It's never fun to go first, especially in a room full of people who don't know what to expect, but Bill Elias confidently climbed on stage, stuck his hand in the red-floppy hat and pulled out his inspiration.

Then the emcee shared it with the crowd:

"Holiday film."

Elias beamed a sarcastic kind of half-grin, and the crowd whooped its approval. Because if this guy was stuck with the holiday film, they probably wouldn't have to make one.

We tend to think of moviemaking in Hollywood terms, of explosions and superheroes and $200 million budgets, of box-office openings and starlets with lap-dogs. This is not the sphere in which The 48 Hour Film Project operates.

It holds its opening ceremonies in a bar on a Friday night. It demands that its participants script, film and edit a four- to seven-minute film in a single weekend. It requires that all cast and crew be volunteers, that each film include a particular character, a prop and a line of dialogue. Filmmakers pluck their genres from a hat. Finished movies are due at a different bar on Sunday night, 48 hours later.

Elias, a 37-year-old aspiring director from Durham, didn't seem discouraged after the drawing, even as other teams landed what seemed to be easier genres: horror, action/adventure, comedy. Before leaving the Greensboro bar and heading for Pittsboro to begin work, he already had a least one idea for the movie.

"I think it fits in with our genre," said Elias, who seemed every bit the moviemaker by 1) politely declining to reveal just what this idea was and 2) wearing a brown newsboy cap tipped just-so atop his noggin.

"Somehow. At least in my head. I'll have to see if my ideas fit in with the others'."

Getting the idea

Started in 2001 by filmmaking friends in Washington, D.C., The 48 Hour Film Project has grown into a national competition, with screenings this year in more than 30 cities. Each city produces a winning film that competes against the other winners, and an ultimate champion is eventually crowned.

To meet the Greensboro contest's qualifications, this movie would have to include a TV personality named Ben or Barbara Jones. There would need to be bubble wrap. And somewhere along the way, a character would have to say, "It's just like my mother always said..."

Organizers held the filmmakers at the bar until 7 p.m., to make sure no one would get any extra filmmaking time.

Elias and his crew -- dubbed "Untied Artists" -- adjourned immediately to a home in Pittsboro to begin hashing out the plot. There was much back and forth, a lot of "what ifs" and "I think thats...," but the ideas didn't seem to be getting very far.

Then at 8:46 p.m., Elias became good-humoredly decisive: "Kazoos are gonna be involved in this."

As team leader and director of the project, Elias was, in some ways, ultimately in charge, but he and a couple of filmmaking buddies from Piedmont Community College in Yanceyville produced the effort. Derrick Brown, 28, of Advance, and Jon Dorety, 22, of Winston-Salem, like Elias, are aiming for careers in the filmmaking industry.

They hoped to finish the script on Friday night, film on Saturday and finish editing on Sunday. Perhaps this movie would be something they could use to show prospective employers.

So they kept swirling ideas around the dining room table, into the kitchen and even outside in the driveway. By 11:30 p.m., they had settled on the nutshell idea: They would invent their holiday, which would riff on the biblical story of the fall of the walls of Jericho. There would be a bad guy, another guy who works to drive the bad guy out of the neighborhood and dark humor.

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