Here’s an interesting filmmaking challenge, somewhat like the Food Network’s Iron Chef competition. In Iron Chef, two culinary masters must prepare several courses in less than one hour with a surprise ingredient that is announced at the start of the show. In the 48-Hour Film Project, teams of filmmakers have to make short movies within surprise genres. When the competition begins at 7 p.m. on Friday night they find out the genre as well as a prop, line of dialogue and a character that every team must include in their films. Two days later, at 7:30 p.m. on Sunday (organizers throw in an extra half hour for travel), the competition ends. The festival takes place in select cities internationally, then, the winning films from each city are pitted against one another. Last month at the Cinequest Film Festival in San Jose, Calif., Moved was pronounced the 2004 Grand Prize Winner.
The winning team came from Atlanta and included writers Carlos Ricque of WestWayne, Atlanta, and Mark Billows, Arnold Worldwide, Boston (both men were with BBDO South, Atlanta, at the time they wrote the script). Jim Issa, owner of Nice Hat Productions, Atlanta, and director/writer Scott Ippolito, who’s repped by Nice Hat, directed and co-produced the project with producers Richard Sampson and Pamela Peacock of Shadowlight Pictures, Atlanta. (Shadowlight recently signed Issa for commercial and branded media work; they are also teaming up on some feature projects.) Bill Burton was DP.
The genre this team had to work within was science fiction. But all of the teams in Atlanta had to incorporate the same prop, line of dialogue and character: a pair of gloves, “All we’ve got is parts,” and professor N.B. Hunsecker. In the local competition, the team won Best in Atlanta, Best Screenplay, Best Editing and Best Use of the Line of Dialogue.
Although they didn’t attempt to develop any story ideas beforehand, Ricque said they did intend to make the mandatory elements integral to the story. Once the writers knew about the prop, they started their process with the question, “Why does he wear gloves?”
From there, they developed a main character who has an ability to move objects with his mind–even when he doesn’t want to do so. When he wears gloves, the force of his power is quelled. The otherwise ordinary man is able to use his power toward the end of the film to save the woman he cares for from robbers. When he’s done with the thieves, all the police find are parts, body parts that is.
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This was Ricque’s second year participating in the event. Last year he was a writer on Revelation and the Atomic Wedgie, which won several awards in the Atlanta competition, including Best Screenplay and runner up for Best Picture.
Ricque cited two reasons he likes participating in the event. “There’s that feeling when you’re in advertising like everything is revised and edited all to hell and you have to wait for weeks and weeks to get something approved,” he said. “In this case, just knowing that you’re coming out on the other end with something finished and that’s purely creative was a big deal.” The second reason he cited is the energy that comes from working on a project where everyone volunteers their time (another festival requirement).
Sampson is also a previous festival winner. He produced White Bitch Down, which won National Best Picture in ’02.
On why she wanted to get involved in the festival, Peacock cited creative control as an alluring element of the project, as well as fun, of course. She added that they can now, “use it as a calling card for what we can do. We think this is a good example of the type of work that can be harnessed into short film advertising. This project specifically wasn’t to advertise any product or service, however, look at the resources we can pull together under a very limited amount of time and money. This is what we can do and the kind of effect we can have on viewers without spending millions and millions of dollars.”
Additional credit goes to editors Jay Hunt, Michael Tew and Noel Dowd of Lab 601, Atlanta. Robin Finch cut the trailer.
Greg Crawford of Crawford Communications, Atlanta, was sound designer.