A long weekend down south usually means fun, friends and sun.

But for three NIU students, a trip to Birmingham, Ala., meant working three 16-hour days with a monstrous furnace to create the craft of their business.

They were filming the 96-band music festival Furnace Fest, with plans to release a six-hour DVD through 3B Studios, their self-made production company.

The group will present two hours of its wares at 8 p.m. today during a free screening at the Holmes Student Center’s Diversions Lounge.

“This is what we want to do for the rest of our lives,” said 3B Studios member Ryan Wilson, a senior communication major. “We want to tape, we want to record people’s lives through them being in bands.”

The business includes seniors Marc Barbour, Scott Dunham and Wilson, as well as Donnie Martin, who graduated from Northern Arizona University in May.

Today’s screening is a way for their work to be critiqued in the best way, Dunham said.

“We want to show people, and get their input and their feedback on it, so we know what the audience is thinking, how they perceive it, and how they’re going to interpret it,” said Dunham, a senior time arts major. “We interpret it one way, and a lot of people won’t interpret it the same way. We want to know what people will feel and think about it.”

Furnace Fest was the group’s most important project yet. At the site of Sloss Furnaces, a national landmark where 300,000 people visit each year, the event featured punk rock and hardcore acts including Andrew W.K., Dillenger Escape Plan and Hatebreed from Aug. 1 to 3.

“I’ll remember those days,” Wilson said. “Just seeing the amount of people that gathered for one festival, and the amount of different lifestyles that were there. … To me it’s all music, to me it’s all one lifestyle. To me, we all bleed red. There was no need for diversity. I can sit down and talk to anybody. Anybody that wants to come to me, I’m ready to listen anytime.”

The guys found out they were going to the fest about two weeks beforehand. They had shot only one performance before and had just one Canon GL-1 digital video camera, valued at $1,800.

“We at least needed two more of those,” Dunham said. “Donnie and Marc took out a loan, and they both bought GL-1s.”

Those weren’t the only pre-trip expenses. After the nearly $3,000 camera purchase, 3B Studios needed 200 tapes, which put an $890 bill on Wilson’s credit card.

Dunham then yanked more than $500 in stocks from his money market account to rent a van for the 11-hour trip.

Martin came through with his mom’s gas card and other financial help, in addition to the $12,000 in cashed stocks he already had put toward 3B.

Barbour had earnings from his UPS job, as well as some help from his folks.

“We pooled all available cash,” said Barbour, a communication major emphasizing in media studies. “I spent more than what I had. I owed the bank about $300 in overdraft fees.”

It was worth it, because they had a “fantastic time” and returned with more than 180 hours of video – filmed by all four guys with help from two others – on about 150 tapes. The footage, however, needed to be viewed and have its data logged and entered into an Excel spreadsheet.

The foursome is fairly organized. Their hundreds of mini DV (digital video) tapes, which measure about two by one-and-a-half inches, are stacked neatly in a tall black bookcase at their Edgebrook Drive townhouse.

They’ve logged about 140 of the tapes so far.

Booking the show ultimately was a simple process. Martin brought up the idea of filming the concert, and they fired off an e-mail to festival organizer Chad Johnson. Within hours, they began negotiating a deal to film the show for Tooth and Nail/Solid State Records.

“This is something we did for fun and we liked to do,” Dunham said. “And it was gonna make us get out there, and get known.”

3B Studios is now spending most of its time editing the many video clips, some of which are available for download at www.3bstudios.net.

“I don’t think we’d be anywhere right now if it wasn’t for our Web site,” Dunham said. “That is our way to get out to the masses.”

They have five gigabytes of space for $200 a year, but the server’s bandwidth can’t handle the site’s traffic. It once had 5,700 hits in one day, and a few months ago averaged 270 unique visitors per day. It’s since settled at about 100 visits per day.

The group plans to release the double-disc DVD, “Furnace Fest 2002,” sometime in January or February 2003. Initially, 3B Studios will press about 1,500 copies, which will be distributed commercially by Revolution Records.

“That’ll be pretty much going out to a lot of places,” Dunham said. “From Borders (2520 Sycamore Road) to Record Revolution (817 W. Lincoln Highway). And, at any local record store, you will be able to ask to order it and they can order it.”

Dunham and Barbour keep busy by filming Huskie football games and other events for NIU Media Services, including Saturday’s big victory over Bowling Green.

They’ve only missed two games in the last three seasons.

“That’s pretty much how we learned a lot of our technical training,” Dunham said. “We’ve filmed about 30 or 35 games for NIU. We take shots that are designed for the coaches. That’s where I started learning a lot about video framing.”

Besides producing the DVD, 3B Studios has other events coming up. Unearth, a band they met at Furnace Fest, asked the group to film its show this Saturday in Chicago.

“The best part has been talking to the bands,” Wilson said. “Getting to know them, knowing they’re on your side, and that they want to do everything they can to help you out. For me, they’re like heroes. I listen to their music day in and day out. Being able to meet these people and just conversate with them is amazing.”