tight deadline of 48 hours put the focus squarely on the filmmakers emphasizing their creativity and teamwork skills.

The two songs assigned for the competition included Vishal-Shekhar’s ‘Aami shotti bolchi’ and Ram Sampath’s ‘Sapne’. The response received from the teams was exciting. “We promoted the event for 17 days and around 57 teams had registered for the event. We were quite amazed at the response we received and the competition between the teams was good and encouraged them to think differently,” said Gopalkrishnan.

The winning music video at the 48 hour Music Video Project was by the team ‘I Wish Events Pvt Ltd’ for the song ‘Sapne’ rendered by Sona Mohapatra on Ram Sampath’s compositions with lyrics by Munna Dhiman.

I Wish Events team member Kunal Kumar said, “The competition was a good platform to showcase our talent to eminent personalities from the industry. It was a challenge as making a good music video normally takes 3-4 days but we were given only 48 hours. The atmosphere created by the event was intriguing and built a sense of competition in all the teams.”

The project is soon set to be an annual nationwide independent event and the winning music video will be screened at different fests around the world. Gopalkrishnan added, “We see immense potential in the 48-hour format. Our future plan is to extend the brand ‘48 Hour’ to other forms of art by bringing together music composers, artistes and filmmakers from all over India to make more films and music videos, and let their creativity rock the country.”

With plans of making it an annual independent event, the producers aim to screen the winning films at various fests in order to create supportive environment for such activities.

The 48 Hour Film Project (48HFP) first came to India in 2008 in Mumbai. The 48HFP was started in May 2001 by Washington based filmmaker duo, Mark Ruppert and Liz Langston who came up with the idea of making a short film in 48 hours. The concept originated into a worldwide event where nearly 60,000 filmmakers made films in 96 cities across six continents.

In its 11th year, the event is poised to be even bigger with a total of 100 cities on the world tour beginning in March. The winning film from each city will compete for the Best International Film at a film festival in Mexico.