Traverse City Film Festival

I returned from a trip downstate at about 2 am Saturday morning, realizing that the deadline for a short film competition was a day away, and that the eleven35 crew hadn't even started on our submission yet. We collected ourselves early before lunch on Saturday and, running with the only good ideas we had, started shooting film.
The competition was for the Traverse City Film Festival. The task was to produce a 20 to 60 second bumper that would play before the feature films. The theme was "what makes Traverse City so great?" Our biggest concern was the time constraint. We would have to fit our idea of a short film into 60 seconds. We knew this would be hard, but when it came down to the wire, we really had no idea HOW hard.
We were ready to go. We met downtown, where all good things are, and started discussing and shooting footage. We had our HV40 and 35mm adapter attached to a heavy duty tripod, which we fasted to a strap for quick transport, as well as a backpack full of the necessities: Extra camera batteries, battery chargers, AAs, a wireless lavelier mic, extra tapes, duct tape, a notepad and pencil, headphone monitors, and a change of clothes incase the unthinkable happened. Everything went swimmingly. We finished our last shot just as the sun was setting, and, AND didn't get arrested.
We sorted through footage and edited through the night and finished both pieces at about 11pm the next day. I may have been largely delusional during the tail end of editing but it probably helped more than anything. It was a painful process. Each piece could have easily been 4 or 5 minutes long, just because we had so much great footage. Cutting them down to 60 seconds hurt, but the idea of being disqualified was a strong wind in the sails, the sails of cutting out things we loved.