JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. (WJHL)- East Tennessee State University’s (ETSU) Department of Media and Communications hosted its 2nd Annual 52 Film Fest competition.

The festival required film teams to write, shoot and produce a 5-minute film in 52 hours. The event started Friday morning and ended Sunday with a film screening at Wallace Theater at 5 p.m. Eight teams participated in this year’s festival.

Kasey Williams was a writer and actress for her team’s film. She told News Channel 11 how the film festival was structured and what was required to be in the project.

“We have 52 hours to write, film and edit a 5-minute and 20-second short,” said Williams. “On Friday morning we get an envelope, and we had to include 3 elements that are given to us, in our short.”

With a short deadline, teams had to work quickly and stay organized for production to run smoothly. Jacob Higgs was the Director of Photography for his team.

“I made a shot list based off our story, so that way we knew that we’re doing a close-up, it’s a static shot and its interior/exterior location, things like that,” said Higgs.

Higgs and his team created a film called BFF. The team said that there were times during production when they had to make changes to their shot list.

“It’s inevitable you’ll set up a shot and it’s just not as clean as what you wanted, or it just doesn’t convey the right feeling, so there’s a lot of kind of repositioning what felt better,” said Higgs.

With only 52 hours to complete the entire film, the crew said it took a lot of time and dedication to get everything done. The team started the editing process on Saturday night.

“We started around 9 and we probably finished around 7:45 this morning so I’ve only slept 2 hours,” said Higgs.

Although the competition was strenuous, Higgs and his team said they had a lot of fun working together as a team.

“Just the whole thing was enjoyable,” said Higgs. “I think the humor that we got out of it was probably the best. It was just a good experience.”

Both Williams and Higgs said they plan to participate in the film festival again next year.

“It was just a fun process all around to have nothing and then have something in a very short amount of time,” said Williams. “And with really talented creative people.”

Once all the teams submitted their films before the deadline, a screening was held at Wallace Theater for judges to present awards.