Christian Filmmakers

We’re organizing a 36-hour video contest for May 27-28, 2011.

Filmmakers around the world will produce a three-minute story on video starting Friday, May 27 at 9 AM, CST.  36-hours later, 9 PM Saturday the 28th, they will upload their video to YouTube. Judges will score entries on Story, Cinematography, Sound, Performance and Editing.

For this contest, your $25 Pro entry fee will go into a prize pool. If more filmmakers enter videos, prizes will rise! First prize will be 60% and Second 40%. ($5 is used for administrative costs) (Prizes from previous contests were First Place: $700 and Second Place: $300.)  Amateur Entry category, with a $5 entry fee will get an opportunity to get input from the judges.

Depending on Responses, Sponsors may contribute to the prize pool, be sure to check out their services!

(if I got something wrong, it will change…)

Awesome! Can’t wait to see the entries (and to enter mine! :])

Sweet! Definitely going to try and enter again! 

Coolio!  If I haven’t been struck by lightning I’ll likely give it another go! 

Question for the organizers.  I know in previous years, if we wanted to use a non-original score/song, we were required to get permission from the artist/distributor prior to making the movie ... BUT ... I was wondering if we could get away with just giving them kudos in the credits?  Reason I’m asking is that last time I had an idea that I thought would be really good BUT the artist/distributor of the background score I wanted to use (WHICH WAS A PERFECT FIT I MIGHT ADD) never got back to me.  This left me in a bit of a lurch having to reluctantly switch over to my backup idea with a little over a week until the comp.

Thoughts?
K

Sounds good to me! 

Looking forward to this!  I’m on the organizer team.    Kent, I’ll have to ask someone else about your question for confirmation, but I assume that, for legal purposes, you need permission to use someone else’s work - especially if you’re entering in the Pro category, where you could win money from it.

The rules have always been that works must be original or you must have license to use them.  I don’t personally think it would be wise to change that, not only for legal reasons but for reasons of creativity.

Of course everyone’s videos would be better if they had a Luciano Pavarotti solo for the soundtrack, but it doesn’t take a whole lot of effort on the part of the filmmaker to slap that on there.

By licence, do you mean written proof? Or is asking a band for use of their music good enough?

I have emails from the artists/distributors for the ones that I’ve used previous years.  I always thought that was good enough.

Michael Traven wrote:

The rules have always been that works must be original or you must have license to use them.  I don’t personally think it would be wise to change that, not only for legal reasons but for reasons of creativity.

Of course everyone’s videos would be better if they had a Luciano Pavarotti solo for the soundtrack, but it doesn’t take a whole lot of effort on the part of the filmmaker to slap that on there.

Ya ... I guess the prize money puts a little twist on things legally ... so I withdraw my request for artistic “Kudos” because of that obvious oversight on my part.
However, I respectfully disagree with your creativity statement Mike because a large number of films these days use songs that were not scored specifically for that movie ... but their placement was PERFECT for that scene of the movie.  To “slap” just any song in there won’t make any of our films better ... but, as an AVID music lover in virtually all genres, the perfect song is just as important as perfect lighting, the perfect angle, and the perfect pregnant pause.  EVERYTHING takes effort and creative vision in film making ... don’t ya think? 

I’ve been wanting to win this contest for a while, I think I just might enter =)