Monday, September 27, 2010

Really short takes, on really short films

ASHES
DIRECTOR: Robin King (UK)
"Hell is other people" — Sarte..., and Robin King

AUTO MADAR
DIRECTOR: Vasan Bala (India)
Taxi driver pwned by Assassin late for work

BUSINESS A USUAL
DIRECTORS: Michael Benni Pierce & Shaun Boyle (USA)
Elvis' rocks out at The Office

CHOOSE NOT TO FALL
DIRECTOR: Matthew Marsh (UK)
The Matrix meets le parkour

DARK VALLEY
DIRECTOR: Oskar Arnarson (Iceland)
After seeing this film, you'll never get into an SUV again.

DRINKING AND UNICORNS
DIRECTOR: Motke Dapp (USA)
Superhero has another drink, then goes to fight crime.

DUEL IN THE SUNSET
DIRECTOR: Serdar Taç (Turkey/Slovenia)
Girl, guy, sunset, the moon, and a fight scene at the docks. Ouah!

ECHOES
DIRECTOR: John Riley (UK/Romania)
Mirror in the bathroom, please don't scream...

THE FINN
DIRECTOR: Eric Hynynen (Finland)
One critic described The Finn as the most depressing minute you'll spend all day. Maybe. But it's still kinda funny too because of the puppets.

5:27 PM
DIRECTOR: Jeremiah Crowell (USA)
Next time you're stuck in gridlock, just think how beautiful it is - and forget how miserable you are.

FLESH
DIRECTOR: Maarten Rots (Netherlands)
Peeping Tom holds his ground on a rainy day.

GONE
DIRECTOR: Dhruv Mookerji (India)
Mr Bean goes to Bollywood for a magic show.

GOODBYE MR. NICE GUY
DIRECTORS: Ana Iliesiu & Matei Branea (Romania)
Filminute must have a thing for aliens this year, but this time it's a rom/com.

GUMBOOTS
DIRECTOR: Bauke Brouwer (South Africa)
Stylish wellies, gritty township, happy endings.

AN HONEST DAY'S WORK
DIRECTORS: The Brothers Grinn (USA)
Ok, not so happy ending. It's the most dangerous game.

LISTEN TO YOUR LADY
DIRECTOR: Mark Nava (USA/Serbia)
The prison break flick of the year.

LOVE SUICIDES: PROLOGUE
DIRECTOR: Edmund Yeo (Malaysia/Japan)
Daddy's a ghost and he's kind of a downer.

MADAM A.
DIRECTOR: Daniel Maráky (Czech Republic)
We're still thinking about Madame A's notes: written to remember, or for us not to forget?

MENU
DIRECTOR: Joanna Rechnio (Poland-Slovenia)
Houdini flick for foodies.

NATIONAL 03
DIRECTOR: Ana Mendes (Portugal)
Is everyone waiting for someone to arrive or leave?

A NEW PRAYER
DIRECTOR: Dorin Pene (Romania)
A Mel Brooks and Monty Python-esque take at the gates of heaven, with sms messaging as comic relief.

SERVED COLD
DIRECTOR: Gábor Hörcher (Hungary)
Child actor says "No thank you, I'd rather sit in the closet, please."

SHIVER IN THE EVENING OCEAN AIR
DIRECTOR: Tubomi Koukou (Japan)
Yakuza on the beach.

THE WALL
DIRECTOR: Tomas Rafa (Slovak Republic)
Worth noting: A wall is a wall is a wall.

YELLOW
DIRECTOR: Motke Dapp (USA)
A taxi driver for the peak oil era

★★★★ VIEW, RATE, COMMENT and VOTE
www.Filminute.com ★★★★

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Filminute on Feedback

Every year, Filminute has committed to collecting a cross-section of comments to share with each director on our shortlist. We often extend that feedback and support to films that narrowly missed making the final cut.

What we have heard back from filmmakers is that some gleaned more insight around their work from participating in Filminute over any other film festival they had ever entered. We would like to keep up to this high standard that Filminute has set.

This year we've specifically augmented and refined the social media support around the films and the festival experience. We are gauging whether audiences will be more prone to communicate even more around the films, and we curious to see what the qualitative difference is in the feedback sent to us via our form presented beneath each film -VS- the comments put out to the Twitterverse, Facebook, et al.

Given the recent research discoveries around Twitter being a better predictor of box office than prediction markets (research by HP Labs, covered in Fast Company), we wondered if that parallel would provide any indicators or insights that would be useful to filmmakers.

As we hope you can appreciate, Filminute is more than just one experiment. We expect our hypotheses to lead to a collection of insights and outcomes that first benefit our Filminute community (adding 25 filmmakers every year). In turn, we hope to have a larger impact on the film, television, and creative industries through our community.

Last but not least, in support of all these experiment, please do invite your peers, networks, friends and family to participate fully. In under one hour, everyone can rate all the films, provide comments on some, share several, and vote for their favourite. This is how we will grow the data and build a large enough sample to validate whatever we find. 7 DAYS LEFT! Let's max out and see what we learn.

★ Everybody's a critic, so rate all the films ;-)

Monday, September 20, 2010

Guest blog post from @ajenkins


A thoughtful post from @ajenkins that we're publishing to the Filminute blog.
I have been a big fan of Filminute since its inception. As a filmmaker and film lover, festivals have been my source for the new, the potentially overlooked and the thought provoking films. Festivals are especially critical for supporting documentaries and I count myself fortunate for the access to documentaries that festivals like Filminute provide.
I will never forget seeing the premiere of The Crying Game at TIFF and heard the air get sucked out of the theatre from the audience’s collective gasp when the film’s secret was revealed. It’s those unforgettable moments of surprise, joy, tears, anger and wonder that festivals are all about and Filminute has been able to provide those moments every year.

What’s more impressive is the power that the films are able to convey in just sixty seconds. Filminute illustrates how filmmakers can say so much with so little. It has been said that innovation comes from constraints. Filminute provides filmmakers constraints in spades and they respond with innovative stories, approaches and truly high calibre product.

Out of the twenty-five semi-finalists, the five films that really resonated with me this year in no particular order were:

5:27 - a juxtaposition of lots of activity with little movement
Choose Not To Fall - inspiration and overcoming fear through parkour
Dark Valley - adhering to Hitchcock’s mantra that what you don’t see is always scarier
Echoes - two periods in the same life connected through a mirror
Madam A. - sound and visuals married for powerful effect and a single object, a piece of barbed wire, telling so much without saying anything

I encourage you to take a few minutes, pardon the pun, and view the films. You will be provoked, touched and, most of all entertained.

Andrew Jenkins
Filmmaker in a previous life

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Prize money versus prestige

This question comes up from time to time. : Why no prize money from Filminute? In 2005 when we came up with the idea, we focused our lean budgets on building a brand, and our goal was to build a presence as remarked upon as the Academy Awards, the business acumen of the Toronto International Film Festival, the splash of Cannes, and the indie spark of Sundance. I'd say we're part way there on some of these, and we'll not let up on pursuit of this vision as a driver of the festival.

Filminute then, without fail every year, gathers a respected and sharp jury that's arguably as good as any feature length-oriented film festival.


Finally, we do out best to build a massive, worldwide audience. Filminute's festival content reaches more audiences in more countries in one month than any major film festival (107 countries at last check-in, and on some years we've hit as many as 120).

If we did all this and offered a $500 prize, even a $5,000 prize, we'd lose the real filmmakers and end up w/ first year film students and junior league entries. We're just not keen on Amateur Night. That's not to say that students never make it through. You'll always hear Filminute say that a one-minute film "levels the playing field" — it's possible for a student or debutante creative producer to make the right film, the right way, and stand up to the pros.

Filminute set out to build the best brand in the world we possibly could, and increasingly we are attracting some standout filmmakers, artists, commercial directors, animators, writers, and so on. And it's quite satisfying to see all these people chatting each other up across multiple time zones on Filminute's Facebook page ;-)

That being said, if Filminute lands some windfall and musters up a million dollar prize, we'll bug you to submit a film same way we always do ;-)

Rate this film!

When it comes to film, everybody has an opinion. Please translate that opinion on each film by rating all 25 films at Filminute 2010. Your ratings and comments provide a source of insight to the filmmakers and directors.

Don't forget about VOTING for your favourite film as well. Last but not least, share the films you loved to watch.

On our Facebook page, many of the shortlisted directors have been participating in discussions about the films. Feel free to join in and tell us what you think. Which films on the shortlist resonate with you most?

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

10 days, 107 countries, 2035 cities, and counting...

How accessible can a film festival be? With no tickets, no lineups, and pure access, Filminute reaches a lot of cities and countries in a short amount of time.

Please share the films you love as far and away as the films can go. Filminute continues to reach more people in more countries every year. We would love your help building a film festival with greater reach than any other. One look at the map and as far as we're concerned, we're just getting started ;-)

Wednesday, September 08, 2010

Monday, September 06, 2010

Momentum, from Country to Country

Filminute sees a consistent pattern every year: countries represented on the shortlist support their filmmakers passionately. This is no different than what we have come to expect of the Olympics, and what we saw at every World Cup. We wondered if large countries would simply end up with an insurmountable advantage by generating "national" votes and handily winning the Filminute's People's Choice award.

As it turns out, the films that win tend to generate ratings and votes from A LOT of countries. As a result, we've seen excellent showings at Filminute by small countries like Belgium and Hungary. James Cooper's Canadian entry"Life" won the Filminute 2009 People's Choice award and it was most definitely the nation of "Twitter" that won the day. Votes poured in from every continent. Canada's relatively small population of 34 million was not going to be nearly enough to make a big enougfh dent on its own.

So, if you've got a film at Filminute 2010, we encourage you to get the word out locally, but also remind you that the world is your audience. Make sure you alert everyone you know, everywhere that they are, that you want them to watch your film.



We're happy to see Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary, Iceland, India, Japan, Malaysia, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, South Africa, Turkey, UK and USA at Filminute.com — some countries representing more passionately than others.

It's far too early to tell which films will gain international momentum and win the day. Lots more drama to come.
Filminute sees a consistent pattern every year: countries represented on the shortlist support their filmmakers passionately. This is no different than what we have come to expect of the Olympics, and what we saw at every World Cup. We wondered if large countries would simply end up with an insurmountable advantage by generating "national" votes and handily winning the Filminute's People's Choice award.

As it turns out, the films that win tend to generate ratings and votes from A LOT of countries. As a result, we've seen excellent showings at Filminute by small countries like Belgium and Hungary. James Cooper's Canadian entry"Life" won the Filminute 2009 People's Choice award and it was most definitely the nation of "Twitter" that won the day. Votes poured in from every continent. Canada's relatively small population of 34 million was not going to be nearly enough to make a big enougfh dent on its own.

So, if you've got a film at Filminute 2010, we encourage you to get the word out locally, but also remind you that the world is your audience. Make sure you alert everyone you know, everywhere that they are, that you want them to watch your film.

We're happy to see Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary, Iceland, India,
Japan, Malaysia, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, South Africa, Turkey, UK and USA at Filminute.com — some countries representing more passionately than others.

It's far too early to tell which films will gain international momentum and win the day. Lots more drama to come.

Sunday, September 05, 2010

Filminute and the Browser Wars

We're fascinated by The Browser Wars that have raged over the past decade between Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer, Opera, and now Chrome. Who watches Filminute and from what browser? And what does it tell us about our target audience?

Filminute has always been predominantly watched on Firefox. But here are our latest stats:

43.59% Firefox     
19.45% Chrome
17.52% Internet Explorer
14.10% Safari
4.26%   Opera

CHROME!?! Wow...Chrome's come from nowhere on the radar, to edging out Internet Explorer. That makes me start to wonder who's using Chrome and what is the profile or correlation between those users and entertainment/leisure/digital content?

Saturday, September 04, 2010

The Weekend Guide to Filminute 2010

Watch an entire film festival in under 30 minutes.

**********
WHO
25 film and animation productions from 18 countries.

WHAT
One-minute films.
60 seconds – no more, no less.

FROM WHERE
Czech Republic, Finland, Japan, Hungary, Iceland, India, Malaysia, Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, the UK and USA, with South Africa, Turkey and Poland seeing their first contributions ever to the exclusive shortlist.

WHEN
Come and rate these films right now!
And vote for your favourite before September 30.

WHY
Because you'll be surprised by what's possible in 60 seconds.
Because some of these films will make you laugh.
Because some of these films are a work of art.
Because all of these films beat out 1000 other films.
Because it's a film festival you can fully experience in under 30 minutes. Truly.

HOW
Go to http://www.filminute.com and watch a film.
Rate that film.
Share that film.
Enjoy.

**********
;-)

*

Friday, September 03, 2010

"LIKE" Filminute on Facebook

Directly and indirectly, Facebook drove 31% of traffic to the festival site in the first day. Facebook and Twitter have increasingly played a larger role in the success of Filminute, but this is over the top.

We've put up a custom "Filminute 2010" tab, and we will evolve that in a couple of days. We tested out a screening room capability and we'll tweak it and launch it soon. Stay tuned!

In the meantime, we invite you to visit our Facebook page and leave any comments about the festival And don't leave without becoming a fan!

Thursday, September 02, 2010

Filminute Stats, Day 1

Here's a view on who's visiting the site from Day 1 of the festival. Romanian fans are always passionate about this festival, and that comes as no surprise given the consistently strong showing of Romanian filmmakers on our shortlist.

The surprises here would be the arrival of the US at this level of visitor traffic. Great to see Icelandic fans supporting one of their entries!

These number do tend to change dramatically as the festival audiences ramp up, and watching those audience numbers swings is part of the geeky enjoyment we get out of running this film festival.

Everybody's a critic. ★ OR ★★ OR ★★★ OR ★★★★ OR ★★★★★?

Everyone has an answer to the question "What's your favourite film?" When our jurors review the shortlisted 25 films, we ask them to judge the submissions as "films", which brings a subjective and an objective critique to the process.

Our ratings from the public are just as important as the decision by our Filminute jury.  ★ OR ★★ OR ★★★ OR ★★★★ OR ★★★★★? Let us know what you think of each film. In addition, we hope you share these films via Facebook, Twitter, email, etc. We set out to build a film festival that was accessible to as many people worldwide as possible, which is possible when dealing with one-minute films.

Last but not least, the People's Choice Award: everyone in the world is entitled to one vote. After you've watched all 25 films, make your selection of the "best" film, best for whatever reason that resonates with you personally. We've never had the jury and the public finally agree on a winning film — although some years it's come close.

Wednesday, September 01, 2010

WELCOME to Filminute 2010. Congratulations to the makers of these 25 films.

THE FILMINUTE 2010 SHORTLIST

ASHES
DIRECTOR: Robin King
UK

AUTO MADAR
DIRECTOR: Vasan Bala
India

BUSINESS A USUAL
DIRECTORS: Michael Benni Pierce & Shaun Boyle
USA

CHOOSE NOT TO FALL
DIRECTOR: Matthew Marsh
UK

DARK VALLEY

DIRECTOR:
Oskar Arnarson
Iceland

DRINKING AND UNICORNS

DIRECTOR:
Motke Dapp
USA

DUEL IN THE SUNSET

DIRECTOR:
Serdar Taç
Turkey/Slovenia

ECHOES
DIRECTOR: John Riley
UK/Romania

THE FINN
DIRECTOR: Eric Hynynen
Finland

5:27PM

DIRECTOR:
Jeremiah Crowell
USA

FLESH

DIRECTOR:
Maarten Rots
Netherlands

GONE

DIRECTOR:
Dhruv Mookerji
India

GOODBYE MR. NICE GUY

DIRECTORS:
Ana Iliesiu & Matei Branea
Romania

GUMBOOTS
DIRECTOR: Bauke Brouwer
South Africa

AN HONEST DAY'S WORK

DIRECTORS:
The Brothers Grinn
USA

LISTEN TO YOUR LADY

DIRECTOR:
Mark Nava
USA/Serbia

LOVE SUICIDES: PROLOGUE
DIRECTOR: Edmund Yeo
Malaysia/Japan

MADAM A.
Daniel Maráky
Czech Republic

MENU

DIRECTOR:
Joanna Rechnio
Poland-Slovenia

NATIONAL 03
DIRECTOR: Ana Mendes
Portugal

A NEW PRAYER

DIRECTOR:
Dorin Pene
Romania

SERVED COLD

DIRECTOR:
Gábor Hörcher
Hungary

SHIVER IN THE EVENING OCEAN AIR
DIRECTOR: Tubomi Koukou
Japan

THE WALL
DIRECTOR: Tomas Rafa
Slovak Republic

YELLOW

DIRECTOR:
Motke Dapp
USA

VIEW, RATE, COMMENT & VOTE
www.Filminute.com