UPDATED 5/10/2014: This year’s award winners are listed below
The 48 Hour Film Festival is a blast. Four hours of short films from Madison’s fastest filmmakers, a showcase event for teams to display a hard-earned, sleepless weekend’s worth of work. As always, Madison’s eighth annual go-around gave those ready and willing three criteria: a character and occupation (Dan/Danielle Frost, locksmith), a prop (eyeglasses), and a line of dialogue (“That’s it. Take it or leave it.”) What teams did with those clues and their randomly drawn genre is where the fun really begins.
29 counts of fun, to be exact. Split across two separate screenings, all 29 films (both under and over the eponymous 48 hour time crunch) screened last night at Sundance Cinemas in Hilldale. (The 7:00p showing actually sold out with fifteen minutes to go.)
Both films by first-year teams, “School of Hard Locks” (RGBeasts) and “Undercovers” (Luke and Nick Production) made for impressive final products. “Hard Locks” extended the criteria into a melodramatic comedy at a “locksmithing school” headed by an oddball instructor (Derek Hovde) whose dubious claims to fame include letting Dan Quayle into his limousine to retrieve an important speech. “Undercovers,” sporting a one-man (!) crew outside of its cast, has its man find his wife in bed with his sister. Yeesh.
Weirdness abounded in “Evil’s Shenanigans,” where a group of nefarious villains — from a fireshooting vixen to a trigger-happy muppet — bicker themselves to death over deciding on a dastardly moniker. Dustee Hardy and Wil Loper’s “Unlocking Your Banana” played up an expectedly over-the-top misunderstanding between Tim Towne and the man eager to return his pen.
Best use of character went to Cap City Productions and “The Big Break,” which found its reporter calling in a favor from a locksmith he covered in one of dozens of page two scrub stories. Like the best uses of criteria, Cap City found a way to poke fun at the requirement while casually weaving a moment of levity into a political thriller.
A trio of teams incorporated solid production design and value into their projects. “Worthless,” a silent film about an olde time jewel heist, included horses and trains in an authentic 19th century setting. Team Project Famous’ black and white noir had a femme fatale enlisting the services of a locksmith to rob her own estranged husband, and Rip Productions’ “Giddy Up!” made fun of their Western genre selection with hamfisted horseback riding alongside pickup trucks and sedans in its modern setting.
Infinite Panther’s “Meld” tells the story of a mysterious technology using a series of flashbacks, a ubiquitous army of clones, and the opaque storytelling reminiscent of Shane Carruth. Another sci-fi effort, Madison Media Institute’s “Chronos” featured the best use of prop, turning this year’s extraordinarily lame eye glasses into “death glasses,” specs that display the time to mortality for anyone in the wearer’s line of sight.
Firmament Films’ “Game Day” brought the thunder with a softball-themed musical, and yes, you read that right. A singing murderer’s row and colorful characters in the crowd (including a boisterous drunk) lent extra color to the most cinematic of sports all while teasing a romance between a persistent hitter (Luke Kraemer) and the opposing team’s no-bullshit catcher (Candace Ostler). Weaving in original music and an impressively choreographed final number, Firmament relished in one of 48 Hour’s more challenging genres.
Phantom Moth Productions produced one of the strongest films of the evening with “The Harbor,” where an abusive caretaker draws the ire of a mentally-disabled man with telekinetic abilities. Visually sumptuous, Evan Parquette’s monochromatic cinematography is punctuated with fleeting moments of rich color, symbolizing the harmony of its trouble protagonist’s fantasies.
As an audience member remarked at the end of the first screening, a large portion of this year’s entries involved time travel, from Filament Games’ fish out of water comedy “Time Jerks!” to a quiet drama from Max Out Productions. Public Image Media actually drew romance but worked time travel elements into its romance anyway.
Best Use of Character [tie]
“Zero Sum Game” by Public Image Media
“Crazy Over Broke” by Project Famous
Best Use of Prop
“Chronos” by Madison Media Independent
Best Use of Line
“The Promise” by Maxout Productions
Best Use of Genre [tie]
“Crazy Over Broke” by Project Famous
“Worthless’ by Key Media Entertainment
Best Costumes
“Worthless” by Key Media Entertainment
Best Choreography
“Zero Sum Game” by Public Image Media
Best Special Effects
“Chronos” by Madison Media Independent
Best Sound Design
“Chronos” by Madison Media Independent
Best Musical Score
“Game Day” by Firmament Films
Best Cinematography [tie]
“The Harbor” by Phantom Moth Productions
“Game Day” by Firmament Films
Best Editing
“Game Day” by Firmament Films
Best Acting
“The Harbor” by Phantom Moth Productions
Best Writing
“Zero Sum Game” by Public Image Media
Best Directing
“Game Day” by Firmament Films
Best Film
“Game Day” by Firmament Films
“The Harbor” by Phantom Moth Productions [runner up]