PARK CITY – Rashaad Ernesto Green needed a short film to fulfill a class assignment as a graduate student at New York University – only it was due the next day.

So, for the cost of a DV tape and with the help of his brother on the other end of the camera, Green made the short, less than 10 minutes long, he called "Choices." Green dubbed his voice over the video and poured his heart out about how his parents' divorce shaped who he is.

His film cost about $2.50, compared to a feature-length film he was working on that took a year to make and ran about $15,000. Green submitted them both for acceptance into the 2009 Sundance Film Festival.

The festival selection committee chose "Choices."

"The response has been wonderful," Green said. "People were really touched, on the verge of tears. People really identified with the story."

Now Green gets to put Sundance on his filmmaking resume while he makes the most of the 10-day festival meeting industry types, networking and building bridget to bigger things.

Bill Barminski jokes about how much it cost to make his short "Joel Stein's Completely Unfabricated Adventures,"

"Less than a million dollars," Barminski laughed.

The Los Angeles-based director and a friend decided it would be interesting to follow journalist Joel Stein to a water treatment facility in Orange County to document how toilet water was being recycled into drinking supplies.

"Everybody laughed in the right places and seemed to like it," Barminski said after the short had screened.

Barminski didn't get paid for the film and it was cheap to make (he still wouldn't say how much). Someone he met at the festival who buys content for short in-flight productions on commercial planes expressed an interest in the short.

Topaz Adizes' 7½-minute short "Trece Anos" cost him plane fare to Cuba, where he shot the film. It's actually taken from an emotionally charged feature-length documentary about a young man who left Cuba at 14 and returns 13 years later for the first time.

"It's part of a larger conversation," Adizes said. "We're very fortunate, because normally you would take this piece and put in on the deleted scenes of the DVD. In this case we sent it out as a short because it's strong on its own."

The short took about four hours to make during the 10 days of shooting in Cuba and it took about a week to edit.

"Generally, when you have a short film, that's your calling card," Adizes said. "We're kind of using the short as another arm, if you will, to bring attention to the feature, to bring attention to the conversation that's around the feature film."

It's his first time at Sundance.

"This is just the beginning," he said. "This is just one step along many. It's just a learning experience. You build relationships, take your time, try to improve and see other people's films, become a better person, a better director and make better films."

E-mail: saspeckman@yahoo.com