Rob Armieri is the toast of Sudbury

Sewing 35 metres of green fabric, almost 72 straight hours of video editing and a whack of other superhuman feats won Rob Armieri an award this past weekend.

Armieri, a recent graduate of St. Basil Secondary School, snagged the student division of Cinefest's CTV Amateur Videomaker Competition this weekend in Sudbury.

But he couldn't be there to collect it.

"He couldn't get back from school in London," says his father, Frank. "He's there in his first year of media theory and production at the University of Western Ontario."

Armieri is anxious to get through university and on to being a director of film and television productions.

"Robbie is very focused," his dad says. "It wasn't unusual to see him work through the night on projects for school."

Armieri's winning short film, Devils and Angels, is a film noir about a man with nothing left to lose, seduced by a sultry demon only to bring his troubled past to the forefront.

Shown are stills from the film.

It was filmed entirely in the Armieri's back yard, on the family's deck, to be precise.

Frank Armieri said that the family worked together to sew 35 metres of green fabric to make a homemade green screen for the production.

"We also painted enough plywood green to make a floor for the deck," he said.

Then Rob Armieri went to work directing and shooting the film that can be seen on his website.

It was shot in one afternoon and edited over the next three days, said Frank Armieri.

He acknowledges that at least some of his son's determination and drive to succeed came from the encouragement he received from teachers at St. Basil Secondary School.