The BestFest San Diego Student Film Festival

Begun in 1997, the event has grown into the largest student film festival in the country. In 2003, 598 students submitted entries, and $15,000 in prize money was awarded. BestFest is run by the Visual Arts Foundation, a 19-year-old non-profit corporation that raises operating funds through its annual Oscar Night America party, one of only 30 Academy-sanctioned events in the U.S.

The 2004 BestFest San Diego Student Film Festival

Saturday and Sunday, April 24 & 25, 2004. Entry deadline is Monday, March 1, 2004 at 5pm at the San Diego Film Commission office in the following categories: Comedy, Drama, Experimental, Non-Fiction, Public Service Announcement, Music Video (high school only) and Screenwriting. Entry forms available after September 15, 2003 at www.BestFestSanDiego.com, where you can also download and view one of the 68 entries in BestFest 2003, Ay Papi, by Andre Armenante of Poway High School.

Way back in the day, bored, talented teenagers rallied themselves around the cry, "Hey, kids! Let's put on a show!"

In 2003 San Diego they say, "Dude! Let's make a film!"

In 48 hours.

This is the driving idea behind the 48-Hours of Madness Film Festival: First, gather up to 50 teams of hyper-creative high school and college students and give them all the same bare-bones 5-page script to work from—then turn them, their imaginations, and their energy, loose.

Exactly 48 hours later, in the crowded lobby of the Ultra Star Theatre in Poway, see how many wired, sleep-deprived teams can make it across the finish line with a completed film.

Finally, reward them by immediately showing their films right there on one of the theatre's large screens. And after screening all the films to the cheering, sometimes playfully jeering, audience of fellow frenzied filmmakers and advisors and fans, everyone gets together to eat pizza and talk—about making films, of course.

And it works. This year 23 teams from 17 area high schools and 6 colleges participated. Of the 23 teams, only 3 missed the deadline. Their films were still screened, but cannot be officially entered in the annual BestFest San Diego film festival. Only one team, mortally wounded by a computer meltdown, failed to run the course.

Between working a continually ringing cell phone and answering frantic questions from revved-up students sprinting into the theatre to turn in their films before the deadline—only 3 minutes away—Dave Larson, President of the sponsoring Visual Arts Foundation and the evil genius who created 48-Hours of Madness, tells me what it's all about.

"These kids probably learned more about team work, about picking a team, about organization and creativity in the last 48 hours than they'll learn in a year of classes."

Larson surveys the loud turmoil of the crowded lobby, delighted. "Making a coherent film in just 48 hours is like juggling. It forces you to use both sides of your brain."

My conversation with Larson ends when a tall, thin student busts in and announces, "Dave, I ran 4 stop lights to get here in time! I endangered my life! But I made it!" Larson calmly directs the ecstatic student to the sign-in table where he needs to complete the entry of his film.

"When I was a kid, my dad was a Marine Drill Instructor and he had this big sign above his desk," says Larry Gagnon, the soft-spoken Director of the Rancho Bernardo High School Digital Media program. "I'm advising two of the teams that competed this weekend. I'm not allowed to help them hands-on, so I've tried to just keep telling them what that sign over my dad's desk said: Prior proper planning prevents piss poor performance."

Gagnon smiles. "It was great to see the kids catch on. "

My conversation with Gagnon ends when a frantic 17-year old guy talking into a headset busts in and appeals to Gagnon for advice on a technical problem that has something to do with the arcane world of mini-DV format conversion.

"These kids are great. Their energy, the enthusiasm," Michael Steven Gregory says, glancing over the crowds of students, teachers and contest organizers. A well-known independent filmmaker and Filmmaker in Residence at Alliant International University, Gregory acts as a script advisor for the 48-Hours of Madness event. "Using the same basic script means they have to tell the same story all the others are striving to tell. It challenges them to find their own voice."

As if to demonstrate Gregory's message, I meet a high school team called The Cardboard Boxes moments after they've turned in their finished film. One of them, Ginger Enclade, is holding a mannequin head, gently tossing it up and down in her hands.

"This is our mascot," she says. "His name is Godot."

"We found him, found his head, on a post outside of the Salvation Army when we were rushing here to turn in our film," Kevin Klauber, the leader of the team explains.

I learn that Klauber, with some of this year's teammates, was a participant in last year's event. Taking the generic script about high-tech modern teen dating that all the teams were given—his team turned it upside down—and set it in a bare field, with the actors portraying the Amish of Pennsylvania.

"On this year's script, we took a religious angle," Klauber says.

This year's 5-page script focuses on a cast of tense, odd characters in the waiting room of a television game show. "But our film is about these characters auditioning to entertain God," Jessica Fisher, a team member and the editor of the film explains.

"It's called Entertaining God," Klauber smiles. "We based it on Waiting for Godot, an absurdist play by Samuel Beckett."

Right. From game show television to Beckett's masterpiece of barren nihilism.

Well. What else would you expect from a gang of hyper-creative high school filmmakers?

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