A recent article in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette about Little Rock’s 48-Hour Film Project caught my attention.The article follows one production company through the process of the competition.

Here’s the basics of the project: At the beginning, the competing production companies are given the exact same set of items: a character, prop, and line that must be used in the production. There is a random drawing for the genre – so all have to start completely from the beginning. Within 48 hours, they must come up with a set of characters, a plot and complete story line, and act, shoot, edit, and produce a final film less than seven minutes in length, using the guidelines they were given.

What struck me was the similarity to many writing contests or exercises I have participated in, where writers are furnished a set of words or phrases, and have to complete stories within particular word counts. But all we have to do is write a story – and we have weeks in which to do it.

It never occurred to me that this exercise could be used beyond the scope of just writing a story (okay – sometimes I’m in my own little world here). Of course, they work as a team and brainstorm through it – which can be beneficial (surely there’s no writer’s block!) but could present its own set of problems. It’s hard enough thinking up things on your own, but can you imagine having to agree with three others, in a time crunch?

Reading about how they progressed through it gave me several ideas to present to the writers’ group for future workshops. The brainstorming only shows how many different concepts can be engineered from the same basic foundation.

I’m intrigued by the idea that things I had considered as being exclusively literary challenges could be set up as challenges for other forms of art. I’m impressed (and a little jealous) that they can get so much done as a team in such a short time. And I’m amazed at how many ideas this team came up with before settling on just one to complete. This group had to come up with thriller/suspense, but other groups had to come up with westerns, romances, horror, and other things – using the same words and characters. The possibilities were mind-boggling.

I guess sometimes we get stuck, even for ideas on how to generate ideas. We get used to working within our own boundaries and forget that the boundaries are there because WE put them there in the first place. It doesn’t take much to push the line a bit further; to change one little thing from the normal way of doing things and suddenly open up a whole new world.

I’ve already come up with a few ideas to present to my writing group, just to stir things up!

(Winning films will be screened on Saturday, July 19,2014. For information, call 501-205-0400 or go to http://www.48hourfilm.com/en/littlerock/