Extremefilmmaker's 48 Hour Film Festival

One of the most exciting (and terrifying) parts of the festival for us is the when we sit down to view the submissions. We're always thrilled to see new work from filmmakers we've come to know and respect from our previous screenings, but we also love to discover new (or at least new-to-us) filmmakers.

One of the high points of our selection process was putting in the tape of Chris Bosen and Maryellen Owens' "Beaux & D'aria", a hilarious mocumentary about a couple of aspiring - if clueless - filmmakers. There was no question that it would be part of our program, and it was very well received by the audience at our Arclight screenings - so much so that it won the festival audience award by a huge margin! We sat down with Chris and Maryellen (well, via email at least) to get the story on "Beaux & D'aria"...

Okay, first – tell me about you two. Where are you from, what do you do, how’d you meet?

Maryellen: I'm from St. Louis, Missouri, originally. Chris and I met through Chris' cousin, my husband, Keith. When folks ask, I like to say Chris and I are "cousins-in-law". I'm an actor, musician.. blah, blah..wise-acre.

Chris: I grew up in the St. Louis suburb of Collinsville, Illinois, attended college in Arkansas and lived and worked in Kentucky and Mississippi before moving to L.A. in July of 2000. I moved here to further my acting career and in addition I've started working behind the camera on documentaries which is actually what led to it being possible to make "Beaux & D'aria."

How did you hear about the 48 Hour Film Festival?

Maryellen: Chris found the festival online, I think. Right?

Chris: Yeah. I stumbled across Extreme Filmmaker.com on the internet one day last November or December I think. I had done a Google search on film festivals and L.A. I'm pretty sure and it popped up there. I read all the info online and it sounded great. I signed up for e-mail updates and then told Maryellen about the festival to see if she would be interested in entering. Fortunately, she was and we did.

What made you decide to get involved and make a film for the festival?

Maryellen: We had been looking for an outlet to do some comedy together, maybe standup, sketch..but then this came along and it seemed to be a workable format.

Chris: We definitely had wanted to work together creatively for awhile and just hadn't been presented with the right opportunity. I also think the format of the festival -- start to finish in 48 hours and running time of 8 minutes or less -- encouraged us to go forward because at the very worst you've lost a couple days of time. The limits made us first-timers feel like we could pull off making a film. Plus, like every other actor in Hollywood, what we really want to do is direct and now we have.

How did you come up with the idea for ‘Beaux and D’aria’?

Maryellen: Chris and I have a similar sense of humor and a love of "banter" like in radio or old-school comic acts. On the phone, we would spend time just playing around with that, often in faux performance mode.
So we'd find bits that would crack us up through this "over-the-phone improv". (Can I coin that?) At some point we stumbled across, making fun of the process of indie filmmaking.

Chris: Exactly. We're great at cracking each other up and our phone conversations sometimes become seeing if we can get the other person to play along with our train of thought -- as if we have an audience listening. Now that I've said that, I think we need therapy. Maryellen's experience hosting a radio show and my improv background kind of naturally fit together and we wanted to incorporate that feeling of two characters bantering about something. My wife likes to say I have the gift of gab, which I think she means as a compliment, and that certainly helped Beaux ramble on. I'm really thinking the therapy is a good idea.

Can you describe your experience making ‘Beaux and D’aria’ in just 48 hours?

Maryellen:The process is a little crazy but great. Some brainstorm/improv meetings. About 6 hours shooting. And then finalize the story through editing. The festival's format provides solid boundaries for not overthinking or complicating things.

Chris: We did brainstorm first and came up with a lot of topics for the characters to discuss. The first thing we shot was the exterior at the rubble site (at the end of the film) and Maryellen standing out by the street sign and the dead Christmas trees saying "Signs are pointing downward. Kinda like life. You don't buy it?" We shot the rubble site because I just thought the location was funny and it reminded me of a scene in the documentary "American Movie" where the filmmakers go to their location and it has burned down the night before. If you haven't seen "American Movie" rent it. It should be required viewing for 48 Hour Filmmakers. When we saw the site a couple days before there was actually a three or four story fireplace still standing and more of the shell of an apartment building. It looked really good. Of course, by the time we shot there a few days later it was just an empty lot. I missed the fireplace. Then, as we were going back inside to shoot the "Lunchtime Gang" and "Never Say Never on Sunday" scenes, we saw the pile of Christmas trees on the curb -- this was the last week of January -- and we wanted to incorporate them. So we started the camera and Maryellen just made D'aria go. After the scenes against the brick wall, we shot the "interview" portion of the film where we basically shot 45 minutes of us rambling on and on about filmmaking, craft services, production insurance, etc. We used one miniDV tape for the whole project - one hour and 5 minutes of footage. The 48 hour time limit forces you to make choices, do it the best you can, and move on to the next thing and that goes for the shooting, the editing, costumes, everything. There isn't time to waste time.