Employing the same restraints as the ’12 Hour Shorts’ series – I challenged myself to make a 1-minute micro short film. The result? A culinary tragedy.
Harbourmaster – BEST FILM at Bristol’s 48hr Film Competition
Harbourmaster was made as part of Cutting It Fine 2025 – Bristols first annual 48 hour film competition – winning the award for BEST FILM on the night.
The challenge? To write, shoot and edit a 5 minute film in 48 hours – all while incorporating three random prompts:
Prop: Greeting Card
Location: Harbourside
Line of dialogue: This can’t be real
From there, we created this short.
ALEX
‘Harbourmaster’ wins BEST FILM at Cutting it Fine, Bristol’s 48hr Film Competition
Last weekend, myself and Stephen took part in ‘Cutting it Fine’, Bristol’s inaugural 48 hour short film competition.
The challenge? To write, shoot and edit a short film in 48 hours – all while incorporating three random prompts that were randomly selected from a bucket. Ours were:
Prop: Greeting Card
Location: Harbouside
Line of dialogue: This can’t be real
From that, we created a 5-minute short film titled ‘harbourmaster’.
On Tuesday, we attended the competitions screening event – mainly to support the wide variety of talented individuals who made up the other 18 teams. We were keen to see their weird and wonderful creations, and in a best case scenario, leave feeling inspired by this city’s insane filmmaking talent, all while hopefully having met a few likeminded individuals in the process.
Never in million years did we imagine we’d come away from the night with the award for ‘Best Film’.
We found the process equal parts stressful and incredibly fun. Things are hard as a team of two at the best of times, but they’re even tricker when one half of the team takes on an acting role in the short. Despite this, we’re so proud with what we’ve made, and we can’t wait to share it with you.
Part our prize for winning is for the film to receive an online treatment in the form of a grade and a sound mix from PictureShop – we cannot wait for this unbelievable opportunity, and to then share it to the world once it’s done!
Big love to everyone who has reached out to us since last night, your kinds words mean so much – we were truly honoured to share the screen with your films.
ALEX
Wildflower – a short film
Wildflower is the first instalment of filmmakers Alex McPake & Mac Nixon’s ‘Places’ series.
‘Places’ is an experimental collaborative project between the two that flips the process of traditional filmmaking by shooting interesting locations and then constructing a narrative retrospectively.
ALEX
Mud Turners – a documentary short
In an overpopulated and oversaturated working world, two men on the Gower Peninsula have taken up the peculiar occupation of Mud Turning.
Birthed from the minds of Alex McPake & Stephen Shelmerdine, this improvised mockumentary is the third instalment of their ’12 Hour Shorts’ film series . Much like its predecessors, Mud Turners began its life as a conversation on a patio and within 12 hours, was written, shot, scored and edited.
ALEX
Inspiration – a short film
Synopsis: “Man witnesses evaporation and becomes inspired”.
Put together with a collection of throwaway footage that I felt compelled to record one morning, ‘Inspiration’ was birthed from my ever meta brains desire to be, well, meta.
In line with most other projects I’ve put together, this was formed rather by accident, but hopefully regardless of that, you’re still able to find something in it. What I hear you ask? I’m not really sure – but I should probably say Inspiration. Yeah, let’s go with that.
ALEX
Paths – a short film
Paths is the second instalment in Stephen and I’s ’12 Hour Films’ series. It was written, shot, scored and edited in a 12 hour timeframe.
We’ll be honest, we’re not entirely sure what this one is… but we do know we had a right hoot making it.
With that in mind, shifting the focus of filmmaking away from creating the most ideal finished product and moving it more towards finding immense gratification in the process itself is the very reason we started this challenge the first place – and so far its been a top laugh, so that’s nice! Anyway, here’s to another one!
Again, we hope you at least enjoy some of it.
Alex
Atoms – a short film
Myself & Stephen set ourselves the challenge of creating a short film in 12 hours, in a bid to shift the focus from talking about making films together to actually doing so.
Within 12 hours Atoms was written, shot, scored and edited.
What began as a late night conversation on a patio ultimately became this playfully poignant little doozy *description pending feedback*.
So with that being said, we hereby present to you ‘Atoms’. The first in our new ’12 Hour Films’ series.
We hope you enjoy at least some of it.
Alex
Conversin’ in Berlin – a short film
Originally released in 5 parts on my personal YouTube channel, Conversin’ in Berlin began as a creative challenge whilst in lockdown.
I wanted to make some alternative style home videos, incorporating a collection of audio recordings, 35mm photographs and camcorder video snippets I collected from our recent trip to Berlin.
You can checkout the original playlist here.
Alex
Make It Funky – Funky Pigeon
I had an incredible amount of fun working on this 3 part series for Funky Pigeon as a Camera Operator.
All episodes were flash mob style, live, one take setups shot using the Sony FS7 with CN7 zoom – a devilish duo for filmmaking!
mcpakemedia.com 