N.C. filmmakers take prize in YouTube competition

Charlottean Blake Edwards had traveled the world looking for film and stage opportunities, but he found them when he returned home and began working next to Erin Fede.

The two worked in neighboring cubicles at Inspiration Network. Fede, an actress and screenwriter, had written a script for a short comedy called "Perfecto!" about an international spy finding love.

The two teamed up - with Blake as director and editor - and filmed "Perfecto!" in Charlotte and Matthews, turning uptown into France, the Middle East, India and Russia.

They submitted it to the Project Direct film contest on YouTube. On Tuesday, they took the top prize among hundreds of entries from around the world.

The rules for Project Direct were simple: Make a five-minute-or-less film in a month, using a red telephone and two other props chosen from a list of 25. All the films were uploaded to YouTube. The YouTube audience and a panel of Sundance festival programmers voted on the entries.

In addition to $2,500 from Moviefone, Edwards will spend five days at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah this month, where his film will get a special screening. The film, along with ones from the two runners-up, will be put on a DVD that will be distributed at the festival. Edwards, the director and East Mecklenburg High graduate, will get to meet the Sundance board of directors.

Fede, a South Mecklenburg High graduate, wrote and starred in last year's Project Direct's first runner-up film, "Gone in a Flash."

"It's a great thing for a friend to say your work is good, but it's an entirely different thing to be recognized by a panel of Sundance Film Festival programmers and an audience as vast and creative as YouTube's," Edwards said.