Fifteen years ago, the notion that an amateur filmmaker could write, shoot, edit, and project a professional-grade film in only 48 hours would have been a near-impossible thought. But times change quickly, and for the 2007 filmmaker, in the age of Final Cut Pro and YouTube, the idea is a challenge rather than an impracticality.

Charlie Weisman has witnessed this rapid evolution from a most unusual vantage point: as cofounder of NYC Midnight Movie Making Madness, a grassroots institution that has grown from a small, locally based hobby of two film lovers in 2002 to what is now a nationwide venture and Mr. Weisman’s full-time job.

This past weekend, Mr. Weisman organized more than 200 filmmakers, who converged on the streets of New York City and tried to deliver the most captivating and entertaining four-minute short film produced over two short days of work. With the competition based out of Brooklyn this time around, and dubbed the Brooklyn Film Race, the noon-to-midnight marathon this past Saturday was every bit as chaotic and euphoric as its competitors may have hoped.

At around 10 p.m. on Saturday night, a leading member of one of the race’s teams, Chase Massingill, had set up an impromptu test screening of his four-minute entry for friends and roommates, just before going back with some 90 minutes to spare to tweak the story’s editing and layer in an improvised music track, recorded from a teammate’s electric guitar. Not long after the competition had kicked off and Mr. Weisman had handed down to teams their two required obstacles — in this particular competition, each film had to include a scene of someone brushing their hair, and had to incorporate the theme of surprise — Mr. Massingill found himself worried about whether his group’s complicated story, about a man recalling a doomed love affair, would click together as he had envisioned. But, he said, it was this mix of uncertainty and adrenaline that made the experience worth it.

“You’re rushing, and you’re stressed, and then you go to edit something together, and it turns out better than anything you could have planned,” Mr. Massingill said around 11:50 p.m. Saturday night, just after handing in the final cut. “There’s something really exhilarating about it, the feeling you get when you don’t know at breakfast what kind of film you’ll create by dinner. And to see it all come together, and to be able to compare it against other people who worked under the same conditions, it’s a rush.”

As is the case with each competition, the two-dozen Brooklyn Film Race entries will be screened this Wednesday at Cobble Hill Cinemas, where each will vie for an array of audience awards. Early next month, the winners will be announced and posted to the race’s web site, www.filmracing.com. Winners will take home such prizes as video equipment, animation software, editing packages, certificates for filmmaking workshops, and cash.

Initially in the business of organizing longer, 24-hour film competitions, Mr. Weisman said the 12-hour variety has caught on in recent years due to the improving state of filmmaking technology and partially due to that very adrenaline rush to which Mr. Massingill alluded. “What we started noticing after a couple years was that people would go for 24 hours straight, and they wouldn’t sleep or take a break. And then they would turn their film in and literally fall asleep on the barstool,” Mr. Weisman said, recalling the earliest days of NYC Midnight. “Ironically, when we shortened the competition, the quality of the submissions stayed pretty much the same, but all the contestants were a lot happier and more relaxed.”

While competitions such as the 48 Hour Film Project (www.48hourfilm.com) and an array of amateur-friendly Web sites such as Atom Films (www.atomfilms.com) have become staples of the independent filmmaking landscape, NYC Midnight has worked to find its niche by constantly altering its schedule and programming to accommodate the shifting tastes and skills of competitors, and by reaching out to underserved corners of the community.

Mr. Weisman started to expand NYC Midnight’s offerings a few years ago, first in the form of a two-week-long screenwriting competition, which has grown from 100 to 600 competitors, and then with a three-week animation contest, which Mr. Massingill won earlier this spring. Due to interest and inquiries from filmmakers across the country, Mr. Weisman has made the move to nationalize the popular 12-hour film races, this year hitting the road in 13 different cities — the Chicago Film Race was held two weekends ago, and the Philadelphia event is set to begin Saturday — and planning to take each winning short from the various contests and pit them head-to-head in something of a national championship.

Yet for all the changes in the filmmaking world, from affordable digital cameras to such Web site as YouTube that today give amateur shorts instant access to a global audience, Mr. Weisman said what continues to draw competitors to his event are the fundamentals: competition and camaraderie. “The difference between this and getting something seen on YouTube? I think that’s sort of like asking a runner why they do a marathon instead of just jogging around the park. There’s something about testing yourself, about comparing yourself against others who are working under the same constraints. It helps when you have big prizes, but most teams do it just for the challenge of the thing. And forget all the fancy editing software or camera equipment — to win that challenge, it all comes back to story.”

ssnyder@nysun.com