Cinemasports founder Jin Woo Joo (top left) lays down the law—or at least the three required ingredients—for this year's teams (Photos: STV)

If you have ever worked on an independent film, you know how it goes: Arrive early, stay late, sweat sweat sweat in between. Saturday's Cinemasports event in New York City was not much different, except that pre-production and the wrap party were separated by about 11 hours. And filmmakers were actually watching their movies at the party.

Of course, such an outrageous turnaround underscores the event's primary appeal, and for the 20 or so filmmaking teams crowding Saturday night's viewing at the Cutting Room—Cinemasports represented probably the most intriguing challenge they had faced in a while. At least that is the way it felt for Team Reeler, an intrepid assemblage of film nuts who could think of no better way to spend half its weekend than running around the East Village with a couple of cameras and the faith that it would be able to shape something watchable by the 7:10 p.m. deadline.

For the most part, everything worked out as well as you might expect under the circumstances. Going into the event, we had a rough story framework in place—something we thought would be flexible enough to accommodate the required film "ingredients" as assigned by Cinemasports' organizers Saturday morning: somebody eating something yellow; an instance of mistaken identity and a howl in the distance. This last one was especially appropriate, since we had known that around noon Saturday, the HOWL! Festival was going to run its Pantheon Processional from Cooper Square, down St. Marks Place and into Tompkins Square Park.

We had also known that Rosario Dawson—the East Village's soon-to-be-expatriated squatter-turned-A-list actress—was set to lead the parade. We thought we might score extra-credit points if we actually had a star in our movie, so we basically cobbled together a story that would take advantage of our access: An odd young man with a magazine featuring Dawson's picture pursues her single-mindedly through the parade, getting closer and closer as the processional approaches the park. Will he find her? Is she in danger? We had only three minutes to get the whole story across.

Rosario Dawson (R) with boyfriend Jason Lewis and Manhattan borough president candidate Margarita Lopez

Whether we did or not is anybody's guess, and I am going to look into seeing if I might get the OK to post Mission: Rosario here for your viewing pleasure. Production involved all kinds of fabulous logistical speed bumps: Our cameraperson/editor KK Sheridan and actor Martin Gevonden faced arrest for shooting from a church's second-story window ledge (I guess that is trespassing or something—we held off the cops long enough to get a few shots we never even used). The parade was so loud that we didn't know if we would be able to verbally convey the mistaken-identity theme between Martin and fellow actor Nick Snow, who was carrying a huge papier-mache head-on-a-stick that could have been Woody Allen or William Burroughs (it was the latter).

And while filming an event that ended around 12:45 p.m. gave us plenty of time to edit, the shooting pace meant adopting a hyper-sophisticated communication system of me running between KK, Martin and our second cameraperson Lauretta Prevost to gauge our coverage and keep the "chase" in some sort of narrative perspective. That we were able stay together without too much trouble was probably the day's most overwhelming achievement—although another film shot at the HOWL! processional featured a runaway dog, which probably outdid Team Reeler's strategizing by half.

Naturally, the stress level peaked as the parade wound down, but we felt like we got what we needed. We also felt pretty safe with five hours to edit at Café Pick-Me-Up, just across Avenue A from Tompkins Square Park. An MSNBC crew that had been following a few Cinemasports teams dropped by to check out our progress, which KK and Lauretta had kept quite brisk until some technical glitch prevented us from exporting the movie from the PowerBook back to DV. With less than an hour to spare, we grabbed a cab uptown, assigned our teammate Andrea Abramoff to track down some DVD-R's and asked her to meet us back at the Cutting Room on West 24th Street.

Team Reeler, clockwise from top left: Martin Gevonden, KK Sheridan, Jennifer VanAirsdale, Andrea Abramoff and Lauretta Prevost (Not pictured: Nick Snow, Mike Dan and your tired author)

We knew it had all seemed way too easy up to that point, and as our watches struck 7:09, the computer was still burning the movie onto DVD. Literally a minute later, the disc was ours and I rushed it to the organizers.

That set into motion the purchase of our first round of drinks, followed by a second round and more that sadly diminished my memory of a few truly genius films (including the evening's winner, The Two Lives of Joe Macanudo) that seemed like they were made over 10 days versus 10 hours. Of course, there really is no way to cheat the movies ahead of time without knowing the ingredients; all you can do is plan that framework I mentioned earlier, so their ingenuity was roundly and rightly applauded. Team Reeler's film still featured the only star "performance," but for whatever reason, it also featured an additional glitch that sped the film up by a few frames per second upon replay. We were crushed! Mortified! Baffled!

Anyhow, as you can probably figure from the timetable, the event was over before we knew it. But it was terrifically enjoyable, and I would be surprised if the team did not find a way to work together again next year and maybe even on a project or two in the interim. I should hear about the MSNBC story in a few weeks, at which point I will provide a heads-up for those who care to check out a recap from the safety of their homes. After all, it was dangerous on the front lines—this business always is.