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Seen at Cutters
Fast Forward Co-Founder Sean U'Ren is also an assistant editor at Cutters, an award-winning Chicago-based editing company.
Check out a brief intro to Sean's commercial work at www.cutters.com.
For more information about the, check out the Fast Forward Film Festival website.
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(Continued from Page One)
Obviously my blank stare wasn't translating well - it meant my mind was blank. You see, the technical capabilities were covered. With a degree in broadcast news, film-industry experience, a MiniDV camera and an editing station, production was cake. What they don't teach you is what to do when the ideas don't forcefully erupt from some creative well-spring within. My boyfriend pulled my arm and led me out. I think he was saying something, something vaguely comforting.
Which brings us to a crucial point. U'ren suggests you choose your team carefully. He uses the analogy of a road trip, "Isn't that hard enough to do with people? Don't work with anyone who’s heart will be broken if you tell them what to do." This should be sufficient foreshadowing of impending relationship doom for the perceptive reader. When the founders acknowledge the strangest outcome of the festival to be that managed to remain friends, then it's pretty obvious that the only other person on your team probably shouldn't be your lover.
Eighteen hours and a night on the couch later, there was no video shot, not even one measly frame of pre-roll. I was venting, boyfriend brooding. Sans the details, it was apparent that plots for three minute videos are too ambitious when they involve hotel rooms, nudity and hand puppets.
Over the course of the lifespan of FFFF, no one has ever been bailed out, claimed remains, or received a DUI. There have, however, been car explosions and crews passed out at airports. I was starting to think they would be able to chalk up their first home wreck. With less than four hours to deadline, we pulled ourselves from the wallowing self-pity of surrender and decided that we had to turn something in - anything.
And that's what we did. Fueled on nothing more than a jar of peanut butter, we edited together something that most closely resembled a music video and then raced, risking life and limb, to turn it in. We anticipated glory in our determination and at the very least, comradery with fellow festival participants over a drink at the party.
We were enraptured by the romantic notion of a grassroots screening of guerilla video tucked in an empty warehouse somewhere along one of Chicago's industrial corridors. Only adding to the mise en scene was the cryptic note left on the door of the warehouse when we arrived, instructing us to call a cell phone number if the door was locked.
Inside, hand drawn arrows lead us through a labyrinth of dark hallways and Escheresque staircases with the only assurance that we weren't falling prey to a serial-killer being the faint sound of music and voices.
I am not going to tell you how the story ended (HINT: our woe reached epic proportions and resulted in sneaking out before our video was even half-way through). That's not the point. I did not produce my magnum opus and my mistake was thinking that I should even want to.
There is a beautiful terror in exposing the ugly, dirty side of creativity and the Fast Forward guys have found a way to showcase it. Rumor has it there’s another FFFF in the works for April - perhaps, by then, I'll be ready to expose my nocturnal naughties one more time.
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Written by Renee Basick
[1] [2]
003: Fast Forward Film Festival
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