Not many people would subject themselves to 48 hours of nail-biting tension and a crushing deadline for fun, but Santa Fe College digital media professor Marc Shahboz was not looking for average people. He was looking for people who eat, sleep and breathe film.
The deadline for SFC’s second annual 48 Hour Film Competition was 7 p.m. sharp Sunday night at Emiliano’s Cafe — a deadline so strict that two teams were disqualified for submitting three minutes late.
“It’s a great learning experience,” Shahboz said. “It teaches you how to deal with deadlines and work together as a team.”
The 23 teams were given a fixed genre, a line and an object to incorporate into their movie. This year, teams were tasked to make a heist film featuring a candlestick and the line, “I got a bone to pick with you.”
Hollywood producer Del Weston, senior producer of Ubisoft video games Marc Fortier and Humoring the Fates’ Jesse Norton will judge the films.
The winning teams will be announced and will receive their awards March 14 after a screening of all the films at 7 p.m. in the building E theater at Santa Fe.
During the filming and amid the mayhem and stress, one team got the attention of the authorities — twice.
Nick May and his team were choreographing a fight on the second floor of the parking garage on Gale Lemerand Drive. It was four guys fighting three, and the scene was so intense it persuaded an uninformed bystander to call University Police.
The 29-year-old case manager and his team stopped filming when they heard the sirens, but they were still surprised when four UPD cars screeched to a halt next to their scene. May told the first officer within earshot that they were shooting a film.
“He picked up his radio and told everyone to back off,” May said.
The team attracted the attention of authorities again when they went to film off Parker Road near Jonesville.
May called ahead to tell the sheriff that they were staging a scene that involved a fake body on the side of a road. The police came anyway.
Five minutes after he set up his camera, two police cars pulled up to the scene. May said the officers were concerned that one of the actors was using a fake gun.
Despite his run-ins with the law, May said he enjoyed the experience, and he looks forward to the screening.
“Even with all that, it was great,” he said. “I’m pleased with the results.”
