A screen grab of 'Creative License' featuring writer Cathy Azanza co-starring with actor Topper Fabregas.

MANILA, Philippines – “We won,” commercial director Paolo Dy happily tells Bulletin Entertainment in a private message on Feb. 17 of his short film, “Creative License.” Indeed, as announced just this week, the Filipino director’s short film just won the 1st Place Overall in the Film Racing Tour 2010.

The concept of this 24-hour filmmaking competition, which came to be known as Film Racing, originally began in 2002—when it was then called the NYP Midnight Movie Making Madness—wherein filmmakers from around the U.S. were “invited to travel to New York City where they were challenged to create an original short film in 24 hours,” according to its website. Its creators Charlie Weisman and Craig Flamm posited the challenge, “Can a movie be made in 24 hours?”
 
Film Racing has since “expanded to 20 cities throughout North America,” with filmmakers turning in over 1,500 films as entries to the competitions.
 
The mechanics of the competition involved the organizers announcing to the competing teams via email the competition theme and a surprise element that the filmmakers must find a way to include in the movie. For Brooklyn, where “Creative License” was made and where it competed, the theme was “Exaggeration” and the surprise element was “Pizza.” Within 24 hours, each team must conceptualize, write, cast, shoot, edit and score the film, “and then rush to a pre-arranged finish line to physically submit your entry,” shares its director Paolo Dy.
 
Dy’s training and extensive experience in the commercial field make him adept at creating images that make an impact to viewers. According to him, his film is “about a young Pinoy who’s struggling to make it in New York, and the way he tries to reassure his parents back home that he’s doing okay in the big city. It’s a very earnest film that I think anyone who’s ever been away from home can relate to.”

Dy’s creative team, Angry Doxen Films, is composed of only three people. With Dy working as the director/cinematographer/editorand his wife Cathy Azanza as the writer and co-star, they set out to film actor Christopher “Topper” Fabregas (nephew of stage and screen actor Jaime Fabregas) around Brooklyn. With the dialogue in Filipino and subtitled in English, Christopher’s character addresses a letter to his mother to tell her he’s doing well and is very busy in New York. He’s also shown taking his own pictures to send back home—unbeknownst to his parents that he’s doing it with a bit of exaggeration, mainly to assuage their worry. He also naturally takes a picture of a rather drab slice of pizza—the surprise element—that he garnished himself to show them how much he’s enjoying living there. Mixing poignancy and humor with technique and clear story-telling, “Creative License” easily became the favorite among online voters who propelled the film to also bag the Audience Award.

Prior to placing first overall in the Nationals, “Creative License” won four awards in the Brooklyn Film Race 2010 in November, including Best Film, Best Editing, Best Sound Design and the Audience Award, the last of which was voted by an audience of fellow filmmakers and film fans. Winning Brooklyn’s Best Film likewise gave them the opportunity to compete against the top winners in the other 20 cities including Chicago, New York City, Seattle, Miami, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and even Vancouver and Montreal, to name a few.
 
Winning the top Overall prize is icing on the cake to Dy, who cherished the experience of working on the film the most. “I love the fact that when you’re faced with such a strict deadline, you have to go with pure instinct. There’s no time to over-intellectualize – you just have to go out and shoot the darn thing. The adrenaline rush was something I hadn’t experienced since my first forays into no-budget filmmaking back in college, and we had a blast, absolutely.” He also adds, “And also, there’s nothing like riding a cab through the streets of Brooklyn with a crazy Russian cab driver who has a lead foot… but we made the deadline!”

Landing 2nd Place Overall in the Film Racing Tour 2010 was Chicago 2010’s entry, “Levi” by Warthead Productions. 3rd Place Overall went to “It’s Hard to Live in the City” by Combination, which topped Vancouver 2010’s entries.