If you’re ever feeling the need for inspiration, maybe you just need a drink. It could have some benefits for your future, like having a short film screened on 21,000 movie screens across America.
MFA screenwriting students Cameron Porsandeh and Tarique Qayumi did just that and are now finalists for the Coca-Cola Refreshing Filmmaker’s Award, a contest that seeks out the best student filmmakers and awards their ability to write, direct and produce a short film promoting Coca-Cola Co.
“We were at Palomino, and we were drinking,” Porsandeh said. “We were drunk, and we said we should do this. Palomino is a great bar, and we have a lot of good ideas when we’re drinking there.”
The contest had a few guidelines: The film had to be set in a movie theater, had to be one minute long and had to feature a teenage boy ““ restrictions screenwriting students could find difficult.
“A lot of the conceptual ideas happened at Palomino and Brew Co.,” Porsandeh said. “I did see a bottle rolling across the bar, and there was something there. There’s something beautiful and elegant about (bottles).”
In this film, titled “Like a Rolling Bottle,” which can be seen on ccrfa.com, third-year theater student Reider Larsen plays a boy who drops a glass Coca-Cola bottle, which then rolls down the aisles. In his effort to get it back, Larsen’s character jumps acrobatically over the theater seats and along the way inadvertently turns off a cell phone, hits on two cheerleaders and nudges along a budding romance. Without giving away the ending, the finale is sweet and victorious.
As a cinephile, Porsandeh said that he doesn’t go to the movies that much anymore because of the distracting nature of being in an audience. Despite this, he said, going out and seeing a movie in a theater can be a truly enlightening experience.
“What we wanted to suggest was that going to the theater is actually an amazing experience because it does bring together a lot of different kinds of people,” Porsandeh said. “If you look at the people we cast, we have an older African American male, a younger Indian couple and a group of high school cheerleaders. We wanted to suggest that it’s a multicultural, multiethnic and multi-age experience.”
The contest’s organizers receive about 200 scripts and storyboards, and from those pick 10 finalists to give $7,500 to aid in the shooting of their proposed ideas. The finalists are then given one month to shoot and produce their films, and one final winner is picked. The prize: The film will be shown on 21,000 movie screens all summer.
As screenwriting students, both Porsandeh and Qayumi had never been in charge of the production side of filmmaking until this project and encountered more than a few challenges, particularly with the casting and the shoot itself.
During the casting sessions, many stunt guys in their 40s came for the role of the teenage boy, thinking that parkour-style skills were what the guys wanted ““ they weren’t. Then Qayumi randomly saw Larsen in Macgowan Hall, and knew he was perfect for the lead role because of his ability to perform the physical elements while acting expressively, even without having any spoken lines.
With only one month to shoot and produce, time was money, to say the least. Using a real movie theater that shows movies in the afternoons and evenings ““ Laemmle Theaters on Santa Monica Boulevard ““ the time they could actually spend in the theater was also very limited.
Porsandeh said that their shoots would begin around midnight and end at 1 p.m., a schedule not exactly favorable to problems like cameras breaking at 5 a.m.
“I spent half an hour convincing a mother from Bakersfield to not leave and take her son with her just so we wouldn’t lose two extras,” he said.
Even though there were a few glitches, the support of the UCLA community helped Porsandeh and Qayumi immensely by giving up time to help with the shoot or post-production or simply by sending in extra cash ““ a remarkable act, as Porsandeh said, because “none of us (film students) have any money.”
Qayumi said that the project was tough, and they encountered some problems, but the things he learned along the way, not to mention the finished product, were well worth the effort ““ even if they don’t win the contest.
“You don’t need to make lemonade out of lemons ““ you need to make passion fruit juice out of lemons,” Qayumi said. “You have to make something phenomenal, incredible, fantastic out of lemons.”