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Reed's team wins '48-hour Film Project,' advancing to world competition

'Deliver Me' won Asheville's '48-hour Film Project and goes on to a Filmapalooza in Washington, D.C., next march.

By Lightning Reports, Published: August 16, 2021

Heather Reed, a Henderson County native and graduate of North Henderson High School, was a key part of a film-making team that won the Asheville 48-hour Film Project competition last month.

The film, “Deliver Me,” moves on to an international competition next March in Washington, D.C. Film-makers across the world compete to represent their city in the project.

“The premise is that you are assigned a specific genre and a specific character, a prop and a line of dialogue that you have to use and in 48 hours make a film out of that,” Reed said. “All the films are required to be between four and seven minutes and ours inclusive of the credits is exactly seven minutes long.”
Her team chose the genres of “soap opera” and “fish out of water” and created a story around a woman who lost her husband to suicide and received his “very unusual request to take some of his ashes to his ex,” she said. “As you can imagine, drama ensues” in a soap opera, fish out of water kind of way.
The movie-making team of nine won Best Film. The movie will be screened at the world Filmapalooza along with 150 other films from 50 countries. Heather RNominated in 12 categories, the short movie won, besides Best Film, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing and Best Supporting Performance and bagged honorable mentions for directing and performance. Reed was also nominated for best writing.
“I also wanted to emphasize that the heart of the film is really about mental health,” she added in a text message. “And even though our assigned genre was Soap Opera, we took great care to address a difficult topic in a respectful and honest way. I’m really proud of what we created in 48 hours.”
Reed, who works in international education, has a bachelor of fine arts degree in theater for youth from Shenandoah University in Winchester, Virginia. She has experience teaching young people how to make short first-person video narratives.
She praised her public school education that first lit her flair for drama.
“We have a great base for theater here in Henderson County,” she said. She took theater classes at Apple Valley Middle School and at North Henderson High School and praised the “influencers” who encouraged her.