Ruby Peak 48-Hour Film Festival: Take One

Published 5:33 am Saturday, November 14, 2015

Act One, Scene One

More than a dozen potential filmmakers and their crews met at Lear’s Main Street Pub in Enterprise last night for the kickoff of the Ruby Peak 48-Hour Film Festival.

The event allows filmmakers to shoot their films with any visual recording device they’ve got, and the preference at last night’s meeting seemed to be iPads.

A handout sheet advising filmmakers where to get free online editing software was included in their packet of information, along with appearance release forms for every actor to sign.

Films can be seven minutes long, not including credits, so both writers and editors are going to have to tell their story as crisply as possible.

“It’s generally a minute of shooting time per page of text,” said co-organizer Luke Zwanziger, “so if you’ve got 15 pages of text, you’ve got too much material.”

The line of dialogue, prop and character that must be in every film was announced as well.

• The line of dialogue is: “Conventional wisdom says you get what you pay for.”

• The object/prop is any size bronze or other material statute.

• The character is: a self-help guru.

A show of hands revealed that a good percentage of the crowd was attempting to make a film for the first time. Several folks showed up to try and get on a crew at the last minute, but most crews were self-sufficient this year.

One “meant to be a volunteer,” Danny Sticka of Enterprise, took a look around for a team and then decided to take the plunge as a solo artist.

“I actually took a few classes on this about 11 years ago,” Sticka said. “I thought this might be kind of cool.”

Sticka drew “action/adventure” as his genre and will be shooting with a Nikon Coolpix camera.

Student filmmakers Steven Caudill of Enterprise and Franklin Cook of Joseph were stoked when they drew their genre: Horror.

“This is going to be awesome,” gushed Caudill.

Another student team thrilled with their random genre selection was the team of Madison Falk, 17, of Enterprise, Renee Seal, 14, of Joseph and Hunter Russell, 16 of Joseph. Their genre was science fiction and they’ll be shooting primarily with an iPad.

“We’re pretty delighted about that (genre),” Russell said. “We’ll be brainstorming by text tonight.”

Other teams were going to be wracking their brains overnight.

Team 9 from Wallowa drew “romance,” and admitted to being temporarily stumped on that.

Team 9 is competing for their third year and includes Becky Bloyd, Tammie Quinby, Stephanie Trullinger and Austin Blodgett, 10.

“We’ll storyboard tomorrow morning,” said Trullinger. “It’s a good way to keep organized.”

Other genres drawn included (but were not limited to) “musical,” “drama,” “mockumentary,” and “mystery and crime”.