Arriving at the Rio Theatre for the Run & Gun 2015 awards only a few minutes before 9:00, I found myself at the end of a long line of filmmakers. A little later Brian, the team leader who guided us through our 48-hour shoot, got in line a few places behind me. From there we met another team member who worked as background. Finding our seats, we all sat with one friend who was supporting us.
After a 20 minute wait featuring the same “Turn off your phone” animation, one of the organizers, Joel (wearing Charles’ name tag) gave a speech about how well this turned out, and only ONE team quit halfway through. Wonder what their story was? When Joel finished, the jury (Warren P. Sonoda, Gigi Saul Guerrero, Caleb Slain, Aaron Keeling, and the Humantown team) told us about all the good films, and the one bad film, saying we’d know it when we saw it. I didn’t, but it probably wasn’t the one I edited. Couldn’t have been. Everyone enjoyed the film I edited, even laughing at the good hilarious moments.
After eight of the films, a 15-minute intermission showing tweets with the festival’s hashtag, the other eight films, and a segment showing different team members being interviewed (people cheered when me and Brian showed up on screen for just one shot. Good to know we’re appreciated), it was time for the awards ceremony hosted by Gigi Saul Guerrero, accompanied with obnoxious drumroll sounds from the audience.
The grand winner of the most awards was the appropriately named team Buttflo$$ consisting of three talented young men who made Like and Subscribe, a YouTube prank vlog style of movie. The winner for Best Actor was Tyler James Nicol in Heart Murmurs, about a deliveryman driving a heart in a cooler, thinking of who it could’ve belonged to, talking to him. The Best Actress award went to Julie Bruns in Default, which featured a trio of secret agents retrieving stolen information from a man working at an office. Best Cinematography and Best Sound Design went to the short film Fizz, which was mostly a continuous shot of a woman escaping a bar after being drugged. The Condenado League won Best Screenplay, which was about superheroes with semi-super powers. Not surprisingly, the Best Editing award went to Counter-Intelligent which featured gamers getting transferred into the Internet. I thoroughly enjoyed their use of 3D graphics. Finally, the newcomer award was given to Avenoir, a dark film showing a girl going through many flashbacks after breaking up.
Though my team’s entry Uninvited Guest didn’t win any awards, the experience was certainly thrilling and showed what you can do on a time budget, even if that time budget is less than two days.
