In his column “The Stanford Scene”, Paolo Reitz ’27 interviews Stanford filmmakers, actors and organizations on their recent projects and big events within the film scene on campus. His first installment focuses on The Restorative Film Collective, a group Reitz is a member of.

Last quarter, the Restorative Film Collective (RFC) — a student film group I’m part of that’s devoted to bringing different identities together to create films — competed in the national 48 Hour Film Competition. Over one weekend, our group brainstormed, wrote, cast, filmed and edited a short film, submitting a complete film in fewer than two daus.

First, a little bit about how I got involved in RFC. I started studying film in high school and wanted to continue this passion in college. I joined RFC in the fall of 2024 and have since worked on various projects on and off campus.

Starting at 6 p.m. on Feb. 7, my group met in the Ng Conference room to discuss our potential topics and ideas. In this competition, every group is given a genre, a character and a prop that must be included in the short film. The prompts we received for this event were a horror or romance genre, a post office worker and a journal. Given these ideas, our writers wrote a script about a mailman who loves a girl and makes a deal with Cupid to get her to fall in love with him. However, the deal goes wrong, turning into a disaster for the main character.

Along with the writers, many other teams — including directors, cinematographers, sound designers, production designers, editors and more — collaborated in order to make this film happen. Students were able to work on their preferred teams, and it was a great opportunity to learn more skills and new roles through more knowledgeable team members. 

Because there were many teams, it was hard to get every idea integrated into the film. There were many compromises made to ensure the film was finished on time. Due to the tight deadline, we immediately had to start designing the production; finding actors, props and locations; making a timeline and storyboard and taking on different roles. It took until 3 a.m. on the first day to finalize all of the pre-productions steps and ensure that shooting was going to go well on Saturday.

Filming took all day Saturday, and trying to get the timing figured out between multiple actors with everyone’s busy school schedules meant the day ran long. Everyone was constantly on their feet. Starting at 8 a.m., we ran from location to location trying to get everything — filming, directing actors, making props, driving and more — done so that our editors and sound designers had time to put the film together on Sunday.

The experience taught us a lot about how to streamline the production process and complete work on set. It was incredibly challenging to alleviate mistakes to meet deadlines and guarantee everyone had time to work on their portion of the project. 

At 5:30 p.m. on Sunday, with bags under our eyes and too many cups on the conference table, we exported the file and sent it off to 48 Hours for judging.

48 Hours

48 Hours, the organization behind the competition, hosts challenges for college and post-grad filmmakers to gain experience and find opportunities to work with larger companies in the future. 

At the end of the weekend, a panel of “industry pro” judges watch all the films and determine the top three best films. Winning teams are given grant money and opportunities to garner employer attention, according to the 48 Hour website. An Audience Winner is chosen through online voting in a single elimination bracket.

We faced strong competition from colleges such as the University of South Carolina and Lesley University, last year’s finalists. This year’s “Best Film” award went to “Petey” by the University of Idaho. 

Our final product will be posted on the 48 Hours YouTube channel as well as our own YouTube channel in the coming weeks. Although we didn’t snag an award this year, we are hopeful that this opportunity will garner more support from sponsors and pique interest in the club across campus.

I really loved working on this project with the rest of the RFC team, and it provided a unique opportunity to work on skills I needed to improve and meet fellow filmmakers excited to make things on campus. Everyone was incredibly motivated, and it was inspiring to see a film come together through the intentional limitations of a 48 hour film competition.