Another 48 hours

Jim Stevens was so tired, he could barely put a sentence together Sunday.

The 19-year-old had spent the last three days writing, directing and editing a seven-minute film for submission to the inaugural Society of Future Filmmakers 48 Hour Film Challenge without one wink of sleep.

Led by Orange Coast College film club organizer Chip Tompkins, the competition began Friday on campus, where the group meets. Contenders gathered in the school’s screening room to go over rules and pick at random from a selection of genres and themes. Then they were released at 10:45 a.m. to make their films.

The challenge began with 16 groups, but only 13 completed films by the cutoff time of 10:45 a.m. Sunday.

Most participants were OCC students, but not all.

“We’re trying to branch out … to anyone who’ll take us seriously,” Tompkins said.

With five cast and crew members, Stevens, a second semester film student at OCC shot completely in and around his home, even using his driveway as part of the set.

Hoping to draw the genre of suspense, Stevens instead drew romance and the theme of birth. He decided to treat the theme figuratively after realizing that casting a real baby would be difficult. “Although birth is kind of physical, it can be metaphorical as well. You don’t necessarily have to have a baby being born,” Tompkins said.

According to the rules, films must be no shorter than one minute and no longer than 10, could not include nudity or excessive profanity, and had to be copied onto a mini-digital videotape, or a high-quality DVD. Plus, every group had to somehow incorporate an orange into their film. It seemed appropriate, considering that Orange County and Orange Coast College would be the staging grounds for the event, Tompkins said.

The citrus made its cameo in Stevens’ film during a flashback scene in which the main character is threatened by his girlfriend’s father. In the scene, the father slices an orange shot at an angle near the man’s genital area, to represent what he would do to the young man if his daughter gothurt, Stevens said.

“A lot of teams tried to make it a huge crucial part of the story. Not us,” Stevens said.

Late Sunday, Tompkins and fellow club organizer Nick Medrud had made their way through a number of the films and still had more to go.

One team caught the judges’ attention with their interpretation of the topic “big wig.” Usually meant in reference to a person in charge, the group simply donned one character in the film with an outlandishly large hairpiece, Tompkins said.

At 5:30 p.m. today the group is scheduled to meet with contest participants in the film and video department on campus for a discussion of the weekend.

Plans for a public viewing event are being considered for later this week, although a venue has not yet been secured. Groups will be awarded for best use of object and most adept handling of genre and theme.

To learn more about the society and the contest, go to www.myspace.com/societyof futurefilmmakers.