Two teams from Fairfield film club travelled to Manhattan last Saturday to participate in a popular annual event in the city called the New York City Film Race.
The Film Race is a competition in which groups are given 12 hours to make movie magic. Thousands of people participate from New York each year, and this year they were joined by the two groups of participants from Fairfield.
Fairfield team, Amalgum Productions, was headed by John Daly, Eric Falcone ’08, Rob Lavine ’09, and Jeff Nieves ’08. The Fairfield Film Club was headed by Mark Basso ’07, Jared Skolnick ’09, Tim Comer ’09, Jayson Cowley ’10, Phillip Carroll ’10 and Emily Fitzmaurice ’09.
The way it works is the teams are given a theme and a surprise element at 11 a.m. Then they have 12 hours to make a four to five minute short film. If you think it easy, think again; groups had to write a script, cast, film, edit and score a film, and be standing at M.J. Armstrong’s in New York by the stroke of midnight.
Time was even more of the essence for groups competing from Connecticut.
Basso, the president of the Fairfield Film Club said, “It was a totally crazy day. Since we weren’t in the city, we had to have the whole thing written, cast, filmed, edited, scored, and burned to DVD between noon and 9 p.m. in order to get our representatives on a train to get there in time.
“It was exhausting, trying to be creative and make something cohesive in such a short time span, but it was a blast.”
This year the Film Race theme was a search for something and the surprise element was a slap.
When hearing about the slap Daly said, “It left the door open that there would be more comedies. We wanted to do something more than a slap on the face.”
So, instead of a slap on the face, Amalgum’s film, “A Nice Suit for A Nice Guy,” featured a slap on the ass.
Fairfield Film Club chose to focus their film, “Love Tap,” around the element of the slap, choosing to show a guy who couldn’t remember who slapped him at a party the night before.
All the teams then competed, not only to make a film in 12 hours, but also to be the best film. Prizes valued around $2,500 were awarded for the top five films. Although neither of the Fairfield teams took home a top prize, they did manage to turn their films in first, no thanks to the 1 hour and 20 minute train ride it took to get there.
The film screening and awards were held last Wednesday. Nieves from Amalgum Productions reported back, “We got a lot of laughs,” for their film.
When asked if he would participate again, Daly said, “Absolutely, we plan on doing the two week film project coming up.”
Basso also agreed. “Definitely. It’s great in that everyone really has to cooperate in order to get something done,” he said. “And, as much work as it is to make a movie, you don’t have weeks or months to dwell on it here, so it forces you to focus and just produce something. In the end it works or it doesn’t.”
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