Student film entered in recent film festival

Scene

Feb 23

By Doug Ancey

After discovering a duffel bag full of weed stuffed into his trash can, Alex, a 20-something-year-old college student, decides to take advantage of the opportunity that has fallen into his lap by selling the drugs. He soon becomes caught up in the life of a drug-dealer, unknowingly causing great damage to himself and others.

This is the premise that sets up "Five Pounds," a feature-length film written, directed, and produced by junior Michael Peer.

"This was something that I did completely independently of Santa Clara," said Peer, "All the actors were my friends from high school."

On Feb. 4, students crowded the library for an on-campus viewing of the movie.

"It was huge," said Peer, "So many people turned out that not everyone could sit to watch the film."

Junior Mark Spain said he was very impressed by the film. "I was actually fortunate enough to have been able to read the script last year and I was blown away by the level of professionalism shown by someone who's a student like me."

The movie begins with two separate narratives and follows them as they intertwine. In the movie, Alex is unaware that the young drug dealer who stashed the bag, Ben, is now in a world of trouble. He now must come up with $15,000 to cover the cost of the five pounds he lost. These two radically different worlds soon collide, leaving no one unscathed.

"The movie jumps back and forth between these two narratives," said Peer. "I wanted to portray the multiple aspects of this scenario. There's the fun side, Alex finds five pounds of weed and parties it up with his friends, makes some money versus the reality of drug dealing and the consequences of dealing."

The original idea came from another short film Peer made with his friends, entitled "Ten Pounds," which gave him the plot idea for "Five Pounds."

"Making ‘Ten Pounds' first was very beneficial because everyone had already acted together before, and the same people played all the characters, so everyone had about a year to prepare for their roles in ‘Five Pounds,'" Peer explained. "One of the main characters for example, Ben, the guy who played him, Henry Gass, had the entire year to conceptualize and prepare for the role. It worked out well because I only had a month and half time period where everyone was back home for the summer to shoot the film."

According to Peer, the film took about two years to complete, beginning with the original screenplay and ending with the finished feature-length product.

"It was pretty amazing to see the project go from a screenplay to an actual film," said Peer. "During the school year all I had was the ideas for the film in my head and I would bounce ideas off my friends and get feedback from them, so it was a really exciting process. The way we shot it was completely out of chronological order. All of my friends in the film either had a summer job or an internship or something. The first scene that we shot was actually a scene that took place 60 minutes into the film."

Peer has already submitted "Five Pounds" to numerous film festivals including the New Mexico Independent Film Festival, the San Francisco Frozen Film Festival and the Cannes Film Festival, which has a specific category for feature-length films with budgets under $25,000. The film has already been accepted to the fourth annual Urban-Suburban Film Festival in Philadelphia.

"The festival in Philly is really cool because I'm from D.C., so all of my friends who acted in it can go to the festival to watch the screening," said Peer.

According to the film's website, there are over 30 speaking roles and at least 35 different extras. The marijuana in the film is the same prop that was used on the set of "Pineapple Express."