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Go, Video Racer

Tuesday, 27 May 2008 08:25 PM

UTA film students race the clock in annual competition

Film and video senior BJ Paknia recites his lines as a bowling alley employee May 17 at AMF Spare Time Lanes in Arlington. The Shorthorn: Rasy Ran

Racing down Cooper Street toward Interstate 30 in his Acura TL, Jorge Arbelaez had no idea how they were going to get to Dallas in 20 minutes.

“We’re not gonna make it,” he told himself.

Film and video senior Noe Medrano, gripping a Mini DV tape, sat next to Arbelaez. That tape, an original video created by Arbelaez, Medrano and eight other students, had to be delivered to Fair Park in Dallas by midnight May 17, according to 24-hour Video Race rules.

From midnight May 16 to midnight May 17, their team wrote, shot and edited an original short movie for the race, sponsored by The Video Association of Dallas.

Their team, along with 95 other teams, created a five-minute piece that included the theme “Twist of Fate,” a key as a prop and the line “What is this going to cost me?” They also had to videotape part of it somewhere a sport is played.

And they had to do it all and deliver the finished product to Dallas in 24 hours.
Adrian Testolin, film and video senior, had previously competed in a 48-hour video race, but had never done a 24-hour race before.

“Twenty-four hours is ridiculous,” he said. “I just did it so I could say I did it and I’ll never have to do it again.”

Testolin, the assistant director, was recruited by Aaron Holloway, film and video senior, who directed the movie.

Holloway, who considered competing in the race last year, said he did it to prove that he could.
“I told myself ‘I got to stop being a pansy,’ ” Holloway said.

Holloway and BJ Paknia, film and video senior, drove to Dallas the night of the contest to get the guidelines for the video. At 12:03 a.m., Paknia called the team at their home base in Fine Arts Building Room 156, so they could brainstorm story ideas.

Participants in the 7th Annual 24 Hour Video Race brainstorm in the early morning hours of May 17 at the Fine Arts Building. The prompt, released to teams at midnight Friday, required a key as a prop, a twist of fate theme, a sporting location and the quote “What is this going to cost me?” The Shorthorn: Rasy Ran

They decided on a bowling alley for their location and by 12:30 a.m., the team had three lanes at Spare Time Lanes booked for 9 a.m. Then the story ideas began to flow.

Daniel Laabs, film and video senior, suggested a bowler find a detached, hairy hand in a locker. Holloway suggested the bowler could work at a carnival, but that seemed too normal for James Rhodes, film and video senior.

“That would actually make sense, so we can’t use that,” Rhodes said.

The team eventually found a story that wasn’t graphic or too ordinary. It begins with a loser bowler who finds a tiny girl in his locker who begs him to take her to a gypsy at a carnival. If he doesn’t help the girl, she’ll die. When the bowler reaches the gypsy, he discovers the only way to save the girl is to take her place as the captive in the locker, which he does.

By 1:25 a.m. they had the story outline and, an hour later, Laabs and Henry Moore, film and video junior, handed out copies of the finished script.

Moore said he didn’t mind having to work a specific theme, location, line and required prop into the film. It forced them to be more creative, he said.

“Having no restrictions leaves it too open,” he said. “The
limitations make it interesting.”

After Moore and Laabs finished the script, Arbelaez, the film’s art director and Holloway’s friend, wondered if their story would hold up at a decent hour.

“Will this be funny at noon?” Arbelaez asked. “Everything’s funny at three in the morning.”
After gathering props and casting actors, the team met up to shoot at the carnival at 5 a.m., but
encountered a problem — the sun wasn’t up yet.

Medrano, the director of photography, tried to brighten the early morning darkness with artificial lights.

“I don’t have a switch that can turn on the sun,” Medrano said.

When the sun came up, the team finished shooting the carnival scenes. After dodging sleepy carnival workers, or “carnies” as the guys affectionately called them, the team went for breakfast before heading to the bowling alley, where they shot the first scenes to appear in the video.

After three hours at the alley, the crew returned to the university to finish shooting in the studio. The rest of their actors joined interdisciplinary studies junior Alden Williams, who had been struggling with getting into character all day.

“Teachers ask us not to act in adjectives, but I am. I have to,” he said. “I have significantly less time. I don’t know anything about my character.”

Williams and the rest of the crew shot the last scene at about 5:30 p.m. and began editing it. All went smoothly until they exported their movie from the computer onto a Mini DV tape.

When they tried to export, nothing showed up on the tape, then the scenes started flashing. They eventually got the video onto tape, but every few seconds frames would drop.

At 11:15 p.m., Holloway and Moore took the video to Dallas, even though it wasn’t perfect. The remaining guys stayed behind to export it again and by 11:35, they had a better version transported. Then they raced to Dallas to deliver the video.

They delivered their finished video to Dallas with two minutes to deadline, Arbelaez said.

A few days later, their video was screened at the Angelika Film Center in Dallas and judged with about 20 other college-aged teams. Their video was one of six chosen to go to the finals, where they won first place.

Their prizes include a plaque, T-shirts and a pizza party, but none of them compare to seeing the audience’s reaction to their film.

“Did you hear the audience laugh?” Rhodes asked. “We need to work together again.”

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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 20 January 2009 05:42 PM )

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