Sometimes there’s nothing quite as funny as real life. Many people take the amusing events in their lives and chuckle, recount them to friends or enter them into the digital record of social networking sites.
Shane Dowaliby, Nick Andrews and Logan Triplett aren’t like most people. Life’s comical instances are not only conversation fodder for these guys, but inspiration for their craft: comedy films.
“A lot of it does come from just life in general,” Dowaliby, a Whitefish native, said. “If I think of something funny during the day I jot it down on my cell phone.”
And it is perhaps this relatable aspect of their films that led to their ranking as one of the four finalists in the Third Annual National College Funny Filmmaker Competition.
Most of the movies produced by their joint project Little Baby Films deal with the day-to-day hilarities of college, which is appropriate for the Montana State University film students.
The other Little Baby filmmakers are also Montanans, with Andrews hailing from Helena and Triplett from Kalispell. They met during a film course their sophomore year and clicked so well they decided to form Little Baby Films last spring. Now in their junior year, the amateur funnymen are going up against students from Xavier University, the University of Michigan and San Francisco State University.
Their short movies “Heaven” and “Sunday Morning” earned high enough honors after five rounds of expert judging and online votes to be shown in Aspen, Colo., during the Aspen Rooftop Comedy Festival in June.
“It’s a validation in a way, it shows we’re actually getting the word out there and people are actually liking what we produce,” Andrews said last week.
And for these 20-year-old students, a free plane ticket and a weekend in Aspen doesn’t compare to the chance to screen their movies for an audience. Technologically, they are grateful for the Internet because it has proven to be an irreplaceable tool for sharing their work, Andrews said, but nothing beats an actual screening.
“The biggest prize is getting the films shown to an audience,” Andrews said. “That’s the goal of so many filmmakers.”
As film students, each member of the Little Baby team dabbles in all aspects of moviemaking. But more often than not, Andrews directs and Dowaliby produces. The two also share the bulk of the writing and acting, Dowaliby said.
Triplett is the cameraman, and is already successful in his cinematography efforts. He is currently in France working with Ambition Snowskates, a company that makes and sells boards resembling skateboards without wheels for coasting on the snow.
Triplett made a documentary on snowskating during Whitefish’s Winter Carnival last year, catching the eye of the company, Dowaliby said, and is now filming their athletes all over the world.
The team’s films in the competition are full of college laughs and are often exaggerations of real world incidents, Andrews said. “Sunday Morning” follows the blurry conversation of two young men trying to recap the night before, complete with flashbacks and often-embarrassing consequences.
“That’s the one out of all of our films that correlates the most to real life,” Dowaliby said.
“Heaven” takes a look at the usually somber task of spreading a family member’s ashes from the perspective of the family member in heaven.
The movies are short, but Andrews insisted creating material funny enough to make most people laugh for four or five minutes is an up-hill battle.
“A really funny comedy is harder to make than a really powerful drama,” he said. “You have to have material that everyone can find something in and get a laugh out of.”
For Dowaliby, who plans on pursuing film as his career, the competition in Aspen is exciting but is hopefully just a start.
“It’s definitely just one of the steps. We have a long way to go from here,” Dowaliby said. “It will be a good experience, but we’re not really satisfied with just this.”
For more information on Little Baby Films or to watch their movies, visit www.littlebabyfilms.com. The movies contain some adult language.