WHAT WOULD YOU DO WITH
A HUNDRED BUCKS?
As the $100 Film Festival enters it's
12th year, creativity is still key

by James Keller

It seems a daunting task, producing a short film with a $100 budget. But the raw and unpolished creativity it requires more than makes up for any limitations such a restriction might impose.

When the $100 Film Festival debuted 12 years ago, the focus was on Super 8 films and filmmakers were limited less by price than by restrictions on resources: three rolls of colour sound film, four rolls of colour silent, and five rolls of black and white. The original concept, the brainchild of Winnipeg-born civil engineer James Beattie Morrison, was to expose independent filmmakers while demonstrating it was possible to produce entertaining films without Hollywood-sized budgets. Even now, with the $100 ceiling gone, the spirit is the same.

"The cost of the technology is making it more possible for people to make films, or at least get started," he explains. "A lot of people who sort of dreamed of making films are starting to realize ‘I don't have to dream, I can go out and make one.'"

With a focus on ideas instead of flash, the point of the festival is to exploit the idea that everyone likely has a concept floating around their head that they could transform onto the screen.

Exhibit A: "I'd make a movie about flowers," says Tanille Docherty, who works the ticket booth at the Uptown Stage and Screen by night, and full time at a flower shop by day. "I think florists are a little bit strange. I wouldn't necessarily say they're misunderstood, but they're living in their own little world."

Docherty isn't the only one with ideas. David Marrelli, director of the Calgary International Film Festival, believes $100 could go a long way in a pinch, and his vision definitely falls within the festival's original intent.

"You just head out with a camera on the street and pick something you could ask a lot of people and get some hilarious answers," he says. Marrelli would focus on the spring weather, a reprieve from Calgary's bitter winters, and ask, "What really turns your crank on a gorgeous spring day?" "It's sort of suggestive, and you might get some good responses," he says.

"The low budgets force you to focus on what you can do more with an idea than with a budget. A lot of the shorts are of that element – generally more light hearted but also interesting. You can't get carried away with a grand effort."

Chris Teijtel, an employee at Casablanca Video and Sound, has a musical interest in the festival this year, as well. His band, the Quiet Revolution, will play in the Super 8 Film Music Explosion, which pairs filmmakers with musicians. While he'll be providing the music, he's already given the other side some thought.

"I'd try to make it as weird as possible," he says, recalling an idea he played around with last year but never produced. "We'd have this guy sitting on a deck and he'd have this realization and he would jump off the deck and run to a Coke machine. He'd stick his hand up the Coke machine and then it would eat his hand."

CSIF programming co-ordinator Pete Harris is less descriptive about what sort of film he would make, but doesn't take long to decide.

"I would make a minimalist Terry Gilliam tribute film," Harris says, amid a busy week preparing for the festival. "He's my all-time favourite filmmaker."