Quick Flick

Mason moviemakers create an award-winning film—in 48 hours

Picture a missionary who can’t ride a bike befriending a young woman afraid to go more than 1,000 steps beyond her home, and you have Owensville, an award-winning short film put together by a group of Mason filmmakers and creative types.

As part of the 48-Hour Film Project, a traveling organization that visits more than 30 cities across the country, a group of 15 friends and co-workers—8 of whom are Mason alumni, faculty, staff, or students—teamed up for the second year in a row to take on the challenge of making a four- to seven-minute-long film in just one weekend.

Starting at 7 p.m. on a Friday, the team had to write a script, cast, shoot, and edit a film, ending at 7 p.m. on the following Sunday. The script for the five-minute film was mostly written by Richard Wood, BA Communication ’95 and executive producer for GMU-TV, who stayed up late Friday night to draft it. Another part of the team began shooting the film on Saturday, leaving time to edit the film on Sunday.

This year, experience paid off for the group, which calls itself the Shaolin Monkeys. “We made a lot of mistakes the first time we did this, and I swore I would never do it again,” says Wood. “But I changed my mind, and this year we had a good plan. It worked out well.”

And work out well it did. The film, which was an audience favorite, took home the biggest honor—Best of D.C. The group also garnered Best Writing, Best Cinematography, and Best Directing honors, which automatically enters Owensville in several other film festivals this year and a competition with the other Best Ofs once the 48-Hour Film Project finishes touring.

To ensure that no filmmaking gets done before the contest begins, participants must adhere to some fun ground rules:

Minutes before the clock starts, each team (nearly 100 for the Washington, D.C., competition) picks a genre, which can be anything from a horror film to a foreign film to a musical, out of a hat. The Shaolin Monkey’s genre this time was family film.
The project also sets certain parameters for each city: each film has to have a certain line of dialogue, prop, and character. For Washington, D.C., the line of dialogue was, “This is absolutely the last time,” the prop was a fire extinguisher, and the character was Tim or Tina Tate, a “gay glass sculptor extraordinaire.”

By splitting the work and keeping things simple, the team found the key to success and, according to the film’s lead actress Stacey Rathbun, BAIS ’03 and director and producer of GMU-TV, to getting some sleep.

“This wasn’t a job or competition. It was a bunch of grown men and women having as much fun as kids in a playground,” says Giovanni Calabro, BA Communication ’01, who, along with other duties, played the movie’s “out-of-shape underwear guy.”

“It was a rough weekend, but we have a good group with no egos, and we were able to pull it off,” says Rathbun. “I can’t wait to do it again next year.”
To watch Owensville, visit www.shaolinmonkeys.net. To see photos of the crew filming the movie, visit www.flickr.com/photos/calabro/sets and click on “48 Hours.”