'48-Hour Shootout' showcases impromptu OU student films

(The following video, put together by director Jess Kardos and the student production company, Poor Puppy Productions, is "œWeather or Not," a romance using rain boots as a prop and incorporating the phrase "œwhy not?")

Ohio University held its eighth annual "œ48-hour shootout" this past weekend with 28 teams of students showcasing their films Sunday night at Memorial Auditorium.

The concept of the 48-hour shootout is simple: students are randomly given a genre, a prop and a line of dialogue to utilize in a film that was required to last between three and five minutes and had to finished by 6:30 p.m.

Execution of the concept, however, was far from simple. While the majority of the entries were live-action films, students also created short films using computer animation and clay-mation, which was the winning technique in last year's shootout.

The short films were shown to a lively audience, and they were judged by a panel comprised primarily of faculty members from the university's College of Media Arts and Sciences."¨

This year's winner, and recipient of $300, was the film "El Tramposo," which translates to "The Cheater." "El Tramposo" was the only entry in the western genre, which proved to be a challenge for the veteran team.

"It was a western, so we were struggling with locations that looked like western locations and western costumes," senior Patrick Muhlberger said after his team was awarded first place.

The group of seniors used their experience to their advantage in creating a short film that portrayed a man who cheats on his loved one and leaves town. He returns and confesses his true love to his loved one, only to have his heart broken by the woman. The team used a unique strategy: coming up with the ending of the film first and then writing the story centered around heartbreak.

"We knew we needed it to end in a showdown, and we wanted to end it with a broken heart," explained Muhlberger. "Once we had the ending, we just tried to make up beginning."

The production team employed camera work that embraced the western genre, and "El Tramposo" was filled with simple and effective dialogue, something that admittedly did not come easy for the team.

"We were rewriting the whole time, and we kind of got worn out," said senior Andy Poland.

Muhlberger added, "We were writing up until we were done shooting."

Second place and $200 went to Broken Glass Productions and their instructional video aptly titled film, "Instructional Video #7." The film, which drew constant laughs from the audience, poked fun at outdated instructional videos and showed a Civil War veteran learning how to assimilate to 21st century America.

Third Place was awarded to Baby Hollywood Productions and their film "Dirty Laundry," a comical spoof on soap operas.

(The following video, "Deer Creek," was Team Perkis' submission to Ohio University's "48-Hour Shootout 2010." The genre was mockumentary, the prop was a wrapped present, and the line of dialogue was "he could go all the way.")