February 12th is a wild night at Majerle's Sports Bar and Grill in downtown Phoenix. More than 200 people are packed into the 9 Lounge at the grill, and the noise is deafening. The laughter overpowers even the stereo system. As 7:00 p.m. approaches, people begin to pay more attention to the young man in the ballcap next to the video screen at the back of the room. Although it looks like a party for the Superbowl or the NBA playoffs, this is the kickoff for the 6th Annual Almost Famous Film Festival's 48 Hour Short Film Challenge, and the man in the back is the A3F's founder, Jae Staats. Tonight, he's the guy with all the answers, and at precisely 7:00 p.m., he will initiate one of the Southwest's largest and most entertaining film festivals.

The concept is deceptively simple: each team has exactly 48 hours to make a film. But every team must incorporate specific elements - a theme, a prop and a line of dialogue - that they will not learn until tonight's kick-off (the criteria are also simultaneously posted to the A3F website for non-local teams). Once they have these three elements, teams have the next two days to write, cast, film, edit and render their one- to five-minute film and return it to Staats by the 7:00 p.m. deadline on Sunday.

At Majerle's, the criteria are announced amid screaming and cheering. This year's theme is "a white lie", the prop is a mirror or some other reflective surface that a character must use and the line of dialogue is "What just happened?" The teams scatter. The room clears within minutes.

In five years, the A3F has become the largest independent short film challenge in the country. In 2005, 28 teams participated. This year 75 teams signed up. By Sunday evening, 56 teams will have turned in completed movies.

Jae Staats is a lean, quiet man with a rare, quick smile and a tendency to worry. He's clearly dedicated to creating the best quality product that he can - the client list for his own videography business, Ballboy Productions, includes the Susan G. Komen foundation, Nestle and the Phoenix Suns. But more than that, Staats cares about and wants to support independent filmmakers, which is why he and his brother Kai started the A3F as a separate entity. He explains, "I thought the area needed a film festival that allowed filmmakers to come together and better their craft in a way that focused the attention back on them and not on some corporation like many festivals do."

Teams

Some of the teams have been working together for years; sometimes members just met a few days before the challenge. Justin Humbert, from Mambo Grin Films, has been working with his crew about five years, and they have competed in several challenges together. Sometimes, teams come from a little closer to home. Daniel Holiday, from On Holiday Productions, says his team was his whole family. "I worked with my brothers and my wife and their kids. We used a lot of kids, which was incredibly difficult!' he laughs. Brian Skiba and Laurie Love from Victory Angel Films met through the A3F three years ago and they have been professional and life partners since. According to Skiba, their nine-member team (Black List Film Empire in this challenge) is a "filmmaking community that supports our success as a group and as individuals, but for the A3F we compete as one."

Script and Story

Scripts range from spare to dialogue-driven. Some of the teams come with a script already fleshed out and hope the theme will work; others wait till they learn the theme and then start writing. Ten/One Films' Sterling Smith was pleased with his essentially predetermined script. "We just had to make a few adjustments." Their script was done an hour after the announcement. Mambo Grin's Humbert says they didn't have their final idea until 2:00 in the morning on Saturday and wrote the script until 5:00 a.m. Flexibility seems to be key. Several teams said that they came to the filming with one idea, only to find that it wouldn't work, and they had to change in midstride.

In 2007, Rock Soup entered the first Spanish-language film at the A3F. The theme was heroism, and the team produced a heartbreaking story of a Mexican migrant reluctantly carrying a young woman to safety after his best friend dies in the desert. The film won best drama, proving that an English-language script is not a necessary component of this competition.