Three N.C. Central University mass communication students — Woodrow “Tre” Rowell, Gabriana Clay-White and Rhy’sha Massey — won the 2008 Digital Film Award for their work on the film “Pulley,” submitted to the Movie Making Marathon.

The marathon evolved from an idea of Duke senior Annie Fleishman after she saw the 24-Hour Plays on Broadway in New York City. The plays are written, rehearsed and performed in a single day.

“Pulley” explores the decision a husband has to make between an important job interview and being with his wife, who has gone into labor.

“We turned the story around to make it more interesting,” said Rowell. “We never thought we would win.”

According to Duke University biology major Kevin Jeng, the play was based upon an experience of Rowell’s.

Jeng said one morning Rowell woke up for work and couldn’t get the garage door open. His dad eventually saved the day by manually opening the garage door by yanking on a pulley.

The storyline of the pregnant wife, which was inspired by Clay-White and her pregnancy, was then added to the story.

“I definitely saw that it had more potential as a sitcom-style short film,” said Jeng. “So the humor was intended, but not at first.”

Students started shooting the film at 8 a.m. Saturday, March 29 and had to submit 8-minute films by Sunday morning.

The student films, ten in all, were then shown at the Griffith Film Theatre at Duke University.

Judges included Bob Balaban, director of HBO’s “Bernard and Doris” and Bill Teitler, the producer of “Polar Express,” “Jumanji” and “Mr. Holland’s Opus.”

Duke University provided video and editing equipment for the project.

“I found that taking writing for radio and television and video production, during the fall semester helped me a great deal for this competition,” said Rowell.

“I think they beat out a lot of other, more experienced teams for the award,” said Jeng.

According to Rowell, they edited the film through the night.

All the students in the project worked on scripts and then five scripts were selected for the 24-hour production.

Two teams were assigned the same script to work on separately.

As it turned out, Rowell, Clay-White and Rhy’sha Massey were assigned “Pulley.”

“It worked out really well. I’m glad they won — I thought they really deserved it,” said Jeng.”