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Monday, August 17, 2009

Miss the 48-Hour Film Project? We’ve Got the (Thrilling) Winning Video

The rules of Hampton Road’s 48-Hour Film Project were simple:

  • picture-4The character Ed or Emma Butler, a travel agent, needed to appear.
  • The prop of a kite must be used.
  • The line of dialog “When will she be back?” had to be said.

Check that. Sounded simple. But with only 48 hours to conceptualize, write, set, shoot, and edit the movie, you can bet by the end of those two days you had some directors with nerves as frayed as the ends of old shoelaces.

Following is the “Best of City” winning film, the thriller Sea of Trees, produced by Idyl King Entertainment‘s creative team of Grayson Wolfe (director, editor, writer) and William Dresden (director of photography, editor, writer). The setting is Aokigahara, Japan, otherwise known as the Sea of Trees. Sitting at the base of Mt. Fuji, the forest is known for paranormal activity, suicides and, after this film, demonic teddy bears and sad/bad daddies.

For their efforts Idyl will represent the 757 at Filmapalooza in Las Vegas. And if they win in Vegas? Next up, Cannes.

Enjoy, but don’t pop too much popcorn: it’s just over seven minutes. You might want to mute the first five seconds to blot out the annoying sound test.

The Sea of Trees from Idyl King Entertainment on Vimeo.

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ABOUT THE WRITER
Jesse is the editor in chief of AltDaily, and he's going to take this bio seriously, but not so seriously that he's going to continue in the third person. I've been involved with a bunch of local projects and civic groups in various roles, including: Hampton Roads, The Canvas; Art | Everywhere, Street Performance in Norfolk; Survive Norfolk; Hampton Roads Pride/Out in the Park; Bike Norfolk; re:Vision Norfolk, and such. I originally came to Norfolk as a Perry Morgan fellow in ODU's creative writing program. Before that I bummed around quite a bit, writing stacks of books that never got published, hitchhiking, couchsurfing, riding the Greyhound up down and back across this country. Some of my favorite jobs and volunteer gigs have included working on organic farms in Ireland; being first mate on an old sail boat in Holland; working at a long-term home for young men in South Africa; being a journalist and high school teacher in New York and California; washing dishes in Yosemite National Park; teaching English in DC and swimming in Florida; and interning at ESPN in Bristol, which was much less cool that you'd want it to be. My career highlights have been having three of my op-eds run in the New York Times, and being the executive producer of a six-part docu-drama on BET. Because school is cool I have three master's degrees (ODU for MFA, NYU for magazine journalism, University of Connecticut for secondary English education). I live in Norfolk because I believe in its potential. Email your ideas or nicely couched criticism to jesse@altdaily.com.
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