Last Friday was opening day of 48 hours spent watching people inflict conditions upon themselves that ranged from sleep deprivation to black eyes to bleeding heads.

I set out that evening to catch the opening act of the 48 Hour Film Project, an around-the-clock guerrilla-style moviemaking marathon that aspiring filmmakers signed on to for money, fame and prizes.

The plan was to follow Step 6 Productions like a groupie over the two days the crew and 56 other teams were given to produce a short flick. But I would take a break to watch men pummel each other at a mixed martial arts fight that night.

Friday evening, the contest began as teams with names like Pilly Booka and Backada and Nobody ("We are nobodies") productions eagerly pulled a folded piece of flimsy white paper out of a cap to discover what genre would be thrust upon them to test their creativity and sort the weak from the meltdown-prone among them. Some teams drew comedy, others historical fiction and the intriguing western/musical.

No matter the genre, the main character had to be named Gus or Gloria, be a trade expert and have a bus, train or plane ticket. The line was "Forget it. I already have."

Step 6 producer Ericka Obenar drew the femme de film genre.

Someone was teaching her and the music composer to ride a Segway scooter up the hill on Beaver Street in the Castro District when I left them a few hours later and headed down 17th Avenue for the MMA

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Gladiator Challenge Summer Showdown. Three fighters trained by Casey Hall, who works at King's Gym in Oakland, were climbing into the ring that night. Hall's business is called Blood Bath Boxing.

The roar of the crowd in the Kezar Pavilion could be heard from the parking lot. "They're getting hurt in there," the parking attendant told me.

I was early for the main event so I stopped off at the Kezar Pub across the street, where Hunter S. Thompson used to drink — heavily, we presume. Steppenwolf's "Born to be Wild" blasted from the jukebox. I could see paramedics across the street at the pavilion patching someone up — a fighter or a fan. It felt like Friday night.

At the Summer Showdown, the aggression was so palpable in the sea of tattoos and bleached blondes it felt like a spark — a shove, a lame look, a wrong word — would be enough to trigger one of the shaved muscle heads. This was not a place for "working things out." So the last thing you want to give them is beer, which flowed about as fast as the flushing toilets.

"Choke! Choke! Choke! Choke!" the crowd roared at Ryan Bastianelli as he worked over opponent Gigo Jara, who resembled a human pretzel.

Justin Hoglund, one of Hall's fighters, stepped into the ring. His opponent caught him with a jab in the first round. Blood trickled down his temple and around to his back.

Later, his third fighter and one of the headliners, Kurt Osiander, was taken out in six seconds.

Hall looked at me with a round-eyed, hard-jawed expression when I asked him, "What happened?"

The showdown was over. A fighter with eyes looking like ripe plums pumped a fist at me.

Meanwhile, Step 6 Productions was fighting its own battle. By Saturday morning, it had hashed out a script for "Ticket to Change" — about trade expert Gloria Lorenz, who falls in love with parking enforcement officer Jimmy Tower, who must outwit his womanizing nemesis Jose Rodriguez — and were in Oakland filming. Eyes were bloodshot, but it was too early for teeth-gnashing.

The next day, director Gavin Garrison came striding down the street a few minutes before the 7:30 p.m. deadline with a laptop hoisted at chin level. The team went through three DVDs and still couldn't get one to work.

"The bell tolls for thee," a man announced as Garrison watched the seconds pass on the computer screen, and the countdown to zero (five-four-three ...) ruthlessly continued. He had slept an hour and showered less frequently.

"I'm shaking. That was intense," he said after slipping the pin drive the team resorted to into the hand of the competition's director without a second to spare. "Ticket to Change" was exactly seven minutes long.

"Who the hell is Willam Loyalo?" Garrison asked, filling in about 2 inches of film releases and paperwork for the competition.

No one could remember.

"The last 48 hours have been tireless. But now we're done," editor Justin Tipping said, hoisting a beer.

Postscript: "Ticket to Change" screened Tuesday at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco. Step 6 might submit the film to the Ojai Film Festival, and I predict at least some of the members are so cravenly adrenaline-addicted there are more 48 Hour Film Projects in their future.

That's all for now, ladies and gentlemen. But if you have a cool shindig, e-mail me at awoodall@bayareanewsgroup.com or visit the Night Owl blog www.ibabuzz.com/nightowl for more events and oddities.