January 15, 2004
Lecturer, husband offer support as filmmakers win
When English lecturer Kimberlee Gillis-Bridges suggested to her students that they might want to enter a filmmaking contest, she didn’t realize her house would turn into a set, a cafeteria and a dormitory for a weekend, but that’s exactly what happened.
And last week she and the students learned that their extraordinary efforts had paid off: They were named the winners of Pioneer Electronics’ Project 2880 DVD-making competition. The project is called 2880 because that’s how many minutes the students have to put together a five-minute DVD based on a scenario provided by the contest organizers. That translates into just 48 hours to get the job done — from script to final cut. Pioneer provides a DVD burner and a $500 stipend.
“We decided to work at my house (in the Madrona Park area) because it was ‘neutral territory’ — it didn’t belong to any of the students,” Gillis-Bridges said. “Plus, it’s near a lot of potential sites for the scenes, like parks, restaurants and so forth.”
As proctor for the students, Gillis-Bridges did not participate in the filmmaking itself, but she and her husband wound up taking care of food for the students so that they could devote every possible moment to making their DVD. And they provided space so that students could sack out when they needed to. At times, there were 20 students in the house during production.
That the students won is a real tribute to their commitment, their teacher says. Housed in Comparative Literature, cinema studies at the UW focuses on film criticism; many of the other universities competing have full scale filmmaking programs. In fact, one of the other two finalists was the Los Angeles Film School. Florida State, the third finalist, actually had a crane shot in their DVD.
“A crane was one of the pieces of equipment their program had available,” Gillis-Bridges said.
The UW students, in contrast, had to tap multiple sources for equipment — The Center for Advanced Research and Technology in the Arts and Humanities (CARTAH), peers and local rental outlets — but they learned from their participation in the contest last year (when they placed fourth). Before the crucial weekend, they began doing that as well as other preliminary jobs, such as scouting potential locations and auditioning actors. They also recruited a large enough team that people did not have to stay up the entire time to get everything done. Team leader this year was Adam Hart, a double major in English and cinema studies.
Thanks to their win, equipment might not be such a problem in the future. The winning school gets $10,000 to purchase it.
The DVD itself, based on the scenario “blind date,” is called Casual Delivery and was made back in October. Pioneer winnowed out the final three teams and flew them to Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show last week, where they announced the winner.
“We almost didn’t get to go because of the snow,” Gillis-Bridges said.
But the fates must have been smiling because the plane took off in time to get the students to the scene of their triumph. “These are driven, motivated students who were able to go out and do this entirely on their own,” Gillis-Bridges said. “I was really filled with pride for what they accomplished.”
All the DVD entries are available for viewing at http://www.projectpioneer2880.com.
