By her own admission, Caitlin Byrnes might be the worst person to talk about this year’s Crazy 8s filmmaking challenge. Reached by phone on the Monday after a full weekend of shooting, the 26-year-old writer-director cops to being tired, but is notably short of horror stories from the previous 72 hours.

“It went really well,” she says, a tad sheepishly, “I was nervous every morning that something would go horribly wrong, because the previous day had gone so smoothly, but no—no disasters in principal photography. So we’ll see what happens in editing. I’ll probably fall down the stairs.”

The competition, now in its 16th proud year, is to distill the already crippling grind of filmmaking into eight demented days of production—three days of shooting, five days of post. The least we should expect is a good dispatch from the war zone once it’s over. But Byrnes has nothin’ but love stories, so far.

“We were only shooting for about eight to nine hours every day,” she says, even more sheepishly. “It wasn’t that hard but I think a lot of it was in the prep. And it’s a small story. A lot of other productions had big scenes with a lot of extras and stuff. This was a film about a fleeting moment between two people. The biggest day was when we used a process trailer.”

Otherwise known as a “low loader”, the process trailer allows your actors to pretend they’re driving instead of plowing over Vancouver’s cyclists while they try to deliver their lines. Demonstrating the kind of moxie encouraged by Crazy 8s—the program awards six separate productions with a $1,000-dollar budget plus equipment—Byrnes scored the hardware from a Teamster colleague who helped her secure everything (including the driver) for free. “Huge thank-yous to Carl, Brad, and Greg!” she says.

Byrnes’s 15-person crew and acting talent were on their game, too. She says that stars Colleen Rennison and Manoj Sood “were both phenomenal. They had great rapport.” Indeed, Byrnes let them rewrite some lines on the fly, although she already had rapport with Rennison—whose other job is fronting the band No Sinner.

“I used to go see her sing at Guilt & Company every Thursday,” she says. “I grew up on Etta James, Otis Redding, Sam Cooke, all that stuff, and I love soul music more than anything, really. I walked down those stairs and there she was singing ‘Dock of the Bay’ in a Harley-Davidson T-shirt and cutoff shorts, and I was just so blown away.”

It was the beginning of a beautiful relationship. Byrnes subsequently directed the hot ‘n’ gritty videos for No Sinner’s “Boo Hoo Hoo” and “Love Is a Madness”, which have racked up over a quarter-million views between them on YouTube.

“One Last Ride” was written for Rennison, who plays a singer on her way to an audition who can’t pay her taxi driver. “And he’s already been ripped off by a bunch of entitled hipsters,” Byrnes explains, “so he decides, ‘Fuck this!’” There is, of course, a twist involving cops, sweet soul music, and a final, if unlikely, connection between the cabbie and his passenger. If that’s not enough gravy already, Rennison also performs her version of “Rise Up” by local singer-songwriter Ben Rogers.

Rennison will hit the stage with No Sinner at the Crazy 8s afterparty at Science World next Saturday (February 28) after a screening of all six movies at the Centre (777 Homer Street), hosted by Nelson Wong and The Interview star Diana Bang. More information is at www.crazy8s.cc/.