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Big-screen dreams start with snippets

The budget: $500. Production time: 30 days. Tampa filmmakers join a state contest that could be their big break.

By JAY CRIDLIN
Published January 6, 2006

Once a year, hundreds of aspiring filmmakers from across Florida take part in a short-film contest organized by a nonprofit group called the Entertainment Industry Incubator, which assists and promotes the state's young moviemakers.

The rules: Each film can be no more than five minutes and must deal with the same theme, often a single word. Teams have only 30 days to write, cast, shoot, score, edit and wrap their film. And they have to do it all for under $500.

The guidelines are strict, but within them, the creative possibilities - drama, comedy, horror, fantasy - are limitless.

And the potential payoff is huge: The winner, to be announced this month, will share in more than $150,000 in equipment and production services and get a face-to-face meeting with executives from Lions Gate Films, producer and distributor of movies like Hotel Rwanda, Fahrenheit 9/11 and Saw.

City Times followed two teams from Tampa, Deep 6 and Team Persons, as members worked days, nights and weekends to meet the budget and deadline. Here's the story of how two very different films came to be.

"So I got the theme yesterday," Eddy Favara said on Nov. 12. "It's just a one-word theme - power - isn't it?"

Four members of Deep 6 (the team name picked for the contest) are sipping coffee and raspberry smoothies at International Plaza, brainstorming ideas for a plot. Most know one another, though they haven't all worked together.

Eddy, the co-director, pitches an idea about a power outage that forces residents of a quiet neighborhood to leave their homes and interact with one another, like one of the New York City blackouts. The team likes the idea, but no one is sure how to depict a streetlong blackout for under $500.

Jack Foster, a seasoned writer, goes next. He has brought an existing script, a thoughtful tale of a waitress consumed by her craft. It seems like a solid place to start, and the team members agree to go with it.

But two nights later, they change their minds again. More plots are pitched. More are overturned. The team is split - Jack and producer Victoria Jorgensen lean one way, Eddy and co-director Angela Ellis another.

The problem, producer and actor Megan Brown explains, is "internal politics." Everyone is trying to repay favors from past jobs while fulfilling their own creative needs.

With the clock ticking, Megan makes an executive decision: The team will go shoot Persuasion, based on an idea from Eddy, to be scripted by Jack. In it, an artist photographs powerful people wearing a blindfold; when the subjects view the photos, they realize that their power has been subverted. Jack starts writing.

When Team Persons gathers on Nov. 15, the mood is confident and the dialogue quick. A dozen people are in an Ybor City production studio, some slouched on the hardwood floor, all chattering at light speed about the next four weeks: When are we shooting? Anyone know a child actor? Who's got a generator? What about a helicopter? Let's get it done!

Fast and furious: It has to be this way. "If everybody tries to put in their two cents on everything," says Jen Persons, the team's producer and namesake, "we'll never get anything done."

Jen and Jon Wolding run their own production company. Along with creative partner Brandon Windish, they won an honorary award for a short film at a recent horror film festival. That film took only 13 days. Thirty seems like a lifetime.

The team already has a plot: A child strings miles of extension cords throughout the city, stirring a local news phenomenon. Titled Dash, it sounds warm and fuzzy - words like "Spielbergian" and "Goonies-ish" are tossed around - but also technically ambitious. They even plan to shoot in high definition, using a borrowed camera.

"It's pretty much an epic five-minute film," says Brandon, the excitable writer-director. "The aim that we're going for is the ending, where everybody's like, yessss!"

Jen runs this meeting on a tight schedule, hopping from point to point, doling out responsibilities. At 28, she is among the team's oldest members - and its only female. She says she'll "be the b----" if need be. "That's how you win," she says.

Two days before Persuasion starts filming on Nov. 26, word comes that Angela, the film's co-director and editor, will miss most of the shoot because of work and illness.

"It's disappointing, but I'm choosing not to worry about it," Megan says. "There's nothing we can do."

Eddy takes over as director, scrounging up a few friends to assist with the camera work and audio. Without them, he later says, "it would have been a waste of time to even try it."

On the chilly but sunny first day of shooting, Eddy sets up the camera, and Megan delivers the film's first line of dialogue: "Sometimes once is never enough."

A few blocks away, Team Persons sets up its first shots among hundreds of departing cruise ship passengers at Channelside - one of nearly three dozen locations scouted.

Jon and Jen shoot from the roof of a parking garage, while Brandon coaches the star, 10-year-old Eddie Rodriguez Jr., on the ground. "What's your best "I'm gonna do this' face?" Brandon asks. Eddie grimaces. Jen calls for action through a bullhorn, and shooting begins.

The team then heads to Franklin Street for a series of shots that require hours of setup, yet will take up only about 15 seconds of screen time.

There's a loose, improvisational vibe on the set; when a nearby barbershop employee swings by, Brandon races over to ask permission to shoot there.

Eddy ends up with about four hours of footage, which he combs through for hours each night, looking for the best lighting and angle. Entire scenes are chopped for time and space.

On Dec. 7, the team gathers at Megan's to view a rough version lasting exactly five minutes.

Everyone debates the music and voice-overs - dissed as "corporate-videoey" and "soap operaish" - and spell-checks the credits. Eddy leaves with a few notes and spends a few more hours tweaking the finished product.

On Dec. 12, deadline day, everyone rests, as Persuasion is mailed off for judging.

Team Persons plans to shoot its climactic scene on Nov. 28. But it rains heavily, and many extras don't show up as planned. In the end, shooting drags on until Dec. 7 - the same night Deep 6 views its rough final cut of Persuasion.

What has cost them so much time? The borrowed high-definition camera. Shooting with a higher resolution means better clarity, but the footage takes much longer to render as a digital file, which they can edit on a computer.

A 30-second clip that might normally take five minutes to render could take 40 minutes in high definition. Over the final week, Jon, Jen and Brandon spend more than 50 hours in Jon's small, dim editing studio, scanning footage until the early morning.

Just before the 5 p.m. deadline, Jon drops a DVD of Dash in the mail to contest officials in Miami. Over the last day of editing, Jen gets less than four hours of sleep. Brandon gets three. Jon doesn't sleep until an hour past deadline.

Postscript: Five days before Christmas, contest organizers send out an e-mail announcing the finalists, to be screened Jan. 14 at a festival in Miami.

Persuasion makes the cut. So does Dash. The two films will square off alongside 13 others from around the state.

"This was certainly our hope and expectation," Eddy says when he hears the news, "but you have no idea."

Win or lose, their five-minute films already have value. Jon, Jen and Brandon will use Dash to help secure funding for a feature film. Megan gained producing experience, and she'll add Persuasion to her list of leading-lady credits. Eddy said the contest's "inherent limitations" will help him become a more disciplined director.

Everyone agrees that the contest has made them better filmmakers. It's given them more confidence heading into whatever projects they decide to tackle next.

"This is what we did with a hundred bucks," Brandon says. "Give us a million, and see what we can do."

[Last modified January 5, 2006, 08:50:08]