This Friday marks the start of the annual San Diego 48 Hour Film Project, where teams of filmmakers have a single weekend to make a short film. Fernando Jay Huerto is a veteran participant.
Huerto is a filmmaker and professional stuntman, as well as a fight coordinator for “NCIS: Origins" and one of the stunt coordinators for the “WWE 2K” games.
And he loves putting those skills to use for the 48 Hour Film Project.
“You have a weekend to write, to shoot, and to edit and upload your film,” Huerto explained. “On Friday, our team gets together. We get the genre, the line of dialogue, the prop and the character that is required in the film, and then we brainstorm and try to come up with a script."
Huerto has gone through this process 19 times already. You can watch his past films on his YouTube Channel, Jabronie Pictures. He loves that it forces him and his friends to make a movie instead of procrastinating.
"That's what I like about it. It forces us to be creative,” Huerto said. "It's challenging, but I like the challenge because as a director, it trains me to make strong choices immediately. I'm forced to make confident choices and stick with them. And I think for me, as an actor and a director, it helps train me to make those choices and not be like, 'I'm not sure, maybe we'll try this.' You have to make those choices now."
Two years ago, he shot at Les Girls Theater for a 48 Hour Film Project called "Le Shift." In keeping with his love for Hong Kong-style action, he didn’t start choreographing the key fight until he got to the location and saw what it had to offer — like a stripper pole.
“We've done fight scenes and stunts for the past 15 years,” Huerto said. "We already have a system of how to do it. I don't pre-choreograph, I don't do rehearsals or anything. We come up with everything on the day. It's that training. It's that doing this style repeatedly over and over. When you do something over and over, you get really good at it. And it becomes second nature. So for us, actually choreographing the fight scenes and doing the fight scenes is the easy part."
And he confessed he’s become addicted to the experience.
“Just doing this, it just helps me become a better director, and it helps me become a better leader,” Huerto said. "I'm able to train myself how to make confident decisions in a short amount of time and think creatively."
This Friday, Huerto along with teams of other filmmakers, will race against the clock to write, shoot and edit their short films for this year’s 48 Hour Film Project.
