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Arts & Entertainment

Updated with Video: Short Film Shoots at Norcross Cafe

45 South barista writes script; Coffee shop transformed into film set for a day.

When you walk into 45 South, you typically find people browsing books, professionals typing away on a laptop or groups conversing over a cup of joe.

Not so on Saturday.

If you stepped foot into the downtown Norcross coffee shop on this day, you found a makeup artist applying face paint to the “world’s first talking mime,” actors with scripts in hand rehearsing lines and props scattered about the front tables.  If you ventured to the back patio, you encountered a director dressed as Baby New Year, Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny rocking out to a Rock Band set in front of lights, a camera and a man holding a boom mike.

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While still open for business as (not quite as) usual, the Shewberts’ coffee shop had been transformed into a movie set.

A cast and crew of about 15 were on hand in Norcross to shoot “An Inconvenient Book” a short film co-written by 45 South barista Paige Prier, for the 48 Hour Film Project competition.

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“It's a meshing of two worlds,” Prier said. “It really is. My outside life and then I kind of know everybody on the block because it's a neighborhood (shop).”

The Bear Driving Car production crew, a name taken from Kevin Smith’s short-lived “Clerks: The Animated Series,” was among 700 filmmakers taking part in the competition throughout the Atlanta region over the weekend.

Begun in May 2001 by a group of Washington, D.C.- area filmmakers, Mark Ruppert and Liz Langston, this year marks the 10th time the 48 Hour Film Project has taken place in Atlanta.

The Bear Driving Car team hoped that Norcross would give their film a “unique and special look,” said producer Jaimee Driscoll.  “It’s just so beautiful there,” she said. “It’s a lovely area. It’s just so idyllic.”

On Friday night, each film team was assigned a character, a prop, a line of dialogue and a genre by luck of the draw and then given 48 hours to write, shoot, edit and score the movie.

The team filming in Norcross was assigned Film De Femme, a genre designed by the 48 Hour Film Project to encourage strong roles for females. A Film de Femme features one or more strong female characters and encompasses romantic comedies or “chick flicks” as a subset of the genre.

The team also had to include a consultant character named Tina Goodwin, use a book as a prop and include the line “When will she be here?”

Prier and Jim Crose worked until 3:30 a.m. Friday night/Saturday morning writing the script and the team filmed all day Saturday.

“An Inconvenient Book” is a modern day comedic take on “The Monkey’s Paw,” the 1902 W.W. Jacobs horror short story where the paw of a dead monkey acts as a talisman that grants the possessor three wishes which come with an enormous price for interfering with fate.

In the film, the main character is a barista named Zoe (played by Amedria Murphy), who is given a book by Shawn (Patric Ryan), a shady character in an alley, and told whatever she writes in the book will come true.  The wishes are granted but with hilarious twists.

The crew worked around life as usual in Norcross- fire trucks responding to calls, employees disposing of trash in Skin Alley, music blaring from speakers, concerts in the park, repairmen on ladders, coffee customers and a morning thunderstorm- as they filmed, but said that the town and its people couldn’t have been more accommodating.

“Working in Norcross was an enormous pleasure,” Driscoll said. “We know that there were many people that were inconvenienced by our shoot, and instead of encountering difficulty we had a wonderful experience with everyone that ran across us.  Many people were interested in what we were doing, and to a person were willing to work with and around us.”

“Being able to shoot in a community like that is rare, and if we get the opportunity we will shoot in Norcross again.”

The Bear Driving Car film will be shown during the 7:45 p.m. screening on Saturday, June 18 at Plaza Atlanta, 1049 Ponce de Leon Ave, NE Atlanta.  Tickets are $8 in advance ($10 at the door) and can be purchased here.

Editor's note: The group decided to change the name from "Diary of Doom," so we've updated the story to reflect the new title. 

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