48Hours

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48Hours is a New Zealand film-making competition. It involves teams of various sizes competing to write, shoot, edit and score a short film, which must be between 1 and 5 minutes long (7 minutes before 2016), over a single 48-hour period. Developed from the US-based 48 Hour Film Project, which was run in Auckland in 2003, 48Hours has been running as a New Zealand-only event since 2004, with regional competitions organised in 8 cities and regions around New Zealand: Auckland, Hamilton, Gisborne, Bay of Plenty, Taranaki, Wellington, Christchurch, and Dunedin.

The event was founded by Anthony "Ant" Timpson and is organised by Ness Patea and Ruth Korver. There is a launch event on Friday night of the shoot weekend, where each team is given a randomly selected genre. They are also given three compulsory elements which are common to all teams. These are a line of dialogue, a prop, a character, and since 2010, a "technical" element.

All creative work required to produce the film must be undertaken and completed within the 48 hours of the competition. This includes storylining, scriptwriting, filming, editing and audio mixing. Teams must deliver their finished film to the competition organisers by the Sunday evening to be eligible for prizes, although late deliveries will still be screened in the heats.

By 2011 the competition had grown to include more than 800 teams nationwide with at least 10,000 people believed to be involved.^{[citation needed]} In 2020, there was a free lockdown version of the competition which was run in level 4. There were 1208 films created over one weekend.