Shoot Out stress produces creative, innovative films

Just tell me how you feel.

That phrase, a hairbrush and the genre of drama were the only guidelines the team, Baby Hollywood/Easy Fix Productions had to begin their film short for the School of Media Arts and Studies annual 48-Hour Shoot Out competition.

At 6:30 p.m. Friday, about 32 teams embarked on a 48-hour challenge to produce a three-to-five minute film armed only with a randomly assigned prop, genre and line of dialogue. By 6:30 last night, 27 teams turned in films that they had written, filmed and edited in two days.

The Shoot Out challenges students to collaborate under stressful conditions while making creative use of their assigned parameters, said Frederick Lewis, faculty adviser for the event.

There are sometimes pieces that are good

but they don't make use of the prop or genre or line of dialogue as well as they could Lewis said.

Team Baby Hollywood/Easy Fix Productions trekked to three locations to shoot footage for their film, Red Planet Hollywood, which features a 1950s Hollywood movie director who is being subpoenaed by Sen. Joseph McCarthy for possible Communist activities during the Red Scare era.

Besides filming at a

seedy motel, searching desperately for a '50s-era microphone and editing down to deadline, the team managed to put together a complex drama that used the short time frame to fuel the urgency of the storyline, said Anthony Fabiano, a senior studying video production.

The weekend was stressful at some points but overall it was a blast

said Fabiano, who got about three hours of sleep during the 48-hour competition.

After the deadline last night, a panel of judges evaluated the films at a screening in Templeton-Blackburn Alumni Memorial Auditorium where attendees

filled the first level.

The winning team of juniors Matt Emmons and Andrea Otto and sophomore Sam Levy broke from the majority of films by using claymation to create a film that incorporated science fiction, a flannel shirt and the line, I curse the day you were born.

The team won the $200 prize for their film, A New Frontier, which featured a cowboy who was abducted from his campfire and experimented on by aliens.

We really lucked out getting sci-fi

said Emmons, who is a junior studying music composition. It really lends itself to the medium.