How to Make a Movie in 24 Hours: Fledgling Directors Take Center Stage at Duke's First Ever Movie Making Marathon

Appeared in the May 2007 edition of Towerview, Duke University's independent perspectives magazine; photos by Eric Bishop.

It's Saturday morning, and Sean Canino is stressed out. He's standing in the Marketplace lobby with a camera jib, and although his day of filmmaking has run smoothly so far, he's beginning to hit some rough spots. He's having trouble getting the right camera angles. He's getting irritated by freshman passers-by interfering with his shots. And he's frantically trying to direct his cast of characters over the clanking of dishes and the incessant beeping of DukeCards swiping in for brunch.

"Let them go in front of you, just let everybody in line go in front of you," he spatters, and the curious onlookers filter past his sunglasses-clad actors, one of whom is dressed in a giant banana suit. The looks on the freshman faces say it all: What the hell is going on?

What's going on is the Movie Making Marathon, a filmmaking extravaganza in which teams of students have only 24 hours to shoot and edit short movies. Sponsored by the Film/Video/Digital program and other University departments, the event kicked off in October with a campus-wide screenwriting competition. Five screenplays were selected for the event from a pool of 26, and marathon coordinators randomly assigned a script to each of the 10 participating groups a day before the big event. From there--jacked up on caffeine, adrenaline and whatever else it took to cram production that usually takes weeks into 24 short hours--it was up to the teams to sweat out their eight-minute masterpieces.

As Canino puts it, "Marathon is really a misnomer. It's not a marathon at all--it's a sprint."


It's 7 a.m. and dozens of bleary-eyed students are making their way to the Bryan Center to pick up cameras, mics, tripods and other filmmaking gear. Most of these people can count on one hand the number of times they've woken up this early on a Saturday at Duke. Still, MMM co-producers Annie Fleishman and Shannon Rowbury--who woke up at 5:15 a.m. to prep the equipment for their arrival--are surprised to see most students trickling in a few minutes after the official start of the marathon instead of coming early to get a jump on the competition.

"I would have tented for this," Fleishman says.

Of all the 70-odd students involved in the marathon, Fleishman is probably the most excited. The junior, a filmmaker in her own right, conceived of the event last year as a way to bolster filmmaking at Duke. Freshmen had the Froshlife iMovie Festival, but there had been no such opportunity for upperclassmen. The goal with the MMM, she says, was to create an event in which any random chem major who had a cursory interest in film could participate. And that meant teams would be assigned randomly, with each headed by a more experienced filmmaker-a student enrolled in a film course taught by Teaching Fellow and event co-producer Elisabeth Benfey.

Canino's team certainly seems random--he's got novices who have never seen this side of a video camera, a few Froshlife veterans and even a senior who studied filmmaking at the hand of the man who wrote, directed and produced Aladdin and Hercules-his father. That last one is Jackson Musker, who is slated as an actor in the group's film. His only acting experience before this was "about 15 seconds in Froshlife," an experience the senior describes as "painful."

In fact, none of the actors in the team's movie are actually "actors." But Canino only had a day to cast after he got his screenplay, and when you're making a movie and you're short on time, you improvise. You begin shooting in the Marketplace before you technically have permission to do so. You enlist Marketplace employees for supporting roles. You sneak $44 worth of candy corn into the Marketplace for a scene, even though doing so may be a violation of the health code. (You're not really sure.) Then you placate the Marketplace manager who's been eyeing you suspiciously during your shoot by fulfilling his request for a cup of said candy corn.

And somewhere in between, Hollywood producer Bill Teitler--whose credits include Mr. Holland's Opus and Jumangi--stops by the set. He's in town to judge the films at the premiere Sunday after it's all over.

"You guys are experiencing one of the basic facts of film production-not enough time and being really tired," he tells the team. But does he ever have just 24 hours to make an entire movie? "Frequently whether you have half an hour to get something done or two hours or twelve hours, time is always ticking. It's always a factor."

Teitler visits the groups in the Smith Warehouse editing room later that night. Wtih less than eight hours to go, the students are so focused on their work that they barely seem to notice him. Headphones are on, eyes are glued to screens--it's time to push. Teitler is impressed with the intensity in the room, especially at this late hour. "It felt like a countdown to a NASA blastoff," he later said.


1:30 a.m. and Canino is growing anxious. He's pacing around the room, fidgeting nervously as the other members of his crew take over editing duties. He's by far the most experienced film editor, but fatigue is setting in--he's at the point when another Red Bull doesn't seem to have quite the rousing effect it once did. (Remember, the groups woke up for a 7 a.m. kickoff yesterday.) So he's putting the fate of his baby into the hands of others while he takes a break.

In the ensuing hours he'll rejoin the group at the editing desk. They're running on fumes, but they're catching their second wind-weariness is morphing into that wonderful sort of giddiness that only sleep deprivation can muster. "Out of all the groups, we laughed the most while editing our movie," Canino later said. And after all the laughter, the petty arguments about technical details and the hours of staring at a single computer screen, they turn in their eight-minute masterpiece. They are the last group to finish.


Sunday's bright, sunny skies are lost on about 200 people, all of whom are spending the afternoon inside the dimly lit Griffith Theater in the Bryan Center for the awards ceremony and screening of the movies. The majority of them slept less than five hours the previous morning. Needless to say, yawns are rampant among this crowd. Still, there's a certain excitement pervading the room, a certain feeling of road-worn accomplishment. Just 24 hours ago, they had nothing. And while the films are far from perfect, they are certainly impressive given the time constraint.

"Limitations frequently produce the best work," Teitler says after the screening. "They had a limited amount of time, a certain amount of ingredients, and you say 'OK, make it happen.' And all 10 groups did a phenomenal job. Any one of the 10 was easily as good as I thought the best was going to be."

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