Think you could make a movie in a week? How about just 48 hours? That's all the time film students had to work on their entries for Project Pioneer 2880, an extreme DVD-making competition sponsored by Long Beach, CA-based Pioneer Electronics (USA) Inc. Each school was given a different scenario to follow (from Pete Jones of HBO's Project Greenlight), and was required to finalize a script, recruit a cast, determine shooting locations, film, edit, and burn up to a 10-minute short onto a DVD, all within a 48-hour (2880-minute) timeframe.

FSU Team Made Lots of Ripples
Florida State University (FSU), Tallahassee, FL, students nabbed the grand prize with their DVD, Ripples. "It was challenging, exciting, and fun, and there was no grade attached to it," says Producer Sloane Korach, a December grad. (There was, however, a $10,000 grand prize!) It turns out that working on other academic and freelance film projects in the area proved to be a major asset when it came to getting resources on the go. "We called actors we enjoyed working with, who were willing to be on hold for the project," explains Sloane. They also scouted out locations, and prepared their equipment and crew, but they couldn't do much more until the countdown began.

When the clock started ticking, FSU received their prompt from Jones: A guy calls his best friend and asks him to pick up his sister from the airport. The open-ended scenario allowed the students creative room to move. "We spun it into a story of coincidences," informs Sloane. "We started out with a guy on top of a building, about to commit suicide, and then he gets the call. It's a quirky comedy. The toughest part was that we had no idea what we were going to deal with, so it was like having immediate writer's block," he admits. The team chose a midnight start time so they could write all night and start shooting during the day. "We spent nine to 10 hours writing," recalls Sloane. "We started calling actors around 3 or 4 a.m., and started shooting between 10 and 11 a.m."

When their time was almost up, they made use of Pioneer's DVR-A05 high-speed DVD burner, which cut the time to burn a DVD to just 15 minutes. Did they get any sleep? "Not a wink," confesses Sloane. "We knew what this would entail." But, he says they were still able to function. "You have to keep in mind that you're not developing a cure for cancer or saving the planet," he reminds. "You're doing what you love -- making a film."

Though the FSU crew was calm, they definitely didn't think their entry was a top contender. So they were nothing short of shocked when they found out they made it to the finals -- a screening at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, NV. That's where they struck winner's gold, and enjoyed every minute of it. "Doing a project with my friends was a nice way to close out film school," assures Sloane. Winning helped, too!

Clay Ashtrays Score Big
The Academy of Art College, San Francisco, CA, nabbed a $5,000 runner-up prize in Project Pioneer 2880 with their DVD, Clay Ashtrays. "It only became stressful for me in the last six hours," admits Director Daniel Sacks, a December grad. "Otherwise, it was a lot of fun." Of course, the Academy's path to stardom wasn't an easy one. "In pre-production, we did everything we could do without knowing what the story was," assures Daniel. Like FSU's team, they got the crew together, had actors on call, and picked potential locations.

When they received their prompt from Jones and the clock started ticking, however, a lot of their planning fell by the wayside. The scenario? Jack, 22, goes to his mother's 50th birthday party with his therapist, and tells his parents he's dropping out of law school to be a preschool teacher.

"We were hoping for something more open-ended, but we were able to take a comedic route," remarks Daniel. "We made a really big deal out of it -- we had him talk about making clay ashtrays at lunchtime."

They wrote a 10-page script, which brought the end product to just under 10 minutes. "You really can't prepare for writing it," he says, "but we had talked about what we wanted to do even before the scenario was given to us." A 50th birthday party changed some of their initial casting and location plans for the film, too. "We had picked mostly college students before, so we made a bunch of phone calls to get grandparents and cousins for the party," explains Daniel. "And all the locations we had prepared wouldn't work. We needed a house that looked like a lawyer's, so we called my parents and took over their house for a couple of days."

During those short days, they definitely felt the time crunch. "The assistant director and I had our watches on, and every once in awhile, we'd yell out, '17 hours!'" After all their hard work, they still weren't sure they'd make it to the winners' circle. "I didn't think we had a chance," confesses Daniel. "We were disappointed, because we were used to spending three weeks on a project, and we didn't think we accomplished what we could have."

But the crew made it to the finals in Las Vegas, and were able to view their film from a new perspective. "Looking back, I'm proud of what we did," asserts Daniel.

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