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One day to make a movie: Apple launches UW films

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Sometimes it pays to read your forwarded e-mails. For University of Wisconsin senior Tyler Gunderson, a fellow director’s joke turned into a three-minute short, to be judged in Apple’s annual “Insomnia Film Festival.”

An “Insomnia Film Festival” might conjure up vague images of a marathon showing of “Rocky Horror Picture Show” in someone’s basement, but, in fact, the title refers to the makers — not the viewers. Each year, high school and college filmmakers are given 24 hours to make a three-minute short that includes three elements — which this year included a park bench, a bird cage and the line “Don’t tempt me!”

“The films that included that line really didn’t make it work. It sounded forced and stuck out,” said UW senior Theresa Saldana, co-director of Gunderson’s short, “Out of Time.”.

Saldana sent Gunderson an e-mail from Apple about the contest, “half-jokingly,” but when Gunderson responded, “we’re doing it,” they were fully committed.

But until the elements were revealed at 8 a.m. Oct. 13, “the only thing we planned for that day was to shoot,” Gunderson said. “A lot of what made this a success was I’m normally an extreme procrastinator.”

Still, the students’ general filmmaking philosophy made their decisions easier. Instead of being “tempted” to use the dialogue gimmick, Gunderson and Saldana selected the elements that would integrate most seamlessly. They picked the dream sequence as the film’s central motif, as well as a match cut (for those of us who are not film majors, think the bone in “2001: A Space Odyssey”) and a Dutch angle (think the entrance of a squad of cartoon villains).

“We knew we had to keep things simple. You have to be careful not to get overly ambitious,” Saldana said.

Saldana was too polite to name names, but browsing the entries, it’s obvious who the “overly ambitious” are. While some high-concept shorts are surprisingly successful (including a spot-on caricature of a student film festival in “The Judges”), others, such as “Curmudgeon” involving “reverse ageism,” just don’t work. The other UW entries are among the most esoteric, including a musical, a cross-dimensional tour and an exploration of the effects of Youtube on reality.

“I think our goal was to be as entertaining as possible,” Gunderson said. He picked the first idea he thought of, a dream sequence in which a student runs to meet his girlfriend for a date. A spontaneously appearing suit and bouquet were added to “to make it more visually interesting,” Saldana said.

“I had fears about it being cliché. But with such a short film, there’s only so much that can be expected,” Saldana added.

Both students agreed the process went fairly smoothly.

The only major change in plans came in the film’s most difficult shot, in which actor Ty Christianson changes into a suit on the street in mid-step. A head-on shot had to be scrapped for a switch behind a tree.

“We had him run past the tree [and change] probably 10 times,” Gunderson said, laughing. “If there had been a football game, that would have been difficult.”

But after all that work, the one thing Gunderson and Saldana are asking themselves is, “Why don’t we do this every weekend?”