A pair of aspiring film makers are in the top 10 nationwide in a contest sponsored by Nikon.

Oh, if only filmmakers Cody Groom and Alexis Eggertsen had $100,000, just imagine the film they could produce!
“Passion. Pain. Pain. Death. Intellectual stimulation. Passion. Pain. Pain!!!!! Or maybe…”
Unfortunately for the aspiring “arteests,” the two had just $30, a lot of construction paper and a sleepy cat.

That, combined with the pair’s creativity and artistic talent, earned them a top 10 spot – among 1,250 entries nationwide – in the Nikon Film Festival.
It turns out that $100,000 isn’t so out of reach; that and a Nikon D5000 D-SLR kit are the grand prize. 

Their growing popularity could pay off as well – there’s an audience award of $25,000 and the Nikon camera kit.

Eggertsen, along with Simba, her laid-back cat, stars in the film, which the two bill as “An Armageddon of love, sprung fully formed from the imagination of a budding filmmaker.”
“Watch out for an androgynous Salvador Dalí, a purse snatching pirate, and a shadowboxing, interstellar robot in this poetic and playful journey, woven through a film that births itself,” Groom, a Kamiak graduate, described it.

They got their inspiration cruising through West Seattle after a pizza and brainstorm session. The goal was “a film that stretches the imagination and transcends the average day.”
“By telling the story through the lens of the imagination, we told it through the lens of a film,” said Eggertsen, a Shoreline High graduate.

The two also had a short timeline working against them – they learned of the competition just three days before the deadline, and scrambled to write, film, edit and do the sound in time.
Filming day was about 20 hours of nonstop action and running around. The two purchased all of their supplies and went back and forth between filming and setting up the scenes.
Were they nervous?

“We still are!” Groom said. “We haven’t heard the results, and can’t help but hope against the odds, as it would have such a drastic effect on our lives and future endeavors.”
That would be a career in film – Eggertsen said the two dream of starting a media business; either prize would be a great head start.
“The festival is over, but they haven’t announced the winner yet,” she said. “While we are trying not to think about it, we can’t help but have it on our minds, feeling nervous and hopeful.”

Groom and Eggertsen were inspired by Isabella Rosallini’s Green Porno series, Groom said, and how it describes the reproductive habits of insects and marine animals, but at the same time reminds us of our own humanity.
“We can't claim our little film necessarily does that, but a kind of mesh of humor, poignancy and description was a goal we had in mind,” Groom said.
“We also loved the low-budget, one-woman feel of the series, and thought we could run with that in our own, authentic way.”

The low budget was out of necessity but turned out to be creatively inspiring, Eggertsen said.
Even more tightly budgeted than money was time. Groom and Eggertsen had to tell their story in just 140 seconds.
“In general, we loved the (honest) idea of Alexis being consumed by her own imagination in a fun, beautiful way, and things going slightly awry within her imaginative world,” Groom said.
“Some sort of sense of sadness or failure or comic destruction within all the delight and quirkiness.”

“While it is fun trying to be an ‘artist,’ it can also be very difficult,” Eggertsen said.
“The 140-second limit is very short, so we only had time for a clear shot at that with the inner beauty monster, the books leading her (the character) to neglect her real life, and the eventual sort of love apocalypse caused by her imaginary, oh-so beautiful film!”

“Also, we couldn't help but want to comically reference the contest itself, making the pearl worth $100,000, and pointing out what we would really do with the money – make more films – in a way that the film sort of devises itself,” Groom explained.
The biggest obstacle, surprisingly, wasn’t the lack of money – it was an abundance of ideas, the filmmakers said.
“We had a lot of ideas we wanted to cram into the 140 seconds,” Groom said. “We were concerned during the film process about whether or not we’d be able to get everything in, despite cuts we’d already made in the script.”

Editing involved shaving frames, speeding up small segments, overlaying footage and anything else the two could come up with, Eggertsen said. 

To check out the video, visit   http://www.nikonfestival.com/blog/2009/12/16/hello-world/.