emails alerting shortlisted filmmakers

We started alerting filmmakers today, about 20 of the 25 films are confirmed. The 5 spots still to be decided will come out of 7 or 8 films jockeying for the final spots. On some we are waiting for a final edit, on others we just haven't heard back from the filmmakers... Imagine that!?!

After all that creativity and effort, they're ignoring us! We'll try not to be offended.

Festival begins September 1, and all will be revealed.

Follow us on Facebook and on Twitter for all the latest news and commentary on Filminute 2011.

Revving up the blog, once again

Admittedly, Twitter has turned us into lazy bloggers. But the time has come once again to rev up the blog and slowly start gearing up for the next few milestone dates (the 20 August submission deadline, and the 1 September start date of Filminute 2011).


We've been using Blogger from the start. Of late, we've started paying attention to some of the innovations in other blogging platforms (like Tumblr). Deep down we were hoping not to have to switch platforms. CLEARLY there are some advantages to being on a platform owned by Google... Search, Google Analytics, Adwords...it all adds up. Blogger also ranks as the most reliable platform (widely reported in December 2010, eg. TechCrunch)


We've had a peek at what's brewing, and we hope some of these design innovations come into play soon... Here's a preview they've hinted at.

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

Nominate Filminute for a Mashable Award

Something like this might help get Filminute and some of our shortlisted filmmakers even more on the map :-)

If you can remember to vote for Filminute once a day until end of November, that'd be great! Click the Mashable Awards (or the graphic on the left) to land on a page that votes for us.

Thanks in advance for your help.

UK, ROMANIA AND ICELAND TAKE TOP AWARDS AT FILMINUTE 2010

UK, ROMANIA AND ICELAND TAKE TOP AWARDS AT FILMINUTE 2010
Acrobatics, divine comedy and a good fright inspire the winning narratives at Filminute, the international one-minute film festival.

TORONTO/BUCHAREST, 7 October 2010 – After a month of online screenings, Filminute 2010 announced the award winners for this year’s film festival. CHOOSE NOT TO FALL, an inspiring and acrobatic documentary from the UK, has been awarded BEST FILMINUTE honours by the seven-member international jury. The unlikely mix of philosophy and real stunts made for exciting viewing and marks the first time that a documentary has won the top honours at Filminute.

Watch the Filminute 2010 Awards clip from Filminute on Vimeo.

 

The online festival audience from 124 countries, each viewer permitted one vote only, chose the Romanian comedy A NEW PRAYER for the People's Choice Award. A NEW PRAYER jousted with films from Iceland and South Africa and pipped ahead to finally win the popular vote.

The top-rated film was DARK VALLEY, an inventively frightening film from Iceland that all takes place in an SUV standing in the frozen tundra. The film accumulated a rating of 4.7 on the 5-star scale.  

CHOOSE NOT TO FALL is directed by Matthew Marsh and features Daniel Ilabaca, a likeable and talented practitioner of parkour — the urban and physical discipline where athletes train to overcome any obstacle in their path by adapting their movements to the environment. Ilabaca is one of the world’s leading parkour athletes and he is transcendental in his delivery of an articulate and optimistic message against “risk free achievement running rampant in youth culture,” as one juror wrote.

John Ketchum, Filminute’s co-founder and head of jury singled out CHOOSE NOT TO FALL as the most quoted film in the festival, with many references and comments from online voters and Facebook fans repeating Ilabaca’s line “If you’re afraid of falling you fall because you’re afraid.”

A NEW PRAYER won the People’s Choice award by generating fans from dozens of countries. Director Dorin Pene takes on the gates of Heaven in a one-scene film that proved to be broadly appealing. The film playfully uses instant messaging as a comedic device, with messaged pleas to a higher power arriving and constantly interrupting the two main characters. The director’s sensibility hints at the work of both Mel Brooks and Monty Python.

12 of the 25 films generated ratings of 4.0 stars or better. DARK VALLEY at 4.7 stars topped them all. “Alien meets Iceland”, quipped one rater of the film. Icelandic director Óskar Arnarson delivers a delightful fright with the most inventive use of side and rear view mirrors to build dramatic tension. And like many masterful horror films, Arnarson’s attention to sound design and ominous shadows is no accident.

 

The Jury

Seven international jury members judge the 25 shortlisted films and help maintain the high standards for which the Filminute festival has become known. Jurors are asked to evaluate the one-minute films with the same discipline and criteria by which they might evaluate a full-length feature film, animation or documentary. This year’s jury includes luminaries from the film, media, art and advertising worlds: Guardian contributor and film critic RONALD BERGAN; Academy Award-nominated director NEILL BLOMKAMP (DISTRICT 9); writer and director TANUJA CHANDRA; JAN LUMHOLDT of FIRPRESCI; MARK TUTSSEL, global chief creative officer for Leo Burnett Worldwide. Filminute’s co-founders John Ketchum and Sabaa Quao round out the jury.

5 Jury Commendations

The Filminute 2010 jury awarded commendations to 5 films ranked in the following order:

AUTO MADAR (INDIA) Directed by Vasan Bala

An assassin, already late for work, is further stymied by his inability to catch a cab.

GOODBYE MR. NICE GUY (ROMANIA) Directed by Ana Iliesiu & Matei Branea

A one-minute romantic comedy? Why not! Animation and live action are cleverly blended in this offbeat breakup story.

GUMBOOTS (SOUTH AFRICA) Directed by Bauke Brouwer

This gritty and ultimately triumphant story also distinguishes itself as the first film from South Africa to make the Filminute shortlist.

LOVE SUICIDES: PROLOGUE (MALAYSIA / JAPAN) Directed by Edmund Yeo

The simplicity of the film belies the complex story of a family haunted by the demands of the father’s ghost.

FLESH (NETHERLANDS) Directed by Maarten Rots

The persistence of a voyeur standing in the rain leads to a tense and uncomfortable confrontation.

“The range of countries and stories on the jury’s commendation list support the belief we stated when we started Filminute in 2006. One-minute films level the playing field. These films prove that no country has a monopoly on great stories,” says Filminute co-founder Sabaa Quao. “So many of this year’s films do prompt us to watch them two and three times in a row.”

This year’s award-winners were selected from a lineup of 25 films from 18 countries. The shortlist of 25 was narrowed from a field of more than 2000 film and animation screenings and submissions.

Impact of social media

Again, Twitter and Facebook play a key role in the promotion and growth of the festival. Filminute screened the full festival collection within Facebook, as a complement to the main screening room at Filminute.com The impact of social media on film and television properties appears to affect Filminute no differently than the mainstream industry. The festival organizers pointed out that Facebook users drove 30% of the festival’s audience, up from 15% last year. Facebook-driven audiences generated an average of 5 minutes of viewing time. Twitter followers generated an average of 8 minutes on the Filminute site. “We’ll be analyzing our audience habits and preferences over the next few weeks. We expect to be make even bigger strides helping filmmakers reach more audiences, and social media will play an increasingly bigger role in that process,” says Ketchum.

Founded in 2006 by John Ketchum and Sabaa Quao, Filminute is a unique and truly international film festival run by staffers in Bucharest, London, Toronto, Vancouver, and Panama. Each year, the festival experiment with different platforms to complement the main site.

The winning films and the complete Filminute shortlist can be viewed at www.filminute.com and at www.Facebook.com/filminute In Canada, Filminute experimented with broadband video on demand and has a channel at www.rogersondemand.com/channels/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...)

Winding down on voting. Winding up for announcements :-)

Filminute tweet #1000

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 ★★★★

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 ;-)

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

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?

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 ;-)

The Filminute promotional trailer.

A 60-second trailer, for 60-second movies. How post-modern!

Filminute 2010 Showreel from Filminute on Vimeo.

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.

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?

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.

**********

;-)

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