It’s that time of year again for student filmmakers.

As the city gets geared up for the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, the annual 10-10-10 Student Filmmaking and Screenwriting Competition also kicks off by pairing up 10 student screenwriters with 10 student directors hailing from the region’s schools and colleges. Their mission, which they’ve already chosen to accept: producing a 10-minute short film in 10 days.

“In last year’s film festival there were scripts with a lot of killings, suicides, and dark material,” said Mike Stinson, co-director of the 10-10-10 competitions. “This year we gave writers the assignment to produce a comedy, and these are 10 of the best scripts we’ve ever gotten in the nine years we’ve had the competition.”

Although student screenwriters have been working for several months with professional mentors producing a comedic script, it was only on Tuesday of this week when they were randomly paired up with an actual student director, beginning the rushed and hectic creative filmmaking process. Each student team must now cast their characters, pick locations for shooting their scenes, and begin filming. With only 10 days to produce, edit, sound mix, and finalize titles, each film team embarks on an almost impossible journey to the finish line.

“We really want this to be a collaborative effort,” emphasized Guy Smith, the other 10-10-10 co-director. “And I’m really optimistic this is going to be a great group of films.”

On February 5 at 1 p.m., all 10 student films will be shown at the Lobero Theatre during SBIFF to a panel of jurors as well as any audience members interested in viewing the final short films.

Stay tuned to independent.com for some profiles of these filmmakers.

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