Do I consider myself Scorsese? No — although my Instagram caption might differ. But I will say we made a pretty darn good film in 72 hours. When I came up in April for admitted students day, I somehow found myself in the Axinn basement, in a “Directing for Film” class with Professor Nikolina Dobreva. I remember in April imagining myself shooting on the Middlebury campus if I came here. So now that I was actually here, I had to jump at this chance that was presented to me.
At the inaugural “Sleepless in Middlebury” festival, teams of up to eight first-years were given 72 hours to write, film and edit a short film in under seven minutes. On Sept. 24, teams gathered in Axinn for the kickoff. We were given film gear (some pretty cool Sony handheld cameras), a 3D printed dragon egg and instructions to somehow include the phrase “You can’t get there from here” in the movie. Everything else was left to the makers.
The only catch was that a roulette wheel decided the genre, in which we lucked out by getting comedy. Our team, brought together through orientation group connections and the Hepburn lounge, assembled to write our story.
The basic idea was developed from a rom-com idea I had written in Professor David Miranda Hardy’s screenwriting class: a man who’d seriously screwed up, needed to reach and apologize to his girlfriend before her train left. He would need to do so in seven minutes to make the film’s time limit. And so began Niccolo D’Agruma ‘30’s (Nico) ordeal of having to run for the better part of his weekend.
Now we needed people and silly situations to derail him. As we mapped out the realistic route from Hepburn to the Amtrak Station in town, we realised that Niccolo would have to run through a good portion of campus and town to reach his station. So we decided we wanted to use the college itself as a distraction. Shooting on McCullough on Saturday, we bumped into a tour group that graciously agreed to cameo in our film. You can catch Nico wishing the tour guide a happy birthday. And of course, we needed unnecessary inconveniences. One of which was Jody Goodrich ‘29, a member of the Midd Nordic Skiing team who graciously accepted our request of chasing Nico in full gear from McCullough to Twilight Hall. That Saturday afternoon, students — current and prospective — got to see a man wearing underwear and a linen shirt, a nordic skier and a cowboy walk through campus.
And in case you missed it, President Ian Baucom had a cameo in the movie. As bold, daring first-years who had just had ice cream with the president two weeks ago, we decided it was completely realistic to email Baucom asking for a feature. Of course he agreed (and yes, we did also get a selfie with him).
After shooting for over 8 hours, Camille Laakmann ’30 and I, collected all the footage — which had been well planned and well shot thanks to James Lin ’30 — so editing was a matter of getting the shots in order and checking that we had a cohesive storyline. We also ended up using Baucom’s recommendation ‘Can’t Get There From Here’ by R.E.M as our background music. It just happened to line up perfectly with Nico’s running pace. Using Youtube tutorials and the experience I have editing family birthday videos, the movie came to fruition.
I decided I wanted to explore filmmaking because the whole process seems surreal to me. It’s crazy that I can walk around with a tripod, make people do basically anything and bring the concepts in my head to life. Those 72 hours are what I had imagined the college experience to be: finding like-minded people whom I can collaborate with, a type of connection other than friendship I’d rarely ever experienced before.
Second, I actually experienced surreal moments — partly because of self-imposed sleep deprivation. The downside of having a film competition the second week of your first year is the undeniable urge to still go out at night with an early morning shoot lined up. I didn’t even know I had the kind of energy I spent Saturday morning, running around Middlebury for over five hours after coming home way past midnight the night before.
I also don’t think Nico expected to meet President Baucom in underwear. Nor did we expect to actually miss the train we were supposed to film. Or leave a note on a tandem bike and have the owner actually lend it to us.
In this effort to make a small story idea I had in class come to life, I met seven amazing other people, learned camera work, editing and screenwriting, ran through town with a nordic skier — and made a film that makes me extremely proud.
And yes, we did win Best Picture.
