The Cinema Pacific Film Festival brings international film and the forefront of cinematic innovation to the University of Oregon. The festival aims to discover and showcase media from Pacific-bordering countries (including the U.S.) and bring creative minds and differing cultures together.
Within this festival is the Adrenaline Film Project – a competition in which university students and other local filmmakers write, shoot and edit a five-minute film in just 72 hours.
During production, industry professionals mentor each team, providing advice to help them narrow down a genre and perfect their storyline. This year’s mentors were Jeff Wadlow, director of Kick Ass 2, Non-Stop and Never Back Down; Leigh Kilton-Smith,  an internationally acclaimed acting teacher who has worked with actors Gerard Butler, Jennifer Aniston and Diane Lane and on the television shows Scandal and Friends; and Omar Naim, writer and director whose debut feature film was the award-winning The Final Cut starring Robin Williams.
On April 27, all twelve films were screened in front of an audience. The night began with Kilton-Smith commending the teams, pointing out how intensely each had worked under immense pressure to put their films together. “This was the first year someone fainted. Honestly, I’m surprised it doesn’t happen every year!” she said.
With bloodshot eyes, each filmmaker watched their final creations on the big screen and awaited the announcement of winners and honorable mentions in four categories: Best Actor, Mentor Award, Audience Award and the finale – the Jury Award.
The Mentor Award went to the sci-fi film Night Lights by Marty Hilligoss, Matthew Raasch and Brett Kane.
Bringing home both the Audience Award and the Jury Award (a total cash prize of $600) was the surreal film Clark produced by filmmakers Jacob Salzberg, Joe Glasgow and Michael McGovern.
Clark is a film about a guy torn between two passions: being a dude and being a clown. When his two cliques find out about one another, they battle it out in effort to claim Clark for their own.
“The idea came out of nowhere,” McGovern said. “You know, Birdman came out and everyone was obsessed with tracking shots, so I thought of having a cool tracking shot of someone coming out of a car, taking off a tutu and throwing it in his car – so right off the bat no one knows what’s going on.” The tutu turned into a clown, per the advice of their mentors, but the bare bones of McGovern’s story remained.
From storyline conception on, the team worked tirelessly to bring their vision to life. The sleep-deprived crew had been filming for 10 hours straight, creating the fight montage an hour before the sun came up. “At one point (Glasgow and McGovern) were like ‘Okay, lay on the ground with the camera. We’re going to flip this poker table onto your face!’ and I was like ‘Okay fine.’ The chaos that came out of a 5 a.m. start time on the montage was difficult at the time, but it saved our movie.”
Glasgow, who edited from 2 p.m. Sunday afternoon until 3 p.m. Monday, found himself so weary that he fainted into the arms of mentor Kilton-Smith. Although he described the experience as the scariest of his life, he looks back at the experience as worth the pain. “You guys were my first faint,” he said looking at his fellow team members. “I’ll never forget that.”
Each Clark filmmaker hopes to use this experience to fuel their future ambitions as creators of art, in their own separate ways. Salzberg hopes to create films of all shapes and sizes and eventually move onto television; McGovern started out in journalism but has slowly moved into cinema and onto the path of directing; Glasgow wishes to pursue stand-up comedy and comedic writing.
Halden Hoodenpyl, who starred in the film as Clark, described the experience as “a combination of ‘Is this ever going to end?’ and ‘I hope this never ends.’” To which the team breathed an overwhelming and content sigh of agreement.