Time. Money. Guns. Cheesy, tongue-in-cheek bravado.

And plenty of fake mustaches.

Those are the themes of two films produced by a group of young amateur filmmakers, longtime friends from Helena who've come out on top of the Helena Short Film and Video Festival the past two years.

Brothers Matthew and Dustin "Dub" Campbell, along with Troy Ford and Cody Eickmeyer, are the main players behind Lowdown and Dangerous Productions, a group effort to produce short films.

They do it for fun and to entertain their friends, but the two contest-winning pieces are original, well-done (considering this year's shoestring $18 budget) and enjoyable to watch.

Considering the four guys and their friends were given just 72 hours to complete the each project, the results are admirable.

"I've been interested in filmmaking forever," said Matthew Campbell, who's the main camera operator, de facto director and story originator. "We've been making short films for a while now, but we're also working on a full-length film now."

In a group interview, the quartet talked about the process they went through to produce their films, "Time" and "Crime Spree Industries!" which triumphed this year and last at the festival hosted by the Myrna Loy Center.

"Time" is a take on the classic cop interrogation scene, with 1970s overtones and faux grit.

"Crime Spree Industries!" -- this summer's contest winner -- starts out with group of criminals planning a heist, but midway through morphs into a spoof infomercial, with the crooks peddling a handy jacket-ski mask combo, which comes complete with a set of complimentary steak knives.

Here's how the contest works: Participants are given the year's theme -- last year, it was "time," this year it was "money" -- on a Friday night. Entrants have 72 hours to write, shoot and produce a six-minute short film, which is then judged by a panel. A few weeks later, the Myrna Loy hosts a celebration, shows all films entered and doles out the prizes.

The three-day production deadline adds an element of stress to the competition but also provides the motivation to push the project through to the end.

"These projects are really good because we hammer them out," Dustin Campbell said. "It's nice having a deadline."

"But what's not nice is having a time constraint," he added. "There's a lot of things you can't do, a lot of things get forced, because you can't ride things out for maximum funny."

The guys come up with basic idea for their entry Friday and flesh out the story Saturday before shooting several hours of footage and completing the production all day Sunday and into the early hours of Monday. All of them work, so there's not much they can do Monday before the 5 p.m. deadline.

The final hours are a collaborative effort, with each of the men taking on a different production task, such as editing or sound work, to complete the project.

Describing their story-development process as a work of writing is a bit of a stretch, since the men readily admit they craft an outline and come up with some of the lines before they start shooting. They ad-lib much of the script, working through take after take to get things how they want.

"We get stupid ideas and work backwards," Eickmeyer said.

"We're like the band that's talking about the record contract before they have the band name," Dustin Campbell said.

They were quick to point out they don't deserve all of the credit for their two wins. They had help from several friends who appear in the films, and each of the actors took turns ad-libbing their lines, essentially co-writing the movies.

They also note the obvious: they're not professional actors.

"If we have a long line, everyone goes outside for a cigarette while one person stands in front of the camera" and struggles through it all, Eickmeyer said.

"We take ourselves and amplify it a hundred times," Dustin Campbell said, describing their approach to character development.

Eickmeyer is working to become a kindergarten teacher. Matthew Campbell is employed by a communications company. Dustin Campbell works in tech support, and Ford is a graphic artist and video editor.

Their filmmaking influences are varied: Dustin Campbell supposedly likes everything; Eickmeyer allegedly hates everything, and Matthew Campbell and Ford fall somewhere in between.

Actually, filmmakers Paul Thomas Anderson, Quentin Tarantino and Ethan and Joel Coen are among their influences, but any conversation with the guys about film ends up taking off in many directions, with them touting or tearing down action films, horror movies, Charlie Sheen comedies and serious dramas.

They plan to enter the festival again next year and want to continue working on their feature-length project. If they come upon some money, Ford might be able to make the movie he wants:

"What I really wanted originally was about 40 gallons of blood and 35 explosions in six minutes ... and a race car," he said.

Follow this link to To view samples of Lowdown and Dangerous Productions' work.