The first SCI-FI-LONDON 48 Hour Film Challenge has been a huge success. With 137 teams registering online and 87 teams actually turning up to the Apollo West End on Saturday morning we are confident of having three cracking films vying for the prizes and a chance for one of them to be screened before the world premiere of CHEMICAL WEDDING on the closing night of the festival on May 4.

People started arriving shortly after 9am and by 10 o'clock there was a queue down Regents Street as the SFL volunteers were madly filling three bags with the vital title, prop and dialogue slips for the teams to pick so they could start off on two days of movie madness.

Teams ranged from a two-person father and son team up to professional crews of 25. There was everything from absolute beginners to seasoned filmmakers; from sci-fi neophytes to hardcore genre fans. By our reckoning there were around one thousand people involved in making sci-fi films over the weekend, which can only be a good thing for the future of British sci-fi. And they were all brimming with ideas that were to be shattered once the hand of fate had its pick from the big bags at the front of screen 5.

After a lively introduction from Festival Director Louis Savy, and a Q&A that seem to get stuck on the minutiae of the rules and release forms, the business of the day got under way, mostly accompanied by groans as the all-important slips were read. And off they headed into the great unknown.

Fast forward 48 hours, through the heaviest snowfall in a year, and back at the Apollo the duly-appointed team members started arriving with their masterpieces in the sweaty little hands. The first ones were there shortly after 9am, with a steady trickle of bleary-eyed auteurs up until midday when they started flooding through the doors. There were plenty of tales of sleeplessness, failed equipment and caffeine-fuelled hallucinations but generally the mood was upbeat and almost everyone was happy with their output. And there were some people coming in begging for clemency and a stay of execution as the final one o'clock deadline approached and their films were still rendering, only to have the team member run through the door as the clock struck one.

In the end we had 68 completed entries. And so begins the long task of checking that all the competition's conditions had been met, a shortlist drawn up and the best of the movies are put before the illustrious panel of judges. Stay tuned for more news and to see all the films on www.sci-fi-london.tv.