It was all about the buzz.”The Misanthrope” producer Rachel Davis could hardly contain her excitement as she chatted with director Allen Colombo. She was glowing and happy as they sat in her room, just hanging out for the first time in months. While she was making conversation, her mind was reeling with how she would break the news to him while trying to rein in her giddiness.

Then it happened.

He mentioned to her that he was going to shoot a friend’s directing project during the second week of March. She took a deep breath as she told him that he wasn’t going to be able to make it.

“Why?” he asked in his Southern drawl.

“Because you are going to be in Austin,” she said restraining her beaming smile. His jaw dropped, and when he said, “What do you mean?”, she knew he was thinking about his film “The Misanthrope” and the South by Southwest Conference and Film Festival.

“It seemed like the most attainable of the good festivals. (Allen) had been saying, “If we just could get into SxSW, then I will be happy,'” Davis said. “”If we don’t do any (other festivals), I will be happy.’ It was the catch phrase.”

But before the festivals (neither Colombo nor Davis had been to a film festival before as filmmakers), the film shoot (their first feature film) and their friendship, there was a memory from Colombo’s childhood. From that, he created Artemis, a sixth grade teacher/wannabe actor who must find satisfaction in directing his school’s play after being rejected by a local theater. Colombo’s master’s thesis draft swelled to 51 pages of screenplay. Then there was the pre-production that Davis, a Speech junior, focused on between classes and reading last spring, researching festivals where they could send Colombo’s short film to build up his name.

The schoolwork was the hard part.

A week after spring finals, Colombo and Davis, along with a student crew, brought the script to life. It wasn’t always pretty. The main young actor, Derrick, had to be replaced on the second day of the three-day school shoot, so they lost a full day of filming. Pressed for time on the last day, they filmed two scenes simultaneously to get the footage they needed. Colombo calls it clutch filmmaking at its finest.

But the golden moments on set weren’t enough once the project went into the editing room. Colombo said it was painful reworking approximately 1020 minutes of film into about 86 minutes with editor Eric Kutner.

“It was like a block of granite we had to sculpt with toothpicks,” Colombo said with a straight face. “At times I felt we were putting Band-Aids on cannonball holes.”

The disappointment of editing vanished Dec. 1 as Davis dashed through Annie May Swift Hall with Colombo, his parents, sister and ex-girlfriend gathering up chairs for the feature’s premiere. As only the third feature in NU film history, “The Misanthrope” attracted more than 300 people. Sitting on the screening room floor, Davis felt prouder of the film with every laugh from the audience.

The ultimate validation came after the $2 margaritas that made Colombo and Davis late to the SxSW Film Festival’s award ceremony. As Davis signed them in, an organizer frantically told her and Colombo to grab seats in the first two rows. Davis began whispering to him that the woman’s reaction might mean something; Colombo was more cautious. When the narrative feature category was announced, Davis waited for their names to be called for the audience award. Instead the award went to a film that they thought was better than theirs.

Davis continued whispering as the Special Jury Award was announced: “”The Misanthrope”, directed by Allen Colombo.”

They looked at each other. Colombo reminded himself to stand up, turn around and wave to the audience. His face turned crimson. Davis didn’t mind that they had forgotten to mention her name.

“I liked the uncompromising nature of (main character’s) unpleasantness. He wasn’t made to be a bogus lovable curmudgeon,” judge Eeamon Bowles wrote in an e-mail.

Since then, the buzz around “The Misanthrope” has continued. Davis is searching for a distributor and an agent. They are sending the film to top-tier festivals like the Los Angeles International Film Festival and the Toronto International Film Festival. The award has changed their approach to promoting “The Misanthrope” because it could be the first building block of Colombo’s professional career.

“There has never been a point where I thought that maybe this is it,” Colombo said. “We had a fairly successful screening although you can never tell because it was in front of friends. We got accepted to Cinequest (a film festival in San Jose, Calif.), which we had never heard of, but it was cool,” he said. “Then we got into SxSW, and then we win an award. It just keeps building.”

He stopped and took a breath.

“If it ends right now, I will be satisfied. We never imagined that we would be at this point.” nyou