The Floor 13 Productions film crew begin to shoot outdoor scenes for their 48-hour film festival entry: “Capgras Syndrome.” (Photo by Jacob Elyachar)
By: Jacob Elyachar
While many people partied at Kansas City’s Power and Light District last weekend, a local film company Floor 13 Films was hard at work downtown focusing on creating a movie in 48 hours.
For Floor 13 Films co-founder David Skaggs, this was his second time returning to the competition and hoped to continue his winning streak from last year.
“The group I was with last year walked away with seven out of the 12 awards including Best Cinematography, which I won. ” said David Skaggs.
This year, however, David was working with a whole different company and production crew. On Friday evening, Floor 13 Film and their rivals gathered and drew the genre for the film that they had to create in 48 hours. When they drew their genre, it was a type of film that none of the staff of Floor 13 Productions had tackled before.
“We were all out of our comfort zone because we drew comedy.” Skaggs said. “(My co-founder) Liz Nelson is a theater person and from what I’ve seen, she has made a lot of dramas. I’m a horror director by trade, so comedy is not my strong suit but I thought we are doing pretty good (with the filming).”
After hashing out multiple ideas, Skaggs, the Floor 13 Films crew and the film’s actors gathered in his downtown apartment to shoot the seven-minute short. Their film was actually a mockumentary about an interesting disorder that a majority of people have heard of.
“The mockumentary is about a real psychological disorder that people have (Capgras delusion),” Skaggs said. “I find that hilarious but I am sure it’s not if you have it, it’s quite tragic but I think it would be really funny to see how someone thinks like this.”
To bring this film to life, the Floor 13 production crew brought in three actors: Michael McIntire, Joe Anderson and McKenna Abercrombie to portray the three characters in Capgras Syndrome. For all three actors, there was one mutual reason why they signed on for the film.
“What mainly attracted me to this project was the cast and crew,” said McKenna Abercrombie. “They are all very talented and really any project that they work on is always successful.”
However, there was one particular challenge that the crew throughout the filming process.
“The most challenging thing for me as a Director of Cinematography for this film is doing a mockumentary.” Bradley J. Lincoln said. “We are trying to stay away from reality T.V. look, which has no cinematography at all but we are trying to pay attention to light and still give it a cinematographic feel.”
Last night, Floor 13 Productions debuted their film to a lot of laughs for a packed house at the Screenland Crossroads in Kansas City, Missouri. At the end of the night, Floor 13 Productions won three awards that night including Best Special Effects, Best Acting and Audience Choice for their screening group.
To see additional photos from my story, visit my Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/JacobElyachar/photos
To learn more about Floor 13 Films, visit their Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/Floor13Films
To learn more about the 48 Hour Film Project, click here: http://www.48hourfilm.com/
