CHAMPAIGN – Champaign Movie Makers is hosting its annual 48 Hour Film Competition starting this Friday. Teams will have two days to make a unique movie based off of the same prompt. Andrew Stengele is the director of CMM and has been running the 48 Hour Film Competition for nearly two decades. Morning Edition host Kimberly Schofield spoke with Stengele about the competition and the accompanying 48 Hour Film Festival.
This interview has been edited for clarity and conciseness.
ANDREW STENGELE: So this is a competition that lasts 48 hours. At the beginning, I will hand out a prompt to every team that registered and they will have exactly 48 hours to write film and edit a movie to give back to me. Then we will screen them the following weekend and they will be judged on how creatively they use the prompt.
KIMBERLY SCHOFIED: Do you create the prompts for the filmmakers?
STENGELE: Yes, I am newly in charge of Champaign Movie Makers as of like a year ago, but I have been running the 48 Hour Film Competition for Champaign Movie Makers throughout its entire existence. I wait until I know how many teams we’re going to have, and then the night before, I make the prompt, so I don’t spill anything to anyone accidentally. The idea is to not come in with an idea of what you’re going to shoot, and then shoehorn in the prompt that I give. The idea is to make the movie based on the prompt that’s given out. So I don’t want to give anybody any hints ahead of time
SCHOFIELD: Who can be a part of this? Do you have to be an expert, do you have to have equipment? How do people just show up and know what to do?
STENGELE: Yeah, anyone can be a part of it. We have teams of people who are filmmakers already. They have equipment. They know what they’re doing. We also have a signup for free agents, which are basically anyone who wants to participate but doesn’t have a team, but they think they can offer something to somebody else, either acting or writing or music or whatever they feel like they could supply or they just want to try something creative. But ultimately, the goal of this is not to make a big budget feature, you know, spectacle. It’s to just be creative. So when, when we show the movies, and when they’re judged, they’re not judged on technical quality, they’re judged on creativity. You can make a movie with your phone, if that’s all you have, that’s fine. It’s perfectly fine.
SCHOFIELD: And can it be any age?
STENGELE: Yeah. It’s generally been adults that have done things here, but we’ve had some students on teams as well and some younger kids involved over the years. So there’s no age limit.
SCHOFIELD: What happens at the screening?
STENGELE: So we will have a screening the following weekend, January 25 at 3pm at the Savoy 16. Basically, I will reveal the prompt to all the attendees that are there. And then we will watch the short films that were made. Judges will go out into the hallway to deliberate and choose their winner, and we’ll watch a few other selections of shorts, things from the vault, other locally made shorts, but nothing that’s specific to this year’s 48 Hour Film Competition, and then the judges will come back in, announce their winner. Usually they say, you know, make comments about all the movies, and then we’ll hand the trophy out to the winning team.
SCHOFIELD: Is that open to the public? The screening?
STENGELE: Yes, it is open to the public and it is free.
SCHOFIELD: I remember going last year, and it was very cool to see the movies from that year that were part of it, but also movies from the past.
STENGELE: Yeah, I try to bring a selection of things, ideally not from the people that made things for the 48 Hour Competition – try to spread out amongst other filmmakers – but I try to show some interesting things that people might not have seen or might not have seen for a while.
SCHOFIELD: Champaign Movie Makers has a lot of events that happen. What makes this unique compared to the others – if there is any unique factor to it?
STENGELE: This one in particular brings in people who aren’t normally involved in movie making. It’s a very high and low commitment. You have to be committed for an entire weekend, but only an entire weekend. So you don’t have to, like, think months in advance, or ‘how long am I going to schedule these things.’ It’s very much just do something in two days and have fun with it. And so people are allowed to experiment and try new things without worrying about it being perfect because you only have two days. You can’t get it perfect. It’s, you know, it’s going to be what it’s going to be by the turn-in date. So instead of stressing about making it perfect, you just got to get it done.
Participants must register before Friday, January 16, 2026.
Last year’s winning film: The Blue Ooze Brothers