Films …In One Minute, In One Take Have an Extreme Take on Sweding

Despite the geeky stereotypes associated with being a filmmaker, those who slave over shorts still find ways to prove their macho-ness. Because sure, these days anyone can make a film — but make one in 48 hours? There’s a challenge. Even more of a challenge: In that time frame, attempt to replicate a blockbuster film using only cardboard and handmade props. Does that sound too easy? Then try and do it all in under one minute. In one take. That’s how you know you’re for real.

Will Tribble and his friends Joe Burgess and Rocco Sulkin have accomplished this feat not just once, but twice. The trio behind Forrest Gump In One Minute In One Take and Kill Bill in One Minute In One Take are all students at the University of York in northern England, where none of them study film. The three instead met via the school’s film club, which provided them with the equipment necessary to pull off each stunt.

Originally, Tribble, Burgess, and Sulkin just wanted to enter an Empire Film competition to make a 1-minute film, but then decided to combine that with the film club’s challenge to make a film in 48 hours. While the short didn’t place in the Empire competition, Tribble uploaded it to YouTube, where it went viral and stayed viral throughout February and March — boosted by the release of Kill Bill In One Minute…, which came out in the middle of March.

Tribble credits the success of Forrest Gump In One Minute… to the original film being shown recently on American TV, thus triggering people to search for the film online. “We never expect these things to do well, it’s just for fun really,” he said via Skype. But what got people engaged was the implementation of the low-fi Sweding movement, plus the charm of distilling the action of both films down to the most basic plot points. Each one-minute-one-take segment essentially works as a synopsis — what you’d end up taking away from the original film anyway.

The one-take angle would make you assume that there was a lot of rehearsal and coordination involved, but that wasn’t the case — according to Tribble, most of it was ab-libbed. “I didn’t know until the last minute that I was going to be in [Gump],” Tribble said, “but then they said, ‘OK, you’re Lieutenant Dan’ and there I was.”

While Tribble admits that there’s a little bit of trickery involved to get the films down to one minute each — the frame rates on both films were sped up — the one-minute-one-take concept is still interesting for those who observe online trends, as it’s a very recognizable attempt to one-up the Sweding movement.

After a hiatus to complete their exams, the team have plans to do one more one-minute-one-take film, though they haven’t yet picked which film they’ll be adapting. “We might do Star Wars,” Tribble said, “but it might be too hard for us, because we’d try and do every single Star Wars film, including Clone Wars and the Holiday Special.” The challenge, of course, would be coordinating the many costume and character changes that occur during the series. Plus, of course, finding a football field long enough to run down.