By Margaret A. McGurk
Enquirer staff writer

If you should spot a car barreling down Vine Street with a camera strapped to its hood this weekend, you can bet you've caught a glimpse of the 48 Hour Film Project.

Starting Friday, hundreds of homegrown moviemakers will throw themselves into a scramble to write, shoot and edit a short film within two days. Last year, the first time the nationwide contest came to town, 24 teams took part. This year, 36 are enrolled.

Aymie Majerski, leader of Team Open-Heart Burglary, is one of the newcomers.

"You know how people that make films are; they are insanely passionate," said Majerski, 32, who worked on the local features Dead Horse and A Generation Lost and teaches in the Reel Kids filmmaking summer program.

"The opportunity to make a film in a friendly competitive environment with no money and a guaranteed showing, plus getting to pick your own team, it's just dreamy."

Kickoff is scheduled at 6 p.m. Friday, when team representatives will meet at Media Bridges, 1100 Race St., downtown, for a random drawing that will assign a genre to each film.

That means each team must be ready to come up with a spy caper, thriller, sci-fi, romance or even musical. In addition, every film must include the same randomly drawn character, prop and line of dialogue.

To stay in the race, finished films must be dropped off no later than 7:30 p.m. Sunday at Jefferson Hall Saloon, 1150 Main St., Over-the-Rhine. Movies that miss the deadline will miss the main competition, but will be shown at the public screening and will be eligible for audience favorite votes.

The finished films will be shown in several separate groups on Aug. 14 in Greaves Concert Hall at Northern Kentucky University. Times and ticket prices had not been set at press time.

E-mail mmcgurk@enquirer.com