Brian Chalfin (junior-film and video) has taken the 'final' out of 'final project' by devoting his entire semester to a film class assignment.

By February, he was submitting a budget, shooting schedule breakdowns, doing some location scouting and finalizing casting.

Still dreading that two-hour final in the Forum next week?

Chalfin has logged countless hours working on a short, completely original 10-minute film entitled The Fix-Up Mix-Up for Communications 347 (Intermediate Video/Filmmaking), a narrative film course. Chalfin has clocked nearly two hours every day working on the film, which is even more time-consuming on the weekends of film shoots.

In this class, aspiring filmmakers split into groups of three early in the semester and brainstorm concepts for a film they will produce, direct, film and edit.

"It's pretty much a film workshop," Chalfin said. "Definitely independent. It's like I don't have class, my professor just says, 'If you need help, we're here.' We learn how it is in the real world."

Chalfin and the other two members of his group wrote a script for the romantic comedy. Once they had a working story in place, they searched for actors, setting up a series of auditions to find their three principal leads.

The movie is a 10-minute short about date-aholic Nick, who is set up on two blind dates -- one with a bombshell blonde and the other with the typical (or maybe not so typical), girl next door. Nick must find a way to juggle both relationships at once, make the seemingly impossible choice for one, or risk losing them both -- especially the one he cares about the most.

Jim Carnicella (junior-journalism) has made several films with Chalfin before and was eventually cast as the lead in Fix-Up.

"Nick, the guy I play, well, I don't want to be rude and call him a pimp, but he dates a lot of women," Carnicella said with a grin. "Somehow in the film he ends up with two blind dates, and he has to balance both girls."

Katie Arbulu (junior-theatre) plays one of Nick's would-be girlfriends. This is her first student film, and coming from a stage background, film shoots were a whole different experience.

"It's awkward," she said. "The scenes are all out of order. I know that's how it works, but it's strange to shoot four lines of dialogue at a time. Plus you do five million takes, which is like weeks of play rehearsal crammed into one shoot."

Chalfin's group also had to persuade several students to be extras in their film.

"You have to be nice to them, because they're willing to sit for hours," he said. "Granted, they're eating the whole time. Hmm, pizza is really the key."

Creating a film comes with many challenges, including scouting locations by securing them with contracts to guarantee availability and permission to film. Most of Chalfin's film is shot at the Penn Stater Conference Center Hotel, but on a recent shoot, the crew ran into problems with time restraints.

"There are always problems," he said. "Batteries die, tapes run out. What are you going to do?"

Writing, casting, directing and filming are time-consuming endeavors.

"The class helps students experience the challenges of balancing these roles against their artistic ambitions," said Rod Bingaman, the course professor. "On top of all this they have other coursework, naturally, so it tends to be the toughest semester in the program."