Filmapalooza

Thousands of filmmakers will screen the results of their 48-hour sprint in New Orleans

Last year, when the 48 Hour Film Project (48HFP) New Orleans teams waited for the orders that would launch them into a two-day, film-making sprint, they received these instructions: their three-to-five minute films had to (1) contain a cell phone charger, (2) incorporate a character named Laura or Laurence Schlecht, event planner, and (3) use the line “It’s my first time.” Then they pulled a genre from a hat. At that starting shot, over sixty teams snapped into action, all in the service of demonstrating that short, rapidly created films could be watchable.

At least, that was the goal twelve years ago when the 48HFP was first conceived in Washington D.C. Now, as one of the largest film competitions in the world involving 120 cities on six continents, the mission need no longer be to prove that it’s possible, but to continue to improve a good thing.

New Orleans joined the 48HFP collective in 2007. This year, for the first time, the city will play host to 48HFP’s culminating Filmapalooza event, an annual festival at which city-level winners from all over the world come to screen their films and compete for top honors. 48HFP–New Orleans winners, like Best Film-winner The Wand, will be competing on their home turf.

The Wand took home top honors at the 48HFP–NOLA competition held last August. Crafted by 7th and Constance, a team led by Andrew and Chelsea Bryan of New Orleans, The Wand is a fantasy (the genre that the team pulled) that features the Bryans’ five-year-old daughter Adriana (Andi) and was filmed in Chelsea’s hometown of Houma, though Andrew said he doesn’t think many people will recognize the town but will just identify the setting as rural Louisiana—unless they’re familiar with its above-ground cemeteries. Parts of the film were shot in Chelsea’s parents’ home as well as in the homes of other relatives. “It was definitely a family project,” Andrew said. “It was really awesome to win in my home city for a project I did with my entire family.”

The Wand is a story about a twenty-something wedding planner, Laura Schlecht, who randomly finds a magic wand given to her as a child by her father. Upon finding the wand, she wonders what types of spells she can cast. The team incorporated the mandatory cell phone charger as part of one of the spells and had Andi say the required “it’s my first time” line to ward off what the team expected to be a suggestive cliché.

“At first I was a little hesitant to take on the fantasy genre,” Andrew said. “But one thing my wife and I had talked about before doing this was that our daughter Andi might actually be a really huge asset—she’s a very outgoing, energetic, cute girl. We knew that we could get around the production challenges normally associated with the fantasy genre by employing [Andi] as the source of imagination instead of having to do some sort of epic fantasy setting.”

Chelsea runs her own cleaning company and is an actress on the side. Andrew has an M.F.A. in film from the University of New Orleans. Since his graduation in 2011, he has worked as a camera operator for Swamp People and Pitbulls and Parolees. He is currently working on the new SyFy reality show Opposite Worlds. He’s also a videographer for New Orleans’ WWL-TV. Andrew said he tries to work on as many creative projects as he can, but struggles to find the money to do so.

“We all know that it takes a lot of money to make films,” he said. “It takes a lot of people, and you at least gotta feed people, if not buy their time in some way. 48 Hour was the perfect opportunity for us to do something creative. It’s only two days, and it takes making a movie off of its pedestal and it just forces you to do it on a shoestring basis. And if it’s not great, you only spent two days on it; so it’s no big deal.”

It was stories like the Bryan’s that inspired 48HFP–NOLA creator Stan Gill to bring the project to the area and products like The Wand that made 48HFP–NOLA producer Alexander Garcia realize he had to be involved. Garcia, a filmmaker, spent the first three years of his involvement with 48HFP on registered teams. When the position of city producer for 48HFP–NOLA became available, he said he knew he had to apply.

“The point of 48 Hour is to get people to stop talking about making films and start making them,” Garcia said. “We [NOLA] started with about fifteen teams the first year, and we’ve grown that to about sixty-one teams this year. We have about one thousand filmmakers locally and in the region. We get people mostly from the New Orleans area. We’ve gotten a lot of people from Baton Rouge, Houma, and Slidell. We’ve even had people come in from Florida, Georgia, and Mississippi to be a part of the competition—so the reach is pretty far for this local one.”

Garcia said the project brings a lot of traffic into the city. And now, after just four years as city producer, he and co-producer Bill Rainey will be hosting the largest portion of the 48HFP year. Garcia is excited about what Filmapalooza will bring to New Orleans. For starters, the film screenings will be held at the newly renovated Joy Theater, one of the festival sponsors that proved instrumental in landing Filmapalooza for the city.

“We expressed interest about two years ago; and when we put in the bid it was between us, Tampa, and Los Angeles. But we were luckily able to find a theatre. We are excited about being able to have Filmapalooza downtown on Canal Street and also being able to have it right there around Mardi Gras,” Garcia said.

Registration opens March 6, followed by a pool party happy hour. That evening, organizers have arranged a Louisiana Night to celebrate the host city and local filmmakers. That event will also showcase Tic Tock, the winner of the 48 Hour Music Video Project–NOLA created by the team Lonely Eskimo Productions.

“We are really excited about Filmapalooza,” said Devin James Waguespack, spokesperson for Lonely Eskimo Productions. “We are hoping for a positive impact not only for Lonely Eskimo Productions but for the band as well. Making this video has definitely inspired our team that if we really want to do something, we can do it. We were very impressed with our ability to hash out an idea, write a script, shoot a video, edit the audio and video, and finalize under forty-eight hours—all with very little budget. We plan on making many more music videos in the future. Just imagine what we could do with more than two days and a budget.”

Garcia said that 48HFP is all about making an impact on its competitors, inspiring them to continue working towards their dreams—Filmapalooza will be no different.

“The 48 Hour Film Project is a great progress report for the independent filmmaking community in southeast Louisiana,” Garcia said. “Every year the quality of films and competition gets much better, which means that we’re seeing a growing infrastructure of human resources and talented professional filmmakers. It’s a great networking opportunity for people who are just starting out, and it strengthens them as a community.”

Filmapalooza begins the day after Ash Wednesday, March 6, and runs through March 10. For details, visit 48hourfilm.com/en/filmapalooza.