"He was very mellow, very trusting," said Kawamoto, who directed the piece. "In the end, I think we kept the essence of what his story was all about."

The story takes place in a local drive-in restaurant over the course of one pivotal day in the lives of a group of friends.

"It's the most local thing I've made," said Sereno, who founded Kinetic Films as a way to produce homegrown films that utilize Hawai'i talent on all levels. "It's a story that's a slice of life, funny at some points but very dark at the end. It's about a series of events that pushes these guys to a different point in their lives."

The film features comedian Augie Tulba in his first dramatic role.

"Comics always have a dark side," Sereno said. "Comedy requires fine timing, and comics can take that and turn it the other way. You see Augie's power and intensity. It's Augie like you've never seen him before."

Kawamoto said he tried to go for maximum authenticity in the film. That meant taking over Meg's Drive-In on Waiakamilo Road for five days and enduring sporadic bursts of karaoke from the bar next door.

Sereno said he hopes local audiences will feel a connection with the film.

"It's about a group of guys with no control over their lives, who feel a little oppressed, and they're trying to break out," he said. "I hope anyone locally will see it and see something of their own life in it."

And those aren't even the best moment's in Kathryn Xian's "Hawaii Slam: Poetry in Paradise," which tracks a team of local poets on their quest to bring a little bit of Hawai'i to the championship of slam poetry in St. Louis.

Xian, the co-founder of Zang Pictures and "nonexecutive director" of Girl Fest Hawaii, delivers much more than just a road flick with slam-poetry soundtrack.

Without straying from her subjects, Xian examines the roots of slam poetry, its inherent contradictions and the impact of competition on the form and on the individuals who practice it. Ultimately, she also shines a light on the way the Hawai'i team's cultural values altered the dynamic of the event.

Mason and his collaborators at Sandust Productions worked on this full-length feature right up until a week before the festival to make sure audiences could enjoy the tale of a malevolent glowing orb wreaking havoc in Hawai'i in true hi-def fashion.

Mason said the original idea of the orb was something of a joke because spheres are one of the easiest things to animate in 3-D. It was producer Dustin Cross who suggested that Mason build a horror story around it, in part because of the broad global market for horror-genre films.

Mason's girlfriend, Misty Lawrence, handled the special effects and makeup — no small task given the film's wince-worthy action scenes and copious bloodletting.

"It's pretty disgusting," Mason said, admiringly. "But it's pretty cool."

The film, including the infamous opening fight scene, was shot at Sherwood Forest in Waimanalo and at the Sandust back lot in Kahalu'u.

Elmore's contribution this year is "Valtor the Great Versus the Universe," a 10-minute comedic short that Elmore is hoping to expand into a full-length feature with the help of a few generous investors.

"I don't make masterpieces," Elmore said. "I make entertainment. I do this for fun because I love it. I love the craft."

Elmore worked closely with Sandust and the crew of "The Orb," sharing equipment, shooting sites and production anxieties. The two films are paired tomorrow night, in the only all hi-def evening of the festival.

Renato Fontaine's "Promise of Paradise" revisits a TV miniseries pilot Fontaine's father and his friends produced more than 20 years ago about the growth of the drug culture within dying plantation communities.

"They were three social scientists and a filmmaker who wanted to show the reality of what was happening at that time versus what was being shown on TV," Fontaine said.

The networks passed on the pilot (which featured a young Jade Moon and voice-overs from Michael W. Perry), but Fontaine's film offers a stacked narrative that provides fresh insight into the ambitious project and into a turbulent time in Hawai'i's history.

Hyun Shin's beautifully filmed "Piko" tells the story of a young woman who returns to Hawai'i from New York to reconnect with her estranged family. Thomas Smith, a theater student who collaborated with Shin, said the project is built around the cultural significance of storytelling — "and part of that is the realization that film is a new way of transmitting traditional values."

In his emotionally impressionistic short "Waiting to Surface," Jason Ordenstein taps into his personal experience of going to school on the Mainland only to return home feeling estranged and disconnected.

"This is definitely intended to be a spiritual journey," Ordenstein said. "There is a yearning for the salvation of the soul."

Ordenstein said he worried that the story was too personal in scope to be relevant to a larger audience.

Reach Michael Tsai at mtsai@honoluluadvertiser.com.