What if we could all be filmmakers?

Given the prevalence of smartphones and their ever-augmenting cameras, this question may have an easy answer: we are -- or could be if we tried.

As the final event in its first annual Wide Eyed Film Festival, the Theater, Dance and Film department at Franklin & Marshall College promoted that realization this week with its 48-Hour Cell Phone Video Contest.

Their work will be screened Friday evening at an awards ceremony.

The campus-wide competition challenged students to create short films using nothing but cell phone-captured footage, and gave them 48 hours to do it.

"We were throwing around ideas about how to get students involved in the film festival," Zachary Reese, a F&M faculty member and organizer of the festival, says.

"We wanted it to be open to any student that had an idea for a story," as opposed to being limited to those with access to film and editing equipment. "We wanted everyone to be on an even playing ground."

Over the weekend, groups of F&M students produced eight short films that feature love stories, action and experimental storytelling, organizers said.

The winners will be announced by guest filmmakers Matthew Porterfield, Lauren Wolkstein and Alex Tyson, who screened their work earlier in the festival and served as judges for the competition.

The event is free and open to the public.

Though any subject matter was fair game, the student filmmakers faced three additional rules:

Each film had to include the likeness of or an allusion to Benjamin Franklin, a red balloon and the quote, "What we have here is a failure to communicate" from the film "Cool Hand Luke."

Franklin's appearance could be symbolic or abstract, organizers said, but the quote had to be included explicitly in the dialogue.

Jeremy Moss, assistant professor of film and media studies and a festival organizer, describes these images as "things that are iconic but could also be incorporated in an interesting way."

The red balloon motif in particular, he explains, features prominently in film history, most notably in an eponymous French classic.

Film minor Liz Meley, 20, whose entry with partner Lizzy McMahon, 21, weaves a first-person narrative through concert footage of rapper Lupe Fiasco, found the stipulations to be constructive.

"Limits can make you more creative if they're manageable," she says. "Sometimes they push you in a way that you didn't mean to go, but it comes out well."

All in all, organizers said that the competition attracted mostly film students and their friends.

"We put up posters and everything, but I think it was totally word of mouth," Moss says.

He hopes that future participation includes more of the campus, ultimately cultivating "a film culture across programs and majors."

"We thought of the cell phone as a way to democratize (filmmaking)", Moss says. "It's definitely about being more available and inclusive."

Best of the 48-Hour Cell Phone

Video Contest

Fri. 6:30 p.m. Free

Green Room Theatre

reception follows at

Philadelphia Alumni Writers House

F&M College
www.fandm.edu