Groups comprised of current and former UO students successfully wrote, shot and edited a film in 72 hours as part of the Fifth Annual Adrenaline Film Project, which is part of the Cinema Pacific Film Festival, this past weekend.
One group of cinema studies majors and first-time filmmakers began their journey Wednesday night. After senior Maura Turner, junior Kory Kast and recent graduate Melissa Seda were assigned the romantic comedy genre for their film, they signed up for the first session with the Adrenaline mentors, giving them only thirty minutes to write a first draft of the script.
The mentors, who are all film professionals and guide the teams along the way, loved their idea and helped them come up with an ending, then gave them the green light to allow them to finish the script.
The plot was simple: A girl is looking for love and thinks a cemetery is the best place to find it. The idea for the cemetery came from the Adrenaline-mandated line of dialogue, “You think you’re death,” a Chilean saying. Adrenaline also gave each team the prop of a red teapot that had to be incorporated into the films.
“I get why it’s called Adrenaline,” Turner said. “Normally after getting a green light, you’d take a break, but we can’t.”
The team’s morale stayed strong through the first night. The next day was a writers’ workshop followed by casting. Casting went smoothly, and then they began shooting.
The team shot until 4 a.m. on Thursday before calling it quits. Friday morning, they woke up bright and early and finished shooting by 11:30 a.m. The rest of Friday was devoted to editing, which proved difficult for the sleep-deprived group.
“At one point Maura fell asleep while editing,” Kast said. “We sent her to take a 20 minute nap and she came back and thought she had edited more. She must have dreamt it.”
Kast and Seda also revealed they both fell asleep around 4 a.m. in the library while listening to music for the film.
The Adrenaline Project ensures that teams complete their films by giving them deadlines along the way. The teams were required to have a rough cut of the film done by Saturday at 10 a.m.
By 8 a.m., Turner had been up for a solid 24 hours and was continuously falling asleep while editing. Turner was the film’s editor because she was the only one who knew Avid, the editing program the team decided to use. Two hours before the rough cut was due, Kast and Seda has to take a crash course in Avid and edit while Turner napped for an hour.
“We trusted each other enough to let each other take the reins on things,” said Seda. “There was an exciting sense of camaraderie.”
The group agreed that Kast’s laidback attitude provided a helpful counterbalance to Turner and Seda’s hyper personalities.
The team finished their film by the 5 p.m. deadline, napped and then headed to the sold-out screening in PLC at 9:30 p.m. After the films were screened, awards were given, including an Audience Award voted by the screening attendees. Energy was high in the room, despite the number of sleep-deprived people in attendance.
Their film – cleverly titled “Mourning Person” – is about a girl who wants to find a man who’s been in love before and knows how to treat a woman. She finds a man in the cemetery after pretending to mourn the loss of her husband and the two begin dating.
Much to the girl’s annoyance, he brings up his deceased wife constantly. She decides she can’t take it anymore and comes clean. The man has a few secrets of his own – not only does he not have a dead wife, but he’s currently married.
The team was proud to see the audience’s positive response.
“Romantic comedy is odd because it can be more romantic than comedic or more comedic than romantic,” said Kast. “We were relieved when they knew when to laugh.”
Turner slept nine hours over the course of three days, a common number for filmmakers of all groups.
“I’m feeling a little bit woozy to say the least,” she said after the screening. “It was all about the energy, all weekend, that’s what kept me going. It was all about the vibes.”
Follow Sophia June on Twitter @skittlejune
Follow Allysa Veigel on Twitter @AllysaVeigel