suggestion Online film competiton

indietalk

indietalk

IndieTalk Founder
Staff Member
Admin
Let me know your thoughts on an official IndieTalk film competition!

We have a program that will let you enter and vote. There will be prizes, yes. The suggestions I need are more on the format. This will be ongoing, so the questions are:

If they are monthly, would you be able to complete a film in a month or shorter?
To make sure they are made for IndeTalk there would need to be some sort of proof. However this can be worked into creativity. Like, character name, a line of dialog, and a prop. Example:

Nancy
"You broke it!"
A peach

Their could be certain length limits.
There would be a period where you have time to enter, for the month. For example, the first 7 days. Then, the rest of the month people post them. At the end of the month the voting begins and the next one starts (as it will be ongoing, with a yearly bigger prize). Or, perhaps voting lasts a whole month, and we alternate. One month is entries. One month is voting. And so on. That seems better for activity.

This was a brainstorm. Please add your thoughts!
 
I think it's a great idea. The "proof" is similar to 48 hour film festivals, which is good. Perhaps movies 5 minutes long or less?

My gut reaction is a bit less than 1 competition per month, as people may get weary of it. I like your idea of 1 month for submitting and the next for voting, so 6 winners per year.
 
Yes, and listing it on Film Freeway would help but also want to make sure it is active. Quarterly could be good as well.
 
We could call it IndieTalkies
(Talkies being the old term for movies with sound)
or "This is IT!"
Or.....
lol

It will have a better name ;)
 
mlesemann said:
I think it's a great idea. The "proof" is similar to 48 hour film festivals, which is good. Perhaps movies 5 minutes long or less?

My gut reaction is a bit less than 1 competition per month, as people may get weary of it. I like your idea of 1 month for submitting and the next for voting, so 6 winners per year.
Click to expand...

I have the same reaction... i think you could do the whole thing in a month. but you wouldn't want it to be every month.
Those 48 hour film festivals aren't weekend after weekend after weekend.

I think it would also be nice to level the playing field some of the time.
Maybe one month the theme could be that you have to shoot it using a cell phone, or something like that.
Another month make it some other requirement like only using two actors, etc.
 
indietalk said:
Quarterly could be good as well.
Click to expand...

Quarterly gets my vote.

Instead of a 48 Hour style competition how about keeping it to a basic genre. The first quarter could be horror, for example, the next quarter could be drama, the third quarter comedy, the fourth quarter action.

Also, perhaps, budget categories - $100 or less, $101 to $500, $501 to $1,000, $1,000 and up.

Maybe even equipment categories - cell phone, DSLR, Pro gear.

Another idea is time/length categories, 5 minutes or less, 6 to 10 minutes, 15 minutes or more, corresponding to one month, one quarter and semi-annual. There could also be an annual animation competition, since animating takes an awfully long time.

Quite a few years ago I participated in a "Midnite Madness" festival; midnight on Wednesday you got the 48 hour style instructions, but more general - genre and general props (i.e. comedy, food; horror, vehicle; drama, garden tools; etc.), length was minimum five minutes, maximum 10 minutes, due by midnight the following Wednesday, so you had seven days with a weekend in the middle. (We got comedy & food and created "Baptism By Food" which came in 2nd in the comedy category, with best actress, best prop use [there was a food fight] and best sound - other comedy groups got different random props. It was the first project I did with my favorite producer, Dianne.)
 
budget categories seem strange without some sort of prize with a monetary value
but equipment categories is great.. or maybe if you include the equipment prices as part of the budget ?

whatever the solution there should be some way to make the poor broke dreamers compete alongside the seasoned pros
 
Definitely keep the submission period separate from the voting period. I contribute to a fortnightly photo challenge on another forum, where the voting takes place in "real time". The photos posted at the start of the two-week period generally get far more votes than those put up just before the deadline, regardless of how good the picture is.

As for categorising ... for a new competition, it sounds a bit OTT until you've an idea of how popular is the challenge. Putting a limit on the duration and having a "must include" phrase/scene will already limit the entries in any one round. I think recognising/rewarding other attributes (budget, equipment) would be better kept for the annual awards.
 
I think this would be good, though would require a critical mass of people participating to make it work. When we've done similar things on here in the past – like the Secret Santas – it's been quite hard to ensure that everyone is making them on time. And I do think that Indietalk's great strength is that we have characters and are a community, and are not just somewhere people come once to promote their film and move on. So it would be nice to find a way of making this work for lots of IT's regulars.

An idea: I also think that a short screenplay competition would be fun, and much easier for people like me who aren't making films these days. It might be nice to have them anonymous and readable (did we maybe do this is the past? Can't remember but rings a bell) and then, perhaps, we could encourage people to make versions of the winning script for the next month's film competition? Just an idea!
 
NickClapper said:
An idea: I also think that a short screenplay competition would be fun, and much easier for people like me who aren't making films these days. It might be nice to have them anonymous and readable (did we maybe do this is the past? Can't remember but rings a bell) and then, perhaps, we could encourage people to make versions of the winning script for the next month's film competition? Just an idea!
Click to expand...

I like this idea a lot.

My husband is an actor, and one of the things that we discuss a lot is the number of directors who write a screenplay so they have something to make, without actually knowing how to write a good screenplay. It frustrates him as an actor, and I know that there are lots of good writers who would love to get a short screenplay produced.
 
I figure with some more brainstorming and as the site grows, we could kick something off in January. So stay tuned and feel free to add ideas.
 
What if instead of doing it as a festival (which would need judging, voting, awards, possibly distribution, laurels, etc.), you just did it in a student/learning capacity? Like others mentioned, a quarterly challenge project, where we all make a small 3-5 minute piece based on category and prop. Quarterly is plenty of time to make something fun and cool, worthy of feedback and competition.

There are plenty of festivals out there, but hardly any of them give great feedback. Even more so if the film isn't very good. You are either selected or not.

What is needed are places to submit a sub-par film, or films that won't necessarily be great, that a Filmmaker could get feedback from his/her peers on how to make the next project better. The only place that really has this is Reddit, and unless you get up voted a lot, you wont get much in the way of feedback.

Everyone wants praise for something they work hard on, but I would rather have someone do a deep dive on my content, and really give me resources to make the next project better.
 
Why not do a monthly challenge? I saw a site around here somewhere that does this. They come up with a monthly theme (it has all the same requirements as a 48 hour contest), but give people a month to make a small 2 or 5 minute film the best they can with the assets they have?

It would give us all something to work on together, critique, and publish people's talents at the same time.

I heard on a thread earlier that there was talk of an online festival, but this would be even easier. There would be a leader board, audience vote for best monthly film out of the submissions. Even if only 2 people do it, it still gives us something to work on together and talk about?

This could even tie into @GOLDENMORAL CINEMAS idea for a specified team, working together on something for the sake of improving abilities.

Any thoughts?
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top