Done In 60 Seconds

As most of you probably know, every year Empire magazine runs a competition in which you have to remake a feature length of your choice and fit it into just 60 seconds. Of course the aim of the competition is the challenge of managing to transfer the entire plot of a feature length film, with a running time of 2 hours or so, into just 60 seconds and on a tiny budget. This of course results in films that are entertaining for the ways in which they get round the obvious time and budget problems, for example here is last year's winner. Jerry Maguire (1996) in 60 seconds.

This competition led me to start thinking about which films would be the easiest to reduce to just 60 seconds. After a brief think about it, I came up with a shortlist of my top 5 easy to do films:

5. Permanent Vacation (1980) - dir. Jim Jarmusch

Jarmusch's feature debut follows Allie, a drifter, as he roams the streets of New York and occasionally stops off to speak to various people he meets. A 60 second remake would be much the same, he would just have to have shorter conversations and not travel quite as far. Jarmusch's non existent budget in the first place gives way to no real concerns on that front either, as anything he managed so can you.

4. Rope (1948) - dir. Alfred Hithcock

One of the most immediate things to notice about Rope is that it is all filmed in one location with the illusion of all being one take. That said, it is perfect material for this competition, with the story being simple yet structured enough to bring down to time.

3. Koyaanisqatsi (1982) - dir. Godfrey Reggio

The first in a trilogy, Koyaanisqatsi is a collection of brilliant and beautifully epic footage compiled to a Phillip Glass score. The film opens with shots of America's natural and untouched beauty and progresses to show how it has been built on and used. This would be relatively easy to mimic in Bath, with so much open space surrounding it and the building works in progress. With Glass's score ready for us to use, the film which took Reggio 6 years to make could be done for this competition in 6 minutes (but more realistically a few hours!)

2. Blue (1993) - dir. Derek Jarman

If you are already familiar with this film, you must be wondering what could possibly be easier than this to make it to number one! If you are not familiar with it, the whole 79 minute film consists of a plain blue screen which doesn't change, with a score from Brian Eno and voice over from Derek Jarman as he recalls his life and meditates, facing death from AIDS related complications. The colour and the concept being significant as blue was the last colour he could see before going blind through his illness. The main complication with remaking this film, is the high probability that it would be received as rather insensitive, when his heartfelt story is reduced to a mere 60 seconds.

1. Empire (1964) - dir. Andy Warhol

If you could be given one piece of information about a film to help you decide whether or not it would be suitable to remake for this competition, "What is it's runtime?", would be a reasonable question. In the case of Empire, the answer would be 485 minutes. From that information it would probably seem like the least likely candidate, it's only saving grace being, perhaps, that it's title might be appreciated by the competition's organisers. If, however, you were not only granted one piece of information and curiosity as to how a 485 minute film could even be considered for such a competition led you to wanting to find out more then you might not be so surprised. The entire film consists of one shot from one angle of the Empire State Building for over 8 hours. Whilst the film was constructed as an experiment, to see how long people could watch the same image before growing impatient and giving up, this would probably be lost in the 60 second version, as it would be over before they realised they were being tested.

Feel free to leave comments of other films that would be suitably easy to do.