Filmmakers receive recognition at short-film screening

By Justin Prince

The Windsor International Film Festival kicked off its event schedule Nov. 3 with their short-film competition screening and awards night as 16 films made their premieres in front of the near-capacity crowd.

The Capitol Theatre hosted the 48-Hour FlickFest’s premiere night in the Kelly Theatre room, which has a capacity of 230 seats.  The original competition was held Oct. 18-20 with a total of 16 teams having to write, shoot and edit a short film within 48 hours.  None of the teams missed the deadline and all of their films premiered during the night.

“There weren’t many empty seats, which was awesome to see in terms of people coming out and supporting those teams,” said event director Eric Boucher.  “Maybe 80 of them there were the actual filmmakers and the rest were family and friends.”

Boucher, 27, said a couple of the films submitted had technical issues, but were corrected before the screening started.  Boucher also said he was impressed with the quality of the films in this year’s FlickFest.

“I really thought all of them were really good.  There were no bad films in terms of production quality and stories,” said Boucher.  “I think everyone did a good job, especially with the 48 hour limit.”

The 48-Hour FlickFest handed out its awards immediately after screening all 16 of the entries.  Lionel’s Got Some Trouble Coming His Way won the top awards on the night, including the Mark Boscariol Best of FlickFest award, and Alex Forman, an actor in the film, won Best Actor.  The best film award was named after Boscariol because of his contributions to the 48-Hour FlickFest.

“I was just really surprised.  We weren’t planning on using me for the role,” said Forman.  “I was just trying to do my best to live up to (the original actor’s) standards.  I’m just so surprised I won best actor.”

According to Forman the original actor, who was in the team’s film for the 2012 FlickFest, couldn’t make it.  Forman said he was placed into the role at the last minute.  He also said the original film length was six and a half minutes long, which was two and a half minutes over the limit.

“We’re planning to re-edit the film how we want to with better music.  Like really tighten it up,” said Forman.  “We’re going to make it how we wanted it to be seen.”

The director of the film Jakob Skrzypa said he was in shock over seeing his film win the 48-Hour FlickFest.  Skrzypa said he didn’t expect his film to win an award.

“It’s a really cool feeling (to win).  I really didn’t expect that to happen,” said Skrzypa.  “So much went wrong when we were filming … Everyone just came together and we had a great crew.”

J.D. Oppen, who also produced a film for the 48-Hour FlickFest, said his team didn’t want to win anything in the FlickFest because he asked Boucher to not give his film an award.

Oppen, 49, said it was neat to see his film up on the screen and wouldn’t change anything in it.

“We just wanted to have fun,” said Oppen.  “We weren’t really in the competition … It was just great to be a part of it all.”

Drew Hewitt, who had troubles with his film during the production weekend, said his audio quality could have been better in the film.  Hewitt said because of his audio people in the theatre couldn’t hear the film the way he wanted it to be heard.

“I saw everything that was wrong with it, but other than that it was pretty nice seeing myself up (on the screen),” said Hewitt.  “I think everything stems from where the audio was bad.  That was the main problem.”

Other winners at the 48-Hour FlickFest included:

Best Use of Prop – Knut Hanson’s Throwaway Gesture; Best Sound Design – Static Wreck; Best Score – Pending; Best Editing – Artificial Serenity; Best Cinematography – Artificial Serenity; Best Writing – Lack of Attractiveness; and Best Directing – Knut Hanson’s Throwaway Gesture.