After 24 hours and countless cups of coffee, the film teams arrived at the Phillips Center for the Performing Arts to see their movies go from the computer screen to the big screen.
Exhausted but proud, seven teams showed their work to a welcoming audience at the UF Performing Arts 24-hour film competition held over the weekend. The film teams — which ranged from first timers to competition veterans — were given a packet containing the competition’s theme and were allowed 24 hours to storyboard, shoot and edit a 5-minute film. All of the films were then shown Sunday at an event free to the public.
The theme was “The End of the World as We Know It,” and interpretations ranged from crippling self-realizations to meteors that destroyed the earth. The film had to include an iconic part of campus, and teams were awarded extra credit points if they could work certain items like a Crock-Pot or a choreographed dance routine into their story.
Derek Wohlust, the education coordinator at the center, said he started the 24-hour film competition in 2010 so the center could take part in Creative B, which is a summer program with the UF College of Fine Arts that gets students involved in artistic activities on campus. Wohlust participated in Gainesville’s Film Fiasco competition for years before the event stopped being held and thought another 24-hour competition would be a good thing for students and the community.
The first year, only two teams showed up. But as the competition has continued, more people have stepped up to the plate to take on the challenge, and Wohlust said the results are always entertaining.
“I’ve never seen a boring film,” Wohlust said.
Team #deeppanther took home second place for its movie “Closed for the Apocalypse,” in which two friends travel to a gas station for beer as meteors destroy the world around them. The five group members said when they heard the theme, they wrote down all of their ideas on a whiteboard and figured out how much time they would need for each step of the project. The team worked through the night editing and adding effects. By Sunday, the majority of the team arrived wearing the same clothes they had shot the movie in.
Still, they said, their efforts paid off.
“It was awesome seeing it on the big screen,” said Nick Cravey, a 23-year-old UF telecommunication senior.
“We had too much fun making it to not be proud of it,” said John Kelley, a 22-year-old UF criminology major.
About 50 people came to the Phillips Center on Sunday to watch the films. Three ushers sat in the back of the room with clipboards and pencils; Wohlust had designated them the judges for the competition.
First place was a tie between the films “Contact” by Stray Train and “Dirty Love” by Pizza Money Productions. In “Contact,” people jumped to their deaths as they heard of an asteroid headed toward Earth, and in “Dirty Love,” a magical jester appeared in a public restroom to try to persuade a man to be a better person to his brother.
Wohlust initially worried about giving the competition an overall theme, he said, but the films had such a variety that the theme didn’t end up being a problem.
“I was afraid that by giving a theme, everything would be pigeonholed,” he said. “But there wasn’t one film that felt like any of the others.”
From left: Shawn Robinson, David Cody Allen, John Kelley, Nick Cravey and Chad Smith, as part of team #deeppanther, place second in UF’s 24-hour film competition with film “Close for the Apocalypse.”
