Written by Leah Kennedy
Photos by Alex Stoltze
The lights dim. White text against a black screen comes into focus. A shot of a man’s feet in the foreground with others in the background suddenly fills the screen. Seeing the man only from the calves down, he drops his pants. So begins the first annual University of Oregon Adrenaline Film Project.
On Saturday, May 8 the UO Robinson Theater was packed with students, faculty, and community members eager to see the products of this unique event. The theater buzzed before and after the lights dimmed. Shouts, cheers, and applause accompanied the beginning and end of each film.
The journey for the 36 participants of the Adrenaline Film Project began the Wednesday before, when they met with their mentors, industry professionals Jeff Wadlow, Scott Prendergast, and Romulo Alejandro. That afternoon, the 12 teams received three things with which they had to use to make their movies: a prop, a line, and a genre.
Though each team’s genre was unique, all were required to use the same prop – a compass – and the same line – “What goes around…” The prop and line were chosen, the mentors said, to tie the films back to the Pacific Rim countries featured in the Cinema Pacific Film Festival, of which the Adrenaline Film Project was a part.
After these initial assignments, a team had to develop pitches to present to the panel of mentors in a matter of hours. Once a concept got the green light, the team began writing scripts, casting their movies, and shooting their footage. With only 24 hours remaining in the competition, teams were allowed into the Cinema Studies lab in Knight Library to begin editing. Only hours later the movies premiered in the Robinson Theater.
The assigned genres of the projects ranged from post apocalyptic to buddy cop to supernatural horror, and the final content was just as varied. After one film, the audience would be laughing at a boy hearing alcohol speak to him; the next they would realize they were watching a strange sex game where a man pretends to break into his girlfriend’s home, only to be knocked out and tied up by his girlfriend.
The climax of the evening came not in the films themselves, however, but after with the awards presentation. There were six awards, all offering prestige and money to the winners.
What Goes Around, an action film, received the Mentors’ Award, acknowledging the teams the mentors felt performed remarkably well. Honorable Mention went to Twinge, the buddy cop movie created by the competition’s only high school team. Part way through the filming of What Goes Around, the team’s cameras broke and they lost half of their footage, but still managed to produce a quality film.
Little Dead Riding Hood won the Audience Prize, voted on by all in attendance. A slasher film loosely based on the classic fairy tale, the movie followed what seemed to be a sad, quiet teenager dealing with the death of her grandmother.
“The win was gratifying,” Little Dead Riding Hood team member Jonathon Wood says. “We had the slasher genre, so we wanted to scare people, but we didn’t know if it was going to come off like funny or stupid. Then when we were actually sitting there people screamed and jumped.”
My Compass Tells Me Where to Go, a romantic comedy, won the Kalb Jury Award, the highest honor given during the event. The film’s main character, a socially awkward young man, spends his day following his compass, oblivious to the bigger world around him. When his compass breaks, he finds new joys and a new friend.
The team behind this short film consisted of Douglas Rice, Desiree Robinson, and Iton Udosenata. The trio says their genre was definitely not at the top of their list, but did to contribute to the final idea.
“It was a lot more than I expected,” says Robinson, who was one of the only girls participating in the competition. “I think it was a huge learning process and I really appreciated each step of the way.”
After the high attendance at this year’s inaugural event, the Project might become a permanent fixture. At the end of the night, UO alumnus and partial Project sponsor Ben Kalb, for which the Kalb Jury Award is named, took the stage and announced that he has already pledged to donate funds for the event to continue for the next five years. This was met with a roar of cheers from the crowd as many leapt to their feet.
