In the film "48 Hours," shot in Hollywood, California, Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy spend two days together. They fill those hours by insulting each other and fighting the entire time, sometimes with fists.

In Richmond (the Hollywood of the East) this past weekend, local film crews used their time much more wisely -- they made an entire movie, from script to finished product in 48 hours. There were few insults, and fistfights were kept to a minimum.

For those who don't know, the 48 Hour Film Festival is a nation-wide event held in 55 cities. Last year a film by a Richmond filmmaker won the whole shebang, and the film eventually showed at Cannes. It was the first year Richmond was included in the project, a pretty good showing.

Here's the set-up -- on Friday night, local film crews are given a character, a prop, a line of dialogue and a film genre.

The clock starts, and from that moment they have 48 hours to complete a film, from soup to nuts, based on these elements. That means they have to write a script, prep a location, clue-in actors, set up equipment, film, edit and assemble a final product. In two days.

Sleep is optional. Red Bull should be the official sponsor.

On Friday afternoon, I talked to the head of one of the teams participating in the festival. He was excited. He'd spent the past week going through his equipment, had writers, actors and crew lined up. This is a big deal, because it was an all volunteer effort.

Several prospective locations had been scouted, energy drinks and food had been stockpiled and families had been put on alert. Sadly, his film wasn't on the list of those completed this weekend. Since then, he's been unavailable. This is one of the pitfalls of the 48 hour film festival -- life sometimes intervenes.

Ambition is a tricky thing. One of the Richmond teams, Westbound Productions, wanted an original score for their film. This too had to be composed and recorded within 48 hours. Westbound asked gadabout and man of many bands, Roger Carroll, to compose some music for their film.

Carroll was told on Friday night at 10 p.m. that the film was about a classical pianist who comes home to visit his dysfunctional family on the Fourth of July, at which time he was going to enlighten them that he was a cross dresser. Piece of cake, but was this a comedy or a drama? Was the cross-dressing pianist tickling the ivories or playing the blues?

Undaunted, Carroll enlisted help from his friend Johnny Hott. Carroll composed a central theme, and then, to cover all the bases, did five variations upon it. The original was fairly classical in nature, but by the end of the recording session there were accordions and duck calls involved.

When all was said and done, Carroll and Hott had 25 minutes of music on a CD that they handed off to one of the only Westbound crew members still standing. Later, someone told him that everyone was really pleased with the score, and that it was like another character in the final story.

If you want to see for yourself how the story turned out, come to the Byrd Theater on Saturday. The Richmond festival site has a full listing of those who completed their films, 35 in all.

A full schedule of films and times and ticket information is here: www.48hourfilm.com/richmond.