Instant Films 19 - Halloween Scares

7 Writers
7 Directors
24 Actors
48 Hours
7 New Films

Last Sunday I was taken downtown to the LA Center Studios for some Instant Films screenings. The theme of the night for this, the 19th go-round, was naturally, it being October et al., scary movies.

What are Instant Films? Well, writers randomly select 2 words (e.g. gory and werewolf) and then have 12 hours to write a script. Directors then randomly pick a script and their actors and have less than 48 hours to deliver their finished short to the public screening at 8pm on Sunday evening (at the "deadline" only 4 films had been received, the others slowly trickled in during the evening).

Of the 7 films, all of which can be viewed on the Instant Films website, 5 were excellent, 1 was average, and the last was just plain disturbing. The production quality was consistently high, the scripts were intelligent and funny, and there was good gore and "make you jump" scares throughout. The only actor I recognised was Ahmed Best (Jar Jar Binks in The Phantom Menace), who's actually got quite a hot bod under all the CGI.

It was probably one of the most enjoyable evenings I've ever spent in a movie theatre. The crowd was full of creative industry types, who really got behind (and felt for) all those involved, and this made the viewing experience all the more intense.

If you live in LA and have never been, you really must go! I am seriously looking forward to the next go around!