Ok, Oscars are done, and to us that means...

The Academy Awards always sits as a marker on our Filminute calendar. To us it means that the official Filminute Call for Entry is almost upon us. Regardless of the "official" notice, we have remarked on the fact that we have received more early submissions than ever before. That HAS TO BE a good sign :-) Stay tuned for more frequent updates as we ramp up to full strength once again.


BTW, we do have a flurry of recent Twitter and Facebook posts that share Filminute's POV on the Oscars. Follow Filminute at Twitter.com/Filminute and Facebook.com/Filminute.

Gearing up for Filminute 2011

It always feels like such short rest. Soon after we wind down from one festival, we start gearing up for the next year. The official Call for Entry for Filminute 2011 will be announced in Spring 2011, however we will spend the next few months discussing the one-minute film genre and raising expectations on quality. Each year, the films get better and that's not by accident.

We invite you to follow Filminute on Facebook, and we encourage you to participate in the discussion by sharing your views and comments there as filmmakers, creative producers, or members of our audience who love and appreciate one-minute films. During the festival, our Facebook page is one of our most important communication outlets and is easily one of the top means by which our fans share their favourite films.

Twitter account is also one of our important communities. Follow Filminute on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Filminute

Facebook + VOD are more important than television...

"How Facebook Can Become Bigger In 5 Years Than Google Is Today" via @techcrunch

Give the TechCrunch article a read first.

We've been thinking about this for a couple of years, ever since we prototyped running festival screenings within Facebook (we ran a beta test of that during Filminute 2008). Entrepreneur Brad Stewart, using some of the mechanics of his AdJoy video platform, pulled the video stream of our festival films into Facebook. Two years ago, that feat was a lot harder to do than it is today. Facebook is now geared for this kind of thing. But in 2008, that successful trial got Filminute thinking far ahead.

Facebook, we decided, is more important than television. Facebook + video on demand are the directions we bet on to round out Filminute's platform reach (Incidentally, this year's broadband VOD trial is underway in Canada w/ Rogers' RODO platform; and our mobile VOD trial in India is coming soon via Jigsee).

During the all-important first week in September, Filminute customarily picks up a first round of momentum, and we gain our first reaction from the audience. No surprise, we quickly get a sense of which films have pull. What was new for us was the degree to which social media had become measurably important. Films that were shared via friends and peers drove deep engagement with our audience — 5 minutes viewing time from Facebook users, 8 minutes from Twitter users.

Taking what we've learned, wait'll you see our next stunt at Filminute 2011 ;-)

Filmmakers and creative producers who are not paying attention to these shifts are missing a glaring opportunity to chart some of their own destiny. While some of these social media platforms and technologies are unpredictable enough (*cough cough* MySpace...), it's worth familiarising yourself with the pattern of communication that probably will outlast any one platform. Facebook + Twitter are your BFFs (Best Friends For now...)

Filminute tweet #1000

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 ;-)

"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!

Join us.

Join Filminute on Facebook; follow us Twitter 

Submissions..the home stretch

In 11 days, we'll close the door on submissions and begin to make our final selects for Filminute 2010. The persistent and perennial August 20 submission deadlines rules us for 8 months, and then we agonise for a few days making the final cuts. The endless viewing of films, the back and forth between our management team and prospective filmmakers — it always pays off. 

Our selection committee is picky and prickly, and for a reason. We expect our audience and our jurors to be picky and prickly so it's best that we be brutally critical first. Now 5 years into the festival, we owe quality to a worldwide audience when Filminute 2010 goes live on September 1 every year.

Last year, so much of the festival was intertwined with social media, especially with the appearance of LINE on the shortlist. That one-minute film originated as a Twitter post by Twitter fiction writer Arjun Basu. It went on to win our People's Choice award winner, and the twitterati definitely weighed in on that outcome!

Following on that, leading up to September 1 we ask you to do 2 things: join us on Facebook and/or on Twitter, because these platforms are becoming increasingly central to the Filminute festival experience.