Wednesday, November 08, 2006

25 Hour Film Festival

write, act, shoot, and edit: all in 25 hours.  that’s a formula for chaos at the 25 hour film festival.  calvin’s video network (CVN) hosts two of them each year, and each year it gets more and more popular.  the festival kicked off before academic advising recess, giving us a holiday to work on.  we were given a theme, a line, and a prop which we had to include in the film.  there was also a 5-minute time limit, which made it even more challenging.

my team consisted of some veterans (ian, dan and i), and some newcomers (nathaniel, courtney, and jeff).  the 25 hours passed quickly, with lots of panic, frustration, and fun.  at the deadline, we were still editing the scenes together, so we had to hand it in a little bit late.  still, we were relieved to have finished the film in almost 25 hours.  we got some much needed sleep (i hadn’t slept at all during the festival), and the next evening, we attended the screening.  the theatre was packed, with some people sitting on the floor and standing by the sides.  there were 16 groups that entered, and all but one submitted a film.

the films were all shown, almost all being very impressive.  the indy film community at calvin has been very impressive.  at times the audience roared with laughter, and at other times the audience cringed.  my team especially cringed when our film betrayed an obvious mistake that we had forgotten to fix during editing.  nevertheless, we all had a great time reveling in the fact that we had finished a film in 25 hours.

after the showing, the crowd milled around as the judges tallied the votes for the audience choice award.  i had my fingers crossed, hoping to get into the top 3.  one by one, the winners were announced.  and i came away disappointed.  ian later asked about our group, and we were told that the judges had disqualified us because we were late.  we had still been eligible for the audience choice award, but we didn’t get that anyway.

despite being disqualified, i’d say the festival was still a success, for everyone involved and also for our group.  we have some amazing footage which we’re touching up into a full 9 minute short film, and at the moment i’m color-correcting the scenes.  we’re polishing it up and adding a soundtrack later.  the goal is to create a DVD which we can sell at the screening of our film.  we’ll be advertising soon, so look out for posters!

Posted by Nehe555 on 11/08 at 01:16 AM
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