48HFP: SCREENINGS Tonight, at the Hollywood Central Performing Arts Center

Filmmakers and Fans--
Tonight is the big night! Come out and see the 2010 48 Hour Films!
48HFP SCREENINGSWednesday and Thursday, August 11th & 12thThe Screenings will take place at the Hollywood Central Performing Arts Center, 1770 Monroe St., Hollywood, FL 33020

Price $11.00 Group A will screen at 7p.m.Group B will screen at 9:15p.m.
Group C will screen Thursday, at 7:30 pm

The Miami 48 Hour Film Project...Another one bites the dust......

We did it!
Congratulations to all the filmmakers who participated in the 48HFP this year! We battled technical difficulties, torrential down pours, tornadoes, and car accidents -- on time or late we all stuck to your guns and made our movie!
It's been a pleasure working with all of you guys.
Let's get together thursday fo the movie preview in hollywood(Florida that is)
Who knows , maybe some day it will be in HOLLYWOOD,Ca.

South Florida filmmakers get a challenge

Miami filmmaking aficionados will be put to the test as the 48 Hour Film Project begins on Friday

Think you can make a film in two days?

The 10th annual 48 Hour Film Project does.

The project -- which visits almost 90 cities worldwide -- is coming to Miami for the sixth year from Friday to Sunday, and challenges South Florida residents to create three- to seven-minute films within 48 hours.

``It's doable, but filmmaking is a very labor-intensive process,'' said the project's producer, Cathleen Dean.

Thirty-seven teams with four to 14 members apiece have signed up.

No experience is required, but participants must use their own equipment and work from their own homes or studios.

Each team will be given a prop, a character and a line of dialogue they must incorporate into their films. Last year, Dean said, the prop was a loaf of bread.

All genres -- including comedy, drama, fantasy and silent -- will be assigned on Friday.

Films will be screened and judged. The best film will then compete at Filmapalooza, the national awards ceremony. Awards include best film, best use of prop, best actor, best cinematography and best directing.

Deadlines are strict. Films submitted even one minute late on Sunday will be disqualified, although they will still be screened.

``And we will continue to celebrate their work,'' Dean said. Participants range in profession and film expertise. Some are professionals, others are amateurs or students looking for their debuts in filmmaking. Others are lawyers or schoolteachers who are film aficionados.

Each team chooses its own name. Some of those already in the competition are People In Trees, Alarming Karma, and Undigested Corn.

Patrick Louis-Pierre, 26, a film student, said he decided to join the project because he wanted to put to the test the filmmaking skills he is learning at the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale. He and almost 15 other students form the team VP&B (Video Production & Broadcasting).

``We could put our names out there and show that this is what we learned and this is how good we are,'' he said.

This will be the fourth time 28-year-old Serge Dorsainvil of Miami Gardens has participated.

Last year, Dorsainvil's team had to rewrite their entire script after realizing it wasn't coming together.

``It was a rush. It was kind of crazy,'' he said. ``Sometimes, you have this whole plan and it doesn't go accordingly.''

But it's all part of the experience.

``It's a delight, it's fun,'' Dorsainvil said. ``When you're a passionate filmmaker, that's what you wake up to.''

TV’s Derek Hayward arrested — three days after wife, ex-Ch. 25 anchor Lisa Hayward

TV’s Derek Hayward arrested — three days after wife, ex-Ch. 25 anchor Lisa Hayward

Posted By Jose Lambiet On August 1, 2010 @ 7:58 pm In Breaking News, Broward, Busted, Catfights, Island’s Finest, Media, Palm Beach Gardens, Wellington, West Palm Beach, crash, miami 46 Comments

Three days after former WPBF-Channel 25 anchorwoman Lisa Hayward [1] was arrested for DUI, her husband, Miami’s WSVN-Channel 7 [2]reporter Derek Hayward [3], ended up seeing the inside of a jail cell on suspicion of domestic violence.

According to the arrest report, Derek, 59, was nabbed by Coconut Creek cops [4] Saturday night after a spat with Lisa as they drove home from a restaurant with their children, sons who are 10 and 13.



Derek Hayward's mug shot, courtesy Coconut Creek Police (Click on the photo for more)
An insider tells me the Haywards were arguing about Lisa’s recent arrest when things really got heated up. Derek, who drove, admitted he grabbed his wife by her shirt as she sat on the passenger’s seat, then kicked her and the children out.

[5]
Lisa's booking mug (Click on the photo for more)
He was charged with simple battery, a misdemeanor. There was no evidence he hit her.

Known for his British accent and hard-hitting tabloid-style reporting, Hayward has been a permanent fixture on the SoFla media landscape for 20 years, always at the Fox affiliate.

He and Lisa have been married for 17 years. He once described how scared he was when, in 2008, Lisa stopped responding to phone calls and vanished for several hours after a public appearance. Derek and the Channel 25 [6] brass were alerting police departments alongside I-95 when she popped up about 1 a.m. Her cell’s ring was on silent, and she didn’t realize she’d been receiving frantic calls.

For more, look below or click

Lisa and Derek Hayward in happier times, last October (Michele Sandberg/Special to Page2Live)
Derek at the time said he was particularly worried because, two weeks earlier, Lisa had been in a serious car crash on her return from interviewing [7] Motley Crue frontman Vince Neil [8] in his room at The Breakers [9].

The 39-year-old Lisa was charged with four DUI-related infractions [1] early Wednesday night when she drove her Honda into a tree in Pompano Beach.She missed her morning TV gig as she remained locked up for 16 hours before Derek bonded her out.

Lisa Hayward became a morning anchorwoman at the Sun-Sentinel’s TV station in Fort Lauderdale, WSFL [10] last year when her primetime anchoring contract at Channel 25 [6] in West Palm Beach wasn’t renewed. She was on the air in Palm Beach County and the Treasure Coast for 10 years.

The latest incident also could have been fueled by alcohol. The police report notes both Lisa and Derek reeked of alcohol when officers spoke to them separately.

Lisa called 911 about 8 p.m. Saturday after Derek stopped his car and kicked them out a few miles from their home. Derek described the argument in the vehicle as nothing more than “a tussle.”

Derek was released from jail Sunday morning.

Stage set for Florida's production comeback

Traditionally, South Florida had attracted the bulk of production, with its exotic beaches and cultural melange of immigrants, old wealth and hard-bodied partiers. The second-busiest production center was Central Florida, best known for NASA's John F. Kennedy Space Center in Brevard County and the large cluster of resorts in the Orlando area, including Walt Disney World and Universal Orlando Resort.

In 1989, Disney opened Disney-MGM Studios (now known as Disney's Hollywood Studios) at its resort, and the following year it was joined by competing Universal Studios Florida. Both were designed to serve as theme parks and fully fledged film and television studios.

Although the Disney property is still highly successful as a theme park, it no longer serves as a production facility. Universal still operates six soundstages, hosting such shows as Nickelodeon's "My Family's Got GUTS," a revival of "Family Feud" hosted by Steve Harvey, Total Nonstop Action Wrestling's weekly show "TNA Impact!" and the Florida Lottery's Powerball drawing.


The oldest production hub is Florida's largest city, Jacksonville, near the northeastern tip of the state. In the 1910s, New York filmmakers flocked to the region, marketed as the Winter Film Capital of the World, establishing 30 studios.

More recently, the city has hosted the HBO original film "Recount" (2008), starring Kevin Spacey, and the features "Basic" (2003) and "Lonely Hearts" (2006), both of which starred John Travolta, who lives an hour to the southwest in Ocala.

Michael Hausman, who produced "Recount," says he was impressed with Jacksonville's versatility (it stood in for Palm Beach, Miami, Nashville and Austin, Texas), as well as the cooperation he received "from the mayor all the way down." This wasn't a small detail, considering that the film's divisive subject matter was the hotly contested recount for the 2000 presidential election.

Hausman received a similar reception when he shot part of the film at the Florida Supreme Court in Tallahassee, where much of the real-life election drama unfolded nearly 10 years ago. "They opened their arms for us, regardless of how they felt about what we were doing," he says.

The state's conservative bent (evident in its additional 5% rebate for so-called "family-friendly" productions) often gives Hollywood types pause. But it's the state's severe weather that can pose the greatest threat if the production is shooting during the summer months, when hurricanes are a possibility and intense heat and humidity are a constant.

"It really has worn our crew down in some areas," says Clifton Campbell, creator of the new A&E original drama series "The Glades," also produced by Fox Studios, which shoots in the Fort Lauderdale area.

"The sweat is pervasive. We have to put our lead (Australian actor Matt Passmore) in an ice vest between takes so he can get through an entire set-up without changing shirts."

Still, the sweat factor doesn't seem to be scaring off filmmakers looking to save some cash.

On the first day that the incentive became available (July 1), Florida certified 53 productions for the tax credit, using up the entire $53.5 million allotment for the year, and it's already begun qualifying projects so they can secure a place in the queue for the next fiscal year.

Fortunately for the showrunner, local crewmembers were already pros at working stunt-heavy productions in Florida, with credits ranging from the series "Miami Vice" to director Michael Bay's "Bad Boys" movies. Most pertinent to Nix's USA Network action-drama, they knew how and where to drop a car off upper levels of a parking garage, which neighborhoods could best tolerate large explosions, and the waterways where one could stage a boat chase without running over a manatee.

"If you go to a city that has a lot of water, where they've never tried to do a boat chase, well, everybody's learning on your dime," Nix says. "In Florida, there aren't 13 meetings where they say, 'How are we going to do this?' They know how much it's going to cost and they just do it. It doesn't (officially) go on any balance sheet, but when you're actually looking at the advantages and disadvantages of a location, that particular thing turns into real dollars and cents."

Nix is actually one of few in the industry to have recently reaped the rewards of shooting in Florida, as the state has seen its cash reserve and production profile slowly dwindle.

Gaffers, grips and other production professionals have steadily exited to work in Louisiana and Georgia, both of which offer 30% tax credits, and to other states offering increasingly generous incentives.

In 2008, the Florida legislature slashed the annual budget for its 15% tax rebate from $25 million in 2007 to $5 million in 2008.

In an attempt to recoup its image and needed production dollars, Florida bumped funding back up $10.8 million in 2009. But that made little difference, as $5.2 million of the money was committed upfront to "Burn Notice."

"Good crew people were having to leave because there wasn't anything going on here a year ago if you weren't on our show," says the show's producer, Terry Miller, whose credits include numerous Florida-based productions such as "Ace Ventura: Pet Detective" (1994) and "Transporter 2" (2005).

In March, faced with declining tourism and rising unemployment that hit a high of 12.3% -- along with a concerted lobbying push by entertainment and tourism concerns -- the state legislature set in motion a plan to approve a new tax credit package that would potentially pay out $242 million over the next five years.



"The Glades"

"(Film and TV production) is very complementary to Florida's tourism industry," says Lucia Fishburne, commissioner for the Florida Governor's Office of Film & Entertainment, speaking of the legislation that was passed in April.

"We were able to link arms with the Florida Restaurant and Lodging Assn. and say, 'You may not know, but this many hotel rooms are used in the course of a film.' With the economy being in such bad shape and with Florida having a shortfall in revenue, tax credits really started making sense."

While still no match for a state like Michigan, which offers a tax credit of up to 42%, Florida's new incentive has "visual advantages," according David Madden, executive vp at Fox Television Studios, which produces "Burn Notice."

Madden knows this first-hand as the original script for the pilot actually set the show in Newark, N.J.

"It took place in a lot of back alleys and pawn shops ... grimier locations," Madden says. "We went through a couple of drafts in that vein and the network very politely said, 'Look at our shows. You don't see a lot of dirt and grime. You see a lot of beautiful people in attractive locations. It would make the show a lot more appealing for us if you set it in Florida.' "