Over 500 teams participate in 48Hours every year, but who makes sure there’s even a festival for them to participate in? Sam Brooks interviews the two women who serve as the national managers of the competition.

When you think of 48Hours, the annual filmmaking competition that has been running since 2003, there’s a few images that come to mind, depending on who you are. If you’re a bystander, it might be the image of groups of people scrambling across New Zealand’s cities for one weekend a year, filming whatever they need to fulfill the brief, permits be damned. If you’re a participant, it might be that final rush to the finish line, after hastily rendering and exporting, praying that the file type is correct. (And if you’re of a certain era, it might be the crate of V that dwindles rapidly over the course of the weekend).

An image that probably doesn’t come to mind is that of two women hard at work in an office, sending emails, making phone calls and answering questions to make sure that every team gets it done. Whether that team is a first-time group of high schoolers or industry pros who’ve made multiple trips to the grand final, it’s the job of national managers Ruth Korver and Ness Patea to get the competition, and its participants, over that finish line.

The pair have had a long association with 48Hours. Korver had been competing in the festival for several years, often as part of legendary team Traces of Nut, which Patea was asked to join in 2008. It was a classic 48Hours dilemma that brought them together in the same team: Traces of Nut needed access to some gear from the art institution where they both worked at the time. Korver produced and filmed, Patea did lighting and ended up providing her house as a location (see above re: classic 48Hours dilemma).

The film they made, Half a Horse, ended up being disqualified. “Me and Ruth ended up at the pub in the last hour because we’d done our job,” recalls Patea. “But the boys exported the film without the audio!”

Ant Timpson loved the film so much that it apparently was the source of the Best Disqualified Award. From then, Patea was hooked. She then thought it’d be cool to go around the competition every year and blog it. “We’d just turn up and they’d be in the middle of their chaos, we’d take photos, ask some questions and I made a blog that I’d put it all up on.”

It was that pre-social media guerilla marketing that got Patea involved in more of the back end of the competition. Korver, however, already had a job as one of two city managers in Wellington, and Patea joined her the following year. In 2016, the pair were made the national managers for the whole competition.

The pair have split the “national manager” role to suit their specific strengths. Korver handles the logistics, while Patea handles marketing and comms with the participants. “It seems obvious. Anyone could just go and make a film in a weekend, but they don’t,” says Korver. “They need a structure, and it blows our mind often.” The role has three distinct phases of work: before the weekend, during the weekend and after the weekend.

The first phase is getting teams involved, and getting the word out there. It’s easy to underestimate the scale of the competition in New Zealand – it feels like such an institution now. Each year the competition aims for around 500 teams to compete; Patea estimates that similar competitions around the world struggle to get into even the high double digits, but 48Hours has been running for so long, with such recognition, that people continue to come back every year. (The competition’s peak was during lockdown in 2020, when around 2,000 teams participated.) 

Part of that prep is also making sure that the competition can hit the ground running after the filming weekend – the screening and judging part of the competition has to move as quickly as the teams do on filming weekend. “All the city managers need to watch everything, they need to set up the heats, and get their judges organised, Korver explains. “All that stuff has to be ready prior.”

When it comes to the actual weekend, the job for the managers is what Patea describes as watching a “social media frenzy”. “That’s probably the best time because everyone’s on an even playing field,” Patea says. “The competition aspect’s not as prevalent in their minds. They’re just trying to finish the thing.” 

From there comes the heats, and the judging. The city managers watch all the entries from their regions, sort it by heats, and start to shortlist judges for individual finals. While Patea and Korver don’t watch everything, they do end up watching a lot of things. “After we’ve got the films, we get really excited about the heats, the finals and all the things that are going to come out of that,” Patea says.

At last, there’s the Grand Final, a massive ceremony where all the awards are given out, and a single film is chosen as the winner. These teams sometimes go onto serious film careers in their own right, and those successful careers validate the festival as much as the festival has validated them.

The managers get to see people progress over time, from just making the heats, to making the finals, to even making the grand finals. “You might see someone, and they’ll just be helping on a team,” Korver says. “And then you see them make a film, make a better film each year, and get quite proud of them making that transition to better quality stuff.”

Korver recalls a participant who, after competing for 10 years, had finally received a nomination for Best Female or Gender Diverse Director, which then convinced her to keep going. “I think everybody needs a bit of encouragement to keep making things, because it’s really a struggle to make stuff,” Korver says. “All those warm fuzzies make us feel good about helping other people make films.”

The competition has changed since they’ve both started participating in it. Broadly, the competition now reflects both the community, and the wider filmmaking industry in general. “We’ve seen a lot more women, especially in the last five years.” Korver says. “We’ve seen a lot more filmmakers from different cultures. We’ve seen people making films in their own languages. We’ve seen people with disabilities. We’ve seen gender diverse people.” 

“All of those people are up on screen and behind it.”

What keeps them doing it? “It’s all of those stories that people tell you about how they made something they’re really proud of, how it gave them some confidence, and how they met this person they love to collaborate with,” Korver says. “It’s just that multitude of all those little impacts on people.”

“And the risk-taking,” says Patea. “One year the prop was a leaf, and one guy tattooed it on his arm! There are things like that are just batshit crazy but people do it.”

“In 48Hours, it’s like, ‘Do whatever. Have a good time.’”

That’s what makes 48Hours special. Meet people, take risks, have a good time. And none of it would happen without the two women who love it just as much, maybe a little more, than the furious filmmakers who participate.

The Vista Foundation 48 Hours Grand Final will be held at the Civic on Friday November 18.