Boy In the Box - ATL 48 Hour Film Project 2011 "Best Actor, Best Special Effects" Award

This is a Director's Cut version of the jury awarded "Best Actor" and "Best Special Effects" film submitted to the competition. The original had to be written, filmed and edited within 48 hours. We drew "Family Film" out of a hat for the genre and were required to have character's name and occupation (which has been removed in this version). A book was also a prop required to be somewhere in the film.
We competed with 55 teams and were chosen as an award finalist which will be announced at the screening on July 7th at the Plaza Theater.

Answers to questions we've been asked, if you care: Spoiler Alert!

3 36" helium balloons and a camera rig we made (to keep the camera level) were used to get the birds-eye-view shot of the parking lot.

The shopping cart is actually what spawned the entire idea. Dewayne saw it one day at a customer of ours and said "How can we use that in a movie." He came up with the idea to have a boy making a box and entering an imaginary world like we did as kids. When choosing "Family Film" as the genre, we knew it had to be made. The concept of the boy in a coma and accident were quickly added with the help of our sister and it all came together.

We called in many favors from a customer of ours to make this happen. Czarnowski was extremely generous by printing unique wrapping paper for us, creating custom size boxes and providing us with an oversized shopping cart. They even delivered the cart to us.

We shot the overhead "boy running" shot with a forklift.

We found a wall in our office basement with a round hole in it. We took the fan out and covered the wall with black paper. Shined bright lights thru it and we had our shot.

Locations:
The store was at Fired and Wired in Highlands. They were nice enough to let us film until 11pm.
The parking lot and store front was outside our office.
The open field was next to our office.
The "inside box" was filmed in the basement of our office - courtesy of Atlanta Feed The Hungry and Ashwood Development.
The hospital scene was filmed at Atlanta Aesthetic Surgery Center. Found through the Doctor that delivered Dewayne's daughter who also helped build our sets.

Subtle things you may not have noticed:

The wrapping paper turns from a smiley face to a frown.

The birthday card changes at the end to say HELP on it. This idea came to us while filming.

The mother is reading the book that the boy purchased at the beginning.

The caution cone keeps reappearing because it contributed to the accident along with the texting,

The photos on memory lane were actual photos from Sheri and Royce's family photos.

The boy was named Jack is a tie in with "Jack in the box" derived from the boy popping out of the box.

The only thing the boy hears inside the box is "Jack over here" which was the last thing he heard before he was hit.

Everything gets larger from scene to scene. The gift, shopping cart, traffic cone, balloon and birthday card.
We purchased 2 different sized matching balloons and ribbons from Party City and scanned and printed the larger B-day card.
A regular size traffic cone was in our office parking lot, we borrowed a medium size cone from Costco and since the 5 ft. traffic cone we wanted was at a trade show, we enlarged it in post.
We borrowed a 6 ft. shopping cart from Czarnowski, a regular size cart from Publix and we also found an extra small red shopping cart in the basement below our office. We painted it silver and we were good to go.

It is quite amazing what we pulled off with all the graciousness of so many friends, colleagues and businesses here in Atlanta. Thanks to ALL OF YOU, our vision came true.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• Best Actor
• Best Special Effects
• Georgia
• Lawayne Bontrager
• Dewayne Bontrager
• Anita Weishaupt
• movie
• short movie
• film
• drama
• award winning
• finalist
• June 10
• texting
• wreck
• car wreck
• crash
• accident while texting
• cell phone
• Sheri Mann Stewart
• Royce Mann
• best movie
• awesome
• greatest
• tear jerker
• sad
• educational
• Jenni Bontrager
• Jenni Lacinak
• Ana Martinez
• David Ludwig
• widescreen
• awards
• driving
• Atlanta
• 48Hr

[rgfser]

Awesome! Wonderful job!

[danestra]

Simply beautiful.

[shalonnajones22]

Amazing!

[sheribarrymann]

Congrats to Royce Mann for winning the Jury Award for Best Actor of the entire 2011 48 Hr. FIlm Fest. Atlanta and congrats to the Bontragers and the whole production team for winning the Jury Award for Best Special Effects! We're so proud to be part of it!

[Hedgaui]

Great Job!!

[MannaFund]

I'm so proud of you guys. Tara would be there tomorrow night, on the front row, with a glass of red, cheering you on! Love it...it gave me goose bumps!

[JassaDeen1]

I LOVE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[atlantamat]

I love the overhead ballon shot! I hate the message because it's so true and tragic for a lot of families. Great job! Especially in 48 hrs!!!

[analila9]

WOW! Really geat! So proud to have been part of it.

[skkennell]

Amazing job guys! So very proud of you!