Earlier this month, the 21st annual i48 Film Competition and Festival took place. The event challenges Idaho filmmakers to create a short film in just 48 hours.

Here's how it works: All teams gather on a Friday at 6pm and receive a packet. Within that packet, there is a genre for the film they will be making, and a line of dialogue, a character, and a prop, all of which must be incorporated into the movie. These surprise elements are how the i48 team ensures the film is made within the designated 48 hour period.

There’s typically 30-35 teams total, split into two divisions – open and novice. The open division is for professionals or teams who have competed before. The novice division is for new filmmakers. Each division has the same prop, character, and line of dialogue, with different genres divided between the teams.

Over the years, i48 has assigned all kinds of genres to teams: comedies, thrillers, silent films, westerns, sci-fis, sports films, buddy cop movies, rom coms, one year they even had movie trailers as a genre.

Teams receive their packet on Friday evening and then it's off to the races. Films must be completed and turned in by Sunday at 6pm. In that 48 hour period, teams must come up with an idea, find a cast, produce, shoot, edit, and score a 4-6 minute short film.

“Whoever captures lightning in a bottle and makes the best movie in whatever genre tends to get rewarded,” said Andrew Ellis, creator of the i48 Film Competition and Festival. He was inspired by the 48 Hour Film Project, which originated in Washington DC.

Over the following week, a judging panel made up of about 30 people watch every film and judge them in certain categories. Award categories include Best Use of Prop, Best Use of Character, Best Use of Dialogue, Best Actor and Actress, Best Sound/Music, Best Cinematography, 2nd Best Film, And Overall Best Film. Films can win awards in multiple categories.

The weekend after the competition, all completed films – regardless of if they turned in on time or not – are screened at The Flicks. “The reward for all the teams, no matter what, is that they get to see their film projected on the big screen at The Flicks, which is really cool,” said Andrew.

Then 13 best films have another screening on Sunday at The Egyptian Theatre. All the “best of” films are screened and then trophies are presented to the winning teams. The films that win “Best Overall Film” are also awarded a cash prize.

All films created during i48 are PG and screenings are open to the public of all ages.

H48

While i48 is open to anyone and all films are PG, all bets are off for H48.

H48 is for horror film fans. This year the H48 competition will be held October 11-13, 2024 and the festival will be October 19, 2024.

“Filmmakers being filmmakers, particularly ones that are a little bit more advanced, they like to get the freak on,” said Andrew. “They would say, you know this whole PG thing is really cramping our style. And so we said okay, we’ll give you a chance to be as body as you want to be.”

Thus, H48 came to be.

For H48 there's no rating restriction, so films can be gruesome and gory and bloody and profane as the filmmaker chooses. Other than that, it’s pretty much the same format with a few slight differences. Teams gather on a Friday night at 6pm and receive their packet, which contains a line of dialogue and a prop that must be incorporated into the film. With H48, teams obviously know they will be making a horror film so subgenres are assigned – things like vampire, supernatural, zombie, etc. Also, they do not assign a character for H48 films.

Once teams receive their packets, the clock starts ticking. By Sunday at 6pm, teams must submit a completed film. A panel of judges watches all the films (there’s usually about 15 total) and then award films for the following categories: Best Of, Best Scream Queen, Best Baddie/Villain, and Best SFX (special effects). There’s also an Audience Choice award that is selected by the audience at the screening. Rather than having a dedicated screening weekend like i48 has, H48 films are screened at The Egyptian Theatre during the Boise Fright Film Fest.

If you’d like to compete in H48, registration opens on Sunday, September 8 at 10:00am.

13 Stories

A relatively new event that i48 also does is 13 Stories. This film competition and screening is spearheaded by the Old Idaho Penitentiary. For this competition, Idaho filmmaker teams are assigned a true story about a real person who worked or served time at The Old Pen. Teams are challenged to make a short film inspired by that story. One of the coolest parts about 13 Stories is that filmmaker teams actually shoot their films on location at the Old Idaho Penitentiary.

13 Stories does not have the 48 hour challenge element. Once teams are assigned a story, they are also assigned a time to film out at the Old Idaho Pen, which is sometime between June and August. All films are then due by September 1, 2024.

The films are screened over two nights (Friday, September 13 and Saturday, September 14, 2024) at the Old Idaho Penitentiary. The first night is a screening and awards presentation for the teams and the second night is open to all audiences.

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Filmmakers have a chance to win prizes at this competition too. Judges award cash prizes for the Warden’s Cup for Best Film, Trusty Trophy for Runner-Up to Best Film, Stool Pigeon Award for Best Use of History, Best Lead Performer, Best Supporting Performer and there is also an Audience Choice Award (which is announced on social media after all three screenings).

Andrew said that many teams attempt to do a historical recreation, which have done to varying degrees of success. But the films that he has enjoyed most have been inspired by the story. Either reimagining the story of this inmate from 100 years ago in the modern times or some have taken the story into supernatural realms or in horror directions. Andrew says he enjoys when teams create a film where there's something recognizable from the story of the actual inmate, but they refine it in a creative way.

February Challenge

There is one more event that i48 hosts, and this one doesn’t happen every year: the February Challenge.

“It happens most Februarys, but it's not been entirely consistent,” said Andrew.

Andrew explained that in the film community, production tends to go dormant during the winter months, like January and February. It gets dark earlier, which makes shooting outside harder. And the cold and wet conditions don’t help either.

“But the whole mission of i48 really is to encourage the production of films and independent filmmaking. Our mission is to stimulate activity and just to have filmmaking happen,” said Andrew. “So we've done something that we just call the February Challenge where we come up with a filmmaking challenge that lasts the entirety of February.”

i48’s February Challenges have been different over the years. They have had a comedy film festival where people had the month of February to shoot a comedy movie. They’ve done documentaries and short films. One year, they did a feature film where they had a feature film script written and then had all the teams shoot a different section to create one complete film.

This past February, they repeated what they had done once before in 2019, called a collaboration project. For that, they solicited screenwriters from Idaho to submit short film scripts, then picked 10 filmmaker teams to read over the scripts and chose which one they wanted to turn into a film. They also auditioned for the actors. If you auditioned, you were guaranteed a part in a movie. They filmed the auditions and gave the tapes to the 10 directors, then got together and directors picked their actors draft-style.

“It pushed teams to do something they hadn’t written with actors they didn't know,” said Andrew

Teams then had the month of February to shoot the film and the films were screened in early April.

Andrew says that, in addition to being a fun experience, the collaboration project is one of the most successful things that i48 has done.

“Particularly in 2019, there was this group of people who came in as actors that I had never seen. I hadn't seen them in i48 films, I hadn't seen them in commercials – I just hadn't seen them anywhere in the local scene.” Through the project, the actors connected with directors, and since then Andrew has been seeing these actors in all kinds of local commercials and advertising. “I think that a lot of it had to do with the fact that these actors got connected with directors, and they put a performance on tape. A lot of collaboration has come from there, and I'm very, very pleased and proud of that.”

If there is one thing that Andrew hopes you take away from this story, it’s that i48’s events are open to anybody.

“Truly, if somebody that is listening to your podcast or reading your newsletter thinks that it would be fun to gather up some friends, gather up their family and make a movie – even if they've never done it – we welcome people doing that,” said Andrew, noting that if you have a smartphone, you already have everything you need to make a movie. “Literally what people are holding in their hands is enough to make a movie.”

Andrew also invites you to see the finished movies. “It really is quite remarkable what people come up with in just 48 hours,” said Andrew. “The level of creativity of the teams is just boundless. It’s a fun thing to witness.”

You can stay up to date with the latest i48 events at www.idaho48.org or follow them on Instagram and Facebook.

Also, you can watch all of the i48 films here.

Thanks for reading!

With love from Boise,

Marissa

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