After endless cans of Red Bull, long hours and just a smidgen of catnip, the 2014 48-Hour Shootout reached its end Sunday night.
The weekend — which kicked off Friday at 6 p.m. — pitted teams of students against each other to race the clock and their competitors. Each team received a genre, a line of dialogue and a prop to incorporate into a three- to five-minute movie. From biopics to mysteries, from lines of “you can’t sit with us” to “that rug really holds the room together,” each team took a different approach to the task at hand. The event was sponsored by The School of Media Arts and Studies.
And when the dust finally settled following the Sunday night screening of the entries, judges chose a winner for both the upperclassmen division, comprising juniors and seniors, and the underclassmen division, comprising freshmen and sophomores.
The top film in the upperclassman division was Rain Maker by Lucky Beggar Productions, a detective/mystery film about a heist of a Matchbox Twenty poster.
The winning team in the underclassmen category was BEEFMEN, with its film 40 Days, which featured the saga of a superman who has given up his craft.
Winners don’t receive any tangible prizes — just the pride that comes with the title of 2014 48-Hour Shootout champion.
“I’m pretty excited right now,” said Chris Denzel, 40 Days’ producer and a sophomore studying integrated media. “I went into this wanting to just make a good movie and I’m proud of something that we made, and we got rewarded for this as well.”
Getting everyone to work together — and quickly — was tricky for BEEFMEN though, Denzel said.
“Even if we didn’t finish in first place it still would have been rewarding just to show everyone what we can do,” he said.
This year, several films featured feline friends, including Rain Maker. Producer Jarrod Dowalter, a senior studying video production, said these furry cast members presented unforeseen challenges as cat wrangling proved a difficult part of the process. The film’s “quirky” humor, though, shined through to the laughing crowd.
“I live in a house full of comedians, so the quirky humor just comes naturally,” Dowalter said.
OUGDA, a group of game animators competing in the shootout, looked to set itself apart by incorporating animation into its film Slice of Love.
“The past three years we’ve been doing animation,” said Nathan Yellon, a senior studying digital media and a member of OUGDA. “We have a lot more experience with animation than when it comes to video, so it’s doing something different but also what we’re more familiar with too.”
Geoff Backstrom, a junior studying digital media and a member on the Slice of Love team, said the collaboration among the gamers was exciting.
“A lot of the time (when we’re) animating, we’re taught to just do it by ourselves,” Backstrom said. “So being able to (work) in a group, in my opinion, is a better experience.”
It was not, however, a great experience for everyone.
The film P is for Pen Pal by Little Love Works experienced audio issues and one group out of the 30 was unable to finish its film. Abbie Doyle, a freshman studying media arts and studies, said her team, after long days of shooting, faced difficulty with SD cards, forcing its withdrawal from the competition.
“It was a very long day and we put in so much effort and to just know that we wouldn’t be able to complete this and screen it and show everyone,” she said.
“We had great footage and our director was really talented and it’s just a bummer to know that we worked so hard and had actually created something really good and to know that no one would know how great it was.”
Though Doyle said she thinks she will learn something from the experience in time, she is unsure if she will participate again next year.
Evan Schmidt, a freshman studying media arts and studies, spent his weekend working on the film Drella, a mock biopic on the life of Andy Warhol; he said this weekend taught him a lot about stress management.
“Definitely, the best part was watching it in the end, just seeing it all come together,” Schmidt said.|
Schmidt said he was excited to see the work and creativity from other teams.
“I think it’s fantastic just because it puts you under so much stress and it … kind of forces creativity out of everyone and it shows you how creative people can be in such a short amount of time.”
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And The Winners Are...
Top films for underclassman
1. 40 Days by BEEFMEN
2. Hard Boiled by Team Team
3. You Did Me Wrong by BAD JAW productions
Top films for upperclassman
1. Rain Maker by Lucky Beggar Productions
2. Wither by Cinema Tree Studios
3. Bad Eggs by Stiff Places Productions
