I went to the screening of the film last night. Packed house. Actually I got to see 12 short films last night. 35 film makers signed up for the contest here in Pgh, 28 film makers completed films, 23 of those filmmakers completed their films on time within the 48 hour deadline.
As I mentioned before, all of the film makers had to incorporate the same character, prop and a line of dialogue in their film, given to them at the beginning of the 48 hour period by the judges of the project. The film makers also didn't know what genre they were to produce until the beginning of the contest. Here is what they ended up being.
The Character = Jason / Julie Whittaker - Camp Counselor
The Prop = Tea Cup
Line of Dialogue = "I wouldn't do that if I were you."
Genres = Buddy Film, Drama, Comedy, Horror, Musical/Western, Cop/Detective, Love Story, etc. etc.
It was fun to see what people produced having to use the above criteria within all of the different genres.
The quality of the films (direction, acting, writing, etc) spanned from very, very amateurish to pretty good quality. The film I worked on landed in the latter. (the director is a an actual TV commercial director) ... but again, everyone only had 48 hours to complete the whole project ... and it showed in some films.
The film I contributed to was of the Cop/Detective Genre and the film maker based the short film about a Meter Maid training a protege' ... very tongue and cheek. My music was used briefly but effectively in the opening sequence and then in another high energy character intro sequence. I got many compliments from people I was introduced to last night ... it was very cool and humbling.
Out of the all the films viewed (again, we saw only 12 in our group and another 11 will be shown tonight) the film I worked on looked the most polished. Seriously. The film maker got the rights to film shots of PNC park so that helped. The actors used were all top notch. Most of them didn't even know each other and met for the first time at the beginning of the shoot. The film maker actually used craigslist to find actors, make up artists, etc. One of the make up artists found was actually from Tom Savini's FX School.
The film was the last one shown at the screening and it definitely got the biggest laughs and biggest applause of the whole night. We got to vote for our 3 favorite films as part of an audience appreciation contest. The films will later be judged by professionals in the local film and TV business and another screening of the ten best films followed by an awards ceremony will be held this Saturday. They are actually giving out awards for every category like best direction, best actor, best actress, best MUSIC ... etc. etc.
Fingers crossed ... the winning film goes up against all of the other winners from cities from around the world.
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