CHARLOTTESVILLE — They should have called it the Insomnia Film Project.

At last weekend’s Virginia Film Festival, up-and-coming director Jeff Wadlow and producer/writer Beau Bauman launched the fest’s first Adrenaline Film Project. Twelve teams of filmmakers — whose members ranged from a high school freshman to a University of Virginia philosophy major to a grownup adman — had 72 hours to write, shoot and edit an original short film.

The rules: Each short had to somehow include a turquoise hula-hoop and the following line of dialogue: “You’re going way too fast” (the theme of the festival was speed).

The teams began work on their shorts last Wednesday at 9:15 p.m. and had until Saturday at 9:15 p.m. to turn in their finished products; absolutely no late work would be accepted. With such a tight deadline, most of the filmmakers got by on a couple of hours of sleep and lived off pizza and Red Bull.

The rush to become the next Scorsese (or the Scorsese of short film at least) led to all kinds of tales of uber-dedicated filmmakers:

A high school student had his car towed after forgetting to move it while working all night on his film at Light House, a Charlottesville media lab for teenagers.

A group of UVa students spent 11 hours driving to Maryland to get their 16mm film transferred to digital video (the format they had to have for the festival).

After a team of three shrunk to two, the remaining pair managed to throw together a totally new film in a mere 10 hours.

The point of all this stress, Wadlow said, was to give filmmakers the incentive to get down to the nitty gritty of filmmaking.

“It’s so easy to sit around and talk about whether or not it’s good,” Wadlow said. “There’s this incredible feeling when you get something finished. If it’s good it’s gravy. Just get it done.”

Relative newcomers to Hollywood, Wadlow and Bauman worked together on a “The Tower of Babble” in 2001. That short nabbed Wadlow a spot in the following year's Chrysler Million Dollar Film Festival, where he won a $1 million feature film production and distribution deal. That film, co-written by Bauman, is called “Cry Wolf” and is slated to be released next year.

While the filmmakers are mere twentysomethings, Wadlow maintains they still have a lot to offer to amateur filmmakers.

“What we lack in experience, we make up with enthusiasm,” he said.

By Friday morning, each team had written a script and come up with shot lists and storyboards. Most would spend this day shooting their films. First, though, several of the filmmakers talked about their work with Wadlow and Bauman.

Those sessions led to at least one lofty discussion about the purpose of filmmaking.

“We don’t want you to come in and tell us to change our story,” Alexandria Searls told Wadlow when he sat down with her and her filmmaking partner, Carrie O’Brien, to schedule a meeting the next day to look at their footage.

“I’m a big believer that things need to work,” Wadlow answered.

“Work for who?” asked Searls, a Charlottesville filmmaker.

“The audience,” he said.

“Not everybody makes movies for an audience,” she quickly answered.

Eventually, they dropped the subject and set a time to meet the next day. When Wadlow moved on to another group, Searls admitted to being frustrated.

“I feel there’s a danger in the speed of this,” she said. “You end up being convinced to change your story before your heart is ready to change it.”

"I just felt they were trying to help us," O'Brien said.

Later in the day, Wadlow and Bauman crossed town to a rescue squad building where Charlottesville residents Jamie Howard, Adam Popp and Todd Free filmed a scene for their short about a driver-ed teacher.

The team had recruited a gaggle of high school students to play teens taking a driving class. Howard, the director, had two of the students French kissing (luckily they happened to be a couple), another girl sucking on a lollipop and a third dropping her pen as an actor playing the teacher droned on about driving.

Those moments ultimately made up only a few seconds of the short, but Howard (who’d slept one hour in the previous two days) wanted to get it right. It took a half-dozen takes before he was satisfied.

“Perfect, loved that,” he finally said.

Ninety minutes before Saturday’s deadline, many of the filmmakers seemed more nervous than sheep about to be sheared.

“This is when everyone stops having fun and starts freaking out,” said filmmaker Joe Babarsky, a 17-year-old Albemarle High School senior.

In one corner of the Light House, Wadlow helped one group of teens shoot last-minute footage while another group worked on their soundtrack at a computer across the room.

Would everyone finish by deadline?

“I’m sure there’ll be some people coming by at 9:45 and you’ll see some fireworks,” Wadlow predicted.

That didn’t happen. Around 9 p.m., team after team began dropping off their final products. Each was greeted with a hardy round of applause and congratulatory shouts from Wadlow and Bauman.

O’Brien looked particularly relieved when she turned in her film. That morning, she and Searls had decided to drop out of the project (each filmmaker provided different explanations for the decision). But with encouragement from Wadlow and help from her brother Tim, O’Brien came up with a new script of her own which she shot and edited in about 10 hours.

Howard turned his film in next. He looked like a zombie.

“When you finally set these things free, it’s separation anxiety,” he said.

UVa’s Culbreth Theatre was packed for Sunday’s screening of the Adrenaline shorts.

Some of the films had sloppy cuts. Some had terrible acting. But there were also moments of brilliant writing, beautifully framed shots and at least one five-star performance.

At the end of the day, both the audience and jury awards went to a short called “One in a Million” about a working stiff whose life is changed by a bottle of soda. The mentor award, selected by Wadlow and Bauman, went to the O’Briens for their spur-of-the-moment short, “The Duel,” a film about two teens who host a super-serious competition to see who had the best hula-hoop skills.

The remaining filmmakers didn’t seem terribly disappointed that their shorts didn’t take home an award. The real prize had been getting to work with two dudes who make movies for a living — something Konstantin Brazhnik, a 17-year-old UVa sophomore from Blacksburg who worked on a short about grocery store romances, found particularly valuable.

“They gave us sweet feedback,” he raved.