Is it morning already? Coffee, please! My ears are still ringing from last night's excellent show by the Noise, the Heist and the Accomplice, Thank God, and The Choir Quit (my new favorites). Isaac and Patrick are some amazing event planners. Kudos!

Friday was a full day, and today will be even busier. My fellow juror Georg Koszulinski kicked things off at 3 p.m. with a sneak preview of his new no-budget guerilla film Dead Buffalo. He's also running a guerilla filmmaking workshop right about now. Run and you still might make it.

At 6 p.m., he joined Roger Beebe and me for a sold-out shorts program: Sunday Mornings, Jiggle Jig,  Folding Over Twice, Gypsy Crepes, Sapsucker, Trip, and Space Ghost. (Sadly, Phoebe Brown's Family Album, slated to screen, experienced technical difficulties and will show later in the festival.)

Several of the filmmakers (including Brown, who was a real trouper) and actors were in attendance, but perhaps the most memorable line of the post-screening Q&A was delivered by Crepes director Lear Bunda, whose day job is working for Adult Swim in Atlanta. When asked to talk about his film, he deadpanned that it was a remake of K-Pax. (You may remember it. Kevin Spacey plays an alien.) Er, right.

The Grits program describes the short that led off the 8 p.m. program this way: "Yard Work Is Hard Work is an experimental animation and mini-musical that, at times, wants to be a romantic comedy. Using various combinations of 2D cut-out and pixilation, the piece follows a pair of newlyweds as they learn the perils of home ownership and life in general." What it doesn't mention is how hilariously catchy the songs are, nor how compelling filmmaker Jodie Mack's use of images of homes and happy couples torn from magazines becomes in her tale of overextended young love.

The feature, Luke and Brie Are on a First Date, then, had a tough act to follow, but the gentle romance acquitted itself with honor. Director Chad Hartigan, like Modern Love Is Automatic's helmer Zach Clark, is a North Carolina School of the Arts grad (what is in the water up there?), and he joins several of their filmmaking classmates as ones to watch.

OK, time to dart back into the dark. --Amy