It was Renton’s Nate Jones second year at Film Frenzy, and he was determined to beat last year’s winners, but he hadn’t anticipated the autumn rain.

“I don’t think it really stopped raining until we stopped filming,” he said.

Jones was one of 24 producers that had 50 hours to complete a four-minute film. Only 17 made it through the rainy weekend, and Jones wanted to be one of them.

“The rain was a challenge, to say the least,” said Suzanne Dale Estey, Renton’s economic development director, who represented one of five major organizations that plans the event through the Renton Community Marketing Campaign.

At 6:16 p.m., 44 minutes before deadline on Sunday, only eight of the 17 films had been turned in.

There was a mad dash at the end when the final nine films were turned in, she said.

The committee started the festival last year, about doubling the number of films this year.

With four professional film crews joining last weekend’s competition, the caliber is much higher than last year, she said.

The hope of the project is to draw attention to businesses in downtown Renton.

The filming is done in Renton, with a required scene of the downtown clock tower and of public art.

“We will always use this opportunity to promote Renton,” Dale Estey said.

The required line of dialogue, “I used my CurveCard,” was unabashedly advertising a city-wide promotion where businesses offer special deals and discounts to card carriers.

“We normally wouldn’t be that self-promotional, except for these hard economic times,” Estey said.

The 17 films will be shown and a winner announced during a free gala on Tuesday.

Next Wednesday and Thursday, downtown businesses and organizations will show the films and host question-and-answer sessions with the producers.

RentonReporter.com will also have the films online for People’s Choice Award, with voting to start on Friday and run through Nov. 11.

“We try to build it to a several day event,” Estey said.

The festival started with the film competition on Friday, Oct. 16.

At 5 p.m. Jones and the other filmmakers received special instructions for the films.

The required dialogue threw his plans off a bit; he was planning a silent film.

“I was more concerned about if the weather would have an affect on what we were able to capture,” he said.

He got approval to film the dialogue in text and went to meet his partner Rob Anderson, a friend from his youth at Renton High School.

At about 5:30 p.m. they began filming from Renton Hill. By 6 p.m. they were at the clock tower.

The rain turned to a downpour, and the sun set. Wet through, they decided outdoor filming was going to have to wait.

The Lindbergh football game wasn’t going to make the film, but they could be flexible.

“The idea is to show a day in the life of Renton,” Jones said.

After a few beers at the Whistle Stop Ale House, they stopped to film the Oktoberfest celebration and polka band.

After taking some shots at Vino at the Landing, they headed home to wait out the rain for the night.

Saturday morning film crews scurried around downtown Renton, all equally drenched in rain.

One high schooler stood outside dressed as an animal, Jones said. “He was dressed head to toe in some kind of wooly costume.”

By 3 p.m. Jones’ team finished filming, but a long night of editing awaited Anderson at home.

All of their footage had to be cut to a four-minute film and the seemingly random scenes had to be arrange perfectly for the film to work.

“You’re only given about two days to turn out a film,” Jones said.

The two turned in their film a few hours before the 7 p.m. deadline.

“It was just one of those things we had more than enough time to film it,” he said. “The hardest part was cutting down the movie to just four minutes.”

They won’t know if they won until Tuesday’s gala. However, they feel accomplished just to have finished.

“I am satisfied with the project, and hopefully people like it,” Jones said.