by Marcella Ortega
Daily Lobo
Erika Lee Turner has been interested in movies since she was a kid.
"I never cared about the plot, just how they did it," she said.
Turner is a production assistant at the Duke City Shootout digital filmmaking festival. She is enrolled in UNM's Duke City Shootout summer course. The class allows media arts students to participate in the production of the festival's films. She said the class began in May with weekly sessions leading up to the shootout.
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"It's a really good opportunity to network so we can get work later on," Turner said.
Duke City Shootout instructor Bryan Konefsky said the class is a nice addition to the Department of Media Arts because it gives students actual filmmaking experience.
"It gives you a good perspective of the other side," Konefsky said.
The festival is held throughout Downtown and Nob Hill. From July 21-29, professional and amateur filmmakers from around the country take seven 12-minute scripts and make them into movies. The scripts are submitted by writers from around the country and chosen by judges like Morgan Freeman and other industry professionals.
"The point is if you want to make a movie, you can," said Jim "Grubb" Graebner, festival co-founder. "Anyone can join and make a movie."
Graebner and fellow filmmaker Tony DellaFlora created the festival in 2000. Graebner said they were interested in a New Mexican film festival to draw interest from the film industry and help aid the state's economy.
"The whole idea was there is nothing going on here," Graebner said. "We wanted it to be industrious and clever."
DellaFlora said the two wanted their festival to be unique and capture Albuquerque's qualities.
"It's a working blue-collar town with hardworking people," he said. "What about a working festival making movies?"
Graebner said the timing of the festival was opportune, as digital video technology began to emerge. DellaFlora said the idea of using digital technology came to him when he made his first documentary, "High Strange New Mexico." In 1995, he was writing a book about UFO folklore in Roswell and asked his friend James Lujan to make promotional footage. After three days of filming, he decided to change his project.
"I said, 'Forget the book. Let's make a documentary,'" he said. "By 1999, it was in the back of my mind that digital was quick."
Since the first festival began, the Duke City Shootout has evolved into one of the largest filmmaking festivals in the country. This year, it joined forces with another large festival called 48 Hour Film Project. The project is similar to the shootout's concept of making movies in an extremely short amount of time - except that this contest allows 48 hours to make a four-to-seven minute film.
"Two months ago, 48 Hours came to town and wanted to expand to Albuquerque," DellaFlora said. "It worked out great."
The festival includes a MiniCini Competition, in which anyone can enter three-minute films shot with anything from a home video camera to a cell phone camera.
DellaFlora said they hope to get the local scientific community involved with the shootout as well. With technological advances, he said places like Sandia National Laboratories could add to the advancement of local filmmaking.
With the festival's increased interest and growth, DellaFlora said the founders' next goal is to take their concept - to do as much as they can with as little as possible - international, with festivals in countries like India and Ireland.
The shootout isn't like any other film festival across the globe, Graebner said.
"It was about rebellion from below," Graebner said. "It's the people's film festival. Where else in the world can you do that?"
