“Do It in 72”
For the past few years, my city’s public access station, MCAT, [Missoula Community Access Television] has hosted a film contest in which they give you 72 hours to produce a short film. The catch: they give you 3 elements on Friday that have to be incorporated into the movie – so you can’t use an old film and just say you did it. The prize? $500 1st place, $200 2nd place, $100 3rd.
This was my first time entering it and I did so with a guy who I filmed my first short out of College for after answering his Craigslist ad. ..yep..
We don’t always see eye-to-eye, and honestly I feel like he thinks he knows a lot more about film and production than he does…but at the very least his grammatical skills have vastly improved since the first film, which was a painful script to read! For this one, it was short, punchy, to-the-point. We had a possible winner! ..Then I made the mistake of using the term “horror” to describe it. It was really just a dark comedy.
We filmed for like 5 hours Sunday. The contest submission being due Monday at 5.
Rockstar? Nope.
Chips? Negative.
Crap.
It was a long night and a longer morning. But, I got it done good enough for the contest. It could’ve used some color grading thrown onto it and I discovered when I was in the theater I missed adding in a gun shot, but it didn’t really matter.
At the end of the screenings (all 26 of them! Ugh!), the pre-recorded judge (a writer for Law and Order or something) admitted that it didn’t really matter which one had the highest production value – it just mattered which one he enjoyed the most! Well, that kinda puts a kink in any creative hose. I mean I understand why, cause in a town with lots of Film/Media Arts majors (myself included), the kids who just want to do it for fun would have an automatic disadvantage to our [more or less] formal training.
Well, kids, and one guy who I actually received footage from after I was brought into a different project 3/4 the way through. He had entered the contest and would get better footage from his cell phone. He just walks around with a Handycam filming whatever, and most of the time doesn’t look like he knows the camera’s recording. *sigh*..anyway..
In my opinion, if two different stories are of the same caliper writing and characters, but one has much better production, the better produced one should at least get a mention. The point of most festivals nowadays is to show off the skills of potential and immediate-future story-tells. Is it not?
If you’re just looking to be entertained, tell us that at the meeting! Don’t have us work our asses off just to be like ‘yeah, production quality doesn’t matter’. I literally went to bed at 3am then got up, showered and went right back to work by 11am, mostly to do audio! Pretty much all for naught.
Now, I don’t mean this to be a whining of “I should’ve won!” Cause no, the winning two did deserve it. It’s more of an exploration of the evolution and different grades of film festivals.
Never-the-less and regardless of the Writer/Director’s obsessive grip on “his property”, here is our 72 Hour Contest submission.
Reckley Art 
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