While some students used this weekend to relax with their time away from classes, students and members of the East Lansing community were working nonstop for 48 hours in the East Lansing Film Festival’s 48/5 Film Competition.
The competition requires teams to complete a 5-minute film in 48 hours. The teams met at 6 p.m. Friday night at Beggar’s Banquet, 218 Abbott Road, and were given a prop, a line one of the characters must recite and a character that must be included in the movie. Team members drew their respective genres out of a hat.
“The most important thing the judges are looking for is the incorporation of the (required) elements,” said Susan Woods, East Lansing Film Festival director and founder. “That way we know the movies aren’t preconceived or premade.”
This competition’s prop was a stuffed animal, the required line was “You get what you paid for,” the required character was a professional athlete named Quinn Cooper and the genres the teams picked out of a hat were romance, comedy and horror/thriller, Woods said.
“The most difficult thing is managing your time and coming up with a good script and finding a reliable crew,” Woods said. “And then you have the technical aspects of (filming), which are also very difficult.”
The East Lansing Film Festival orchestrates the 48/5 competition four times a year, and the top three winners get the opportunity to show their film during the festival and receive a cash prize, Woods said.
Will Chodos, a media arts and technology senior and president of the MSU Filmmakers Club, organized a seven-person crew to take on the challenge.
“We all met at Beggar’s Banquet to start off, then we went back to my apartment and came up with different ideas that would encapsulate the (required) elements,” he said. “Usually the most difficult part is at the beginning when you have nothing, when you have no idea what you’re going to do.”
Chodos and his team wrote and edited their film, “The Fuzzy Side of Love,” which told the story of a man who has a stuffed animal delivered to his house and eventually falls in love with the idea of the stuffed animal.
Chodos and his team’s work earned him first place in the competition and the $100 prize.
“We were overjoyed and ecstatic when we found out,” Chodos said. “It’s awesome to see something that you work hard on get recognition.”
Kirk Mason, an RCAH and media and information sophomore, and his four-person crew called 82 Films took honorable mention with their movie “Isaiah” in the competition.
“None of us slept the entire time,” Mason said. “It’s really exhausting, but the reward is great when it all comes together.”
This year’s East Lansing Film Festival is scheduled to take place Nov. 7-15 and will screen the winning films.
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