With inspiration from neighboring Los Angeles’s annual 48 Hour Film Festival, California Lutheran University and its multimedia department decided to pioneer its own take on the event, Friday, Oct. 7.

The 48 Hour Film Jam commenced at 7 p.m. in the brand new William Roland Art Center. There teams met to put their heads together after drawing a random film theme from a bowl, including horror, mockumentary, silent, coming of age and more.

Multimedia professor Dan Restuccio and student leader Scott Sawyer were responsible for bringing the adaptation of the Los Angeles 48 Hour Film Festival to campus.

“Over the summer a lot of various significant figures from the Cal Lutheran filmmaking community, both current students and alumni, participated in the Los Angeles 48 Hour Film Festival…and we decided that was an experience we wanted to share with the Cal Lutheran community. Not just the filmmaking students but with anybody that took interest,” Sawyer said.

Interest for the Jam was high, and Restuccio and Sawyer were well equipped with pizza and candy for the participants. The groups, consisting of students from various majors, were excited to jump right into the process.

“At the moment we have five decently sized groups with students from various departments in the school. We wanted to make it very clear that despite that fact that it’s being hosted out of the new building for art and multimedia that this is something that is open to all students no matter what department they’re studying in,” Sawyer said.

After receiving the theme for their film, groups were given envelopes containing a character, prop and line of dialogue that must be included in their film. This put a twist on the already difficult task.

In one group, the character to be included was a dropout returning to college named Jack or Jackie Baldwin, the prop was a key or set of keys, and the line of dialogue needed said, “It’s not my fault.”

Preparation before the Jam was extremely limited. Cal Lutheran freshman Kai Schulz had never experienced anything like the 48 Hour Film Jam before and was excited to dive in, despite being able to prep nearly nothing for the film itself.

“I don’t think there’s any [preparation] you can really do other than charging your equipment and getting your stuff together,” Schulz said.

Inclusivity was greatly emphasized by the multimedia department for this event, Restuccio wanted to make sure all students felt welcome to take on this great challenge.

“The multimedia department is sponsoring the event which, next semester will also be sponsored by the Digital Cinema Guild, however, this semester, just as Scott said, we wanted to be very very inclusive of the entire university. Any student whether you’re studying film or not studying film. You could be a bio major and show up tonight and be part of a group,” Restuccio said.

Seasoned students were also looking forward to gaining more experience. Josh “Shaggy” Antorietto said he signed up for the fun of it.

“Originally I was helping to run it but we were like well we have one team that’s all the newbies so they could just all come to me because I’ve done this before, like the actual 48 hour in LA. I’m here because it’s fun. I like doing it and it’s fun to help other people do that stuff. I mean, I’m a DA for that reason.”

Restuccio and Sawyer are coordinating when the films will be premiered to the Cal Lutheran community.

“Right now, and we don’t have a confirmation, but we do have an agreement with the AMC in The Oaks to host a screening that will be free for Cal Lutheran students,” Sawyer said.

Priscilla Romofsky 
Reporter