The Big Production, currently an official selection at the HollyShorts Film Festival in Los Angeles, captured 2nd place in the Best Comedy category of the College Television Awards (Student Emmy Awards).

Billed as a "musical, arthouse, porno, mystery and comedy," The Big Production is definitely a stylishly constructed, humorously written, nicely acted and beautifully photographed short film directed by Preston DeFrancis and co-written by DeFrancis and Trysta A. Bissett. The Big Production squeezes five genres of film into its 17-minute run time wrapped around the story of a missing engagement ring and Bryce (Paul Denniston), the man who thinks his friends may very well be the culprits behind the ring's disappearance.

Far from a traditional "whodunnit," The Big Production introduces each of the potential suspects reliving the events leading up to the ring's disappearance and, you guessed it, each suspect relives it in a unique cinematic genre.

The entire cast is spot-on wonderful here, DeFrancis exhibits a marvelous grasp of the challenges presented by each genre and Elizabeth Santoro, who did such marvelous work in the low-budget indie Eve of Understanding, lenses the film in a way that grabs you right from the film's opening seconds.