Hey, you there. Put down this ink-and-paper media dinosaur and surf on over to YouTube. Type “Fava 48 Hour” into the search box—there you’ll find a small but representative sampling of films submitted to the FAVA 48 Hour Film Festival in years past.
 

The offerings committed to YouTube range, as they no doubt will this year, from drama to comedy, from high-concept to lowbrow. The one thing that binds them all together (besides having been written, shot and edited in 48 hours) is that they’re all totally, patently amateurish—bad acting, sloppy sound, wobbly shots, cheesy special effects. And that’s the coolest thing about them—these are movies that would never have been made if it weren’t for something like the 48 Hour Film Festival. After all, when you’ve committed to completing a film in only two days, there’s no self-censorship. If the creators of the 2007 entry “Daycation” had had any time to re-consider their goofy premise (kids get magically transported to a whimsical day trip in the mountains), maybe the inexplicable but oh-so-charming little short never would’ve been made. The same can probably be said of the ambitious “The Surveyor” from the same year, about an alien who lands in the Edmonton river valley.
 

“We get a real random mix of movies,” says festival producer Sharon Murphy. “It’s thanks to the diversity of the filmmakers we have. Kids as young as 13 and 14 years old, established filmmakers, film students, people who do it as a hobby. And we get people from all over too, from Edmonton, Redwater, Vermilion, St Albert.”

 

Of course, there are a few rules. The filmmakers (who wrote, shot and edited their films between 5 pm Jun 6 and 5 pm Jun 8) must incorporate two props, two quotes, one location and one editing effect into the final film. Those conditions are set by Murphy and her co-producer, Mike Johnson. It’s a creative curveball that seems sort of unnecessary, given the challenge of putting together 10 coherent minutes of film with only 48 hours, but at least it provides an easy and fun way to judge the filmmakers’ relative merits.
 

“Some of the quotes and scenes are just wedged in really awkwardly,” says Murphy, “and it’s funny. That’s why it’s so neat when they fit it in and it really works. Sometimes we almost miss it because it’s so seamless.”
 

Since its inception in 2005, when it was held in the tiny, inauspicious basement space beneath the Black Dog, the festival has become an annual staple for Edmonton’s small filmmaking community.