Devin's Journal for the 5x8 Film Competition, April 2002

  In April of 2002, Devin Tuffy and Erik Wiessmann entered 5x8's fifth independant film competition. Val Tuffy and Christine Miller joined in as well. The format of the competition was as follows: on Friday evening, groups were given topics, and had until 5 PM on Saturday to write, film, and edit a 2-to-5 minute film based on that subject.

For this particular competition, a plot for an entire movie was written by the holders of the contest, and each group was given one section to make, with no knowledge of the rest of the plot. Each team was also given a short description of the four main characters. 24 teams in all entered, and all but one finished the film on time.

Our description was something like: Part 10: A superhero's dream sequence. Jackie dreams that the Evil Dark Figure is trying to steal her coffee. The characters were:

• Jackie: Superhero who wears a "J" on her shirt. Played by Val.
• Joe: Jackie's sidekick. Played by Devin.
• Java: Hooded mysterious figure who shows people pictures of her/his cat. Played by Christine.
• Evil Dark Figure: An evil guy in a suit. Played evilly by Erik.

We didn't start until around 11 PM on Friday evening due to previous commitments. We spent about 30 minutes coming up with the basic plot outline, and then got out props and costumes together until about 1 AM. Filming then commenced until about 3 AM. Erik began editing right away; Devin and Val went home to sleep for a few hours. Devin joined in the editing around 6:30 AM, shortly after Christine went to sleep, and worked on the editing until it was pretty much finished around 11 AM. The next several hours saw a few minor tweaks as we all sat around half- asleep trying to think of more to do with the film. After overcoming some problems getting it onto a VHS tape, it was finally completed around 2 PM.

The film was shot on DV on a Canon GL-1. Editing was done with iMovie on Erik's Mac laptop, whatever that was (Titanium G4, perhaps?). The budget was the cost of renting a camera, buying a couple of DV tapes and a firewire cable, and about $30 of miscellaneous expenses at the grocery store and Walgreens.

Click an the image below to see the video. It's 5 megs in Quicktime Format.



Much to our surprise, we got first place in the competition. Go figure.