Announcement of Prizes

vitualis · Moderator Joined: 01 Oct 2000 Location: Australia

Firstly, thanks to all the entrants into the first VideoHelp.com Short Film Competition. It has been hard work on our side getting this competition off the ground, but it pales into insignificance compared to the obvious planning, effort and thought that has gone into the excellent short film submissions.

Secondly, thanks go to all the other moderators who have helped me design and run this competition and spent time discussing and judging each short film.

Third, a general thanks to all the members of VideoHelp.com for taking an active interest, downloading the short films and rating them in the "Member's Choice Award".

Last but not least, thanks of course goes to Baldrick.

Now, the prizes!

The Cunning Plan
http://forum.videohelp.com/viewtopic.php?t=290057

First place and winner of "The Baldrick" (prize $200)
Best Cinematography (prize $100)
Best Screenplay / Acting (prize $100)
Best Technical production (prize $100)
Winner of the Member's Choice Award (prize $200)

Total prize money: $700

Undoubtedly the best short film of the competition, the favourite of the VideoHelp members, and my personal favourite. Congratulations to Kristy Linderholm.

Paul's Reverie
http://forum.videohelp.com/viewtopic.php?t=290065

Second Place Winner (prize $200)

A favourite amongst several of the other judges, congratulations to Thomas Shaddox for an excellent short film.

Wasp
http://forum.videohelp.com/viewtopic.php?t=290068

Third Place Winner (prize $200)
Best Soundtrack (prize $100)

Total prize money: $300

A truly remarkable short film from a self described amateur. Superb combination of "live action" and animation and with the stunning use of surround sound effects, wins the "best soundtrack" award. Congratulations to Bo Johansen.

Good Day
http://forum.videohelp.com/viewtopic.php?t=290060

Fourth Place Winner (prize $200)

A unique and artistic film, quite different from many of the other entries. Congratulations Mani Ghodratnama for producing an excellent short film.

Baldrick - City of Tomorrow and The Baldrick
http://forum.videohelp.com/viewtopic.php?t=290056
http://forum.videohelp.com/viewtopic.php?t=290066

Equal Fifth Place Winners (prize $100 each)

Excellent efforts and perhaps under-appreciated, these two films were particularly well received by the judges for keeping well to the theme word.

Congratulations to Onnie Granados and Eric Thomasma!

There you have it! The winning films of the VideoHelp.com Short Film Competition 2005. If we could, we would give everyone a prize, however, it is a competition after all.

All prize winners should contact me by e-mail (my e-mail address was in your application package) if you want to receive your prize. Monetary prizes are sent through PayPal only. Thus you will need to either provide me with the e-mail address you use for PayPal (or if you don't already have an account), just an e-mail account you are willing to use with PayPal. The prize money has been generously been provided by Baldrick, VideoHelp.com administrator.

Best regards.
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MackemX · Member Joined: 29 Nov 2002 Location: VIP Lounge

well done all, not just those who entered but those who organised it and voted

and I'm pleased that Cunning Plan won as it was my favourite, well done Kristy

can't wait for next years 'Baldrick' awards

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sanjayk · Member Joined: 31 Jan 2005 Location: India

to all winners ! Its time to celebrate

mattso · Member Joined: 25 Oct 2005 Location: Australia

Just curious, 3rd place winner gets a bigger prize than 2nd place winner?

Anyway, good effort all-round, I must say. I hope this competition carries on every year?

vitualis · Moderator Joined: 01 Oct 2000 Location: Australia

The top 5 ranked clips all received the same (size) prize... Being best in a category would win an additional prize.

Regards.
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vitualis' Medical Rant :: stay updated, read the rant
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greymalkin · Member Joined: 19 Oct 2004 Location: United States

700 bucks!

way to go!

gadgetguy · Contestant Joined: 14 Feb 2002 Location: Michigan, USA

I'd like to thank the academy...

Seriously, thanks to everyone involved in the preparation and execution of the Short Film Competition 2005, especially Vitualis, Offline and Baldrick. It was a fun and worthwhile experience.
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DereX888 · **Banned** Joined: 24 Aug 2002 Location: beautiful

although my personal ranking probably would be different - it is not my money thats being awarded to winners, so:

I believe this was one of the most interesting and independent initiatives I have seen. Thank you for organizing it and hail to the chief - The Baldrick

Also I'd like to give my personal thanks to all of the contestants for their effort.

I also have some extra award.
Me and two 10-year old little guys were dying laughing after seeing "Mr.Slug vs Mr.Salt" piece.
They were extremely disappointed that their favorite didnt qualify in the top 5, thus I suggested they shoul give their own award if they really like it so much.
After short consideration 1 little guy decided he give it one of his Bionicles (a toy), while the other guy was too selfish to give anything hehe.
Nevertheless - here it is:

KIDS CHOICE AWARD
in the amount of $9.99 (equivalent of 1 Bionicle toy)
goes to
M. Cleveland
for
"Mr. Slug VS Mr. Salt"

Please PM me with your paypal-registered email address to receive the award.
Also:
May I suggest the theme/subject for the next competition:
"The Bald Rick" ?

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lordsmurf · Posted: Jan 28, 2006 12:17

ozymango · Member Joined: 13 Jul 2004 Location: Portland, OR

ozymango · Member Joined: 13 Jul 2004 Location: Portland, OR

daamon · Cockney Pommy Joined: 10 Jun 2003 Location: Melbourne, Oz

Good evening ladies and gentlemen. And "Congratulations" go to...

Drumroll...

...Each and every contestant, irrespective of prize money awarded or not - every entry has clearly appealled to someone. The planning, effort, time, weed and beer that was put into these projects is admirable.

...The admin team for their time and effort in getting this off the ground: Vitualis, offline and Baldrick. But also the supporting mods who were in the wings playing an equally vital role.

...The voters, for taking the time to download the clips, figure out how to get the codecs installed to watch them and for actually watching most, if not all, of them.

All in all - I'd say the "Short Film Competition 2005" was an inaugral success!!!

When can we look forward to the announcement of "Short Film Competition 2006"? Preferably sooner rather than later - that'll give everyone more time to ponder, prepare, shoot, edit and submit in time for a December deadline.

I've certainly been inspired by these entries and, with more time, will most likely submit.
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lumis · Posted: Jan 28, 2006 15:57

okay.. now that the competition is over i've got a few things i'd like to get off my chest.

1) why did the prize monies suddenly change?

the baldrick went from $500 to $200
the "best" awards went from $200 to $100

link to current page;
http://shortfilm.videohelp.com/2005/09/awards-and-judging.html

link to google's cache;
http://216.239.51.104/search?q=cache:kPJyzDqBKFYJ:shortfilm.video ... k&cd=1

2) i believe kristy's entry should have been disqualified, or atleast questioned.. although undoubetly the best film (hell, it's even my favorite).. it appears that kristy is a professional, or at worst semi-professional.. hell, her name is listed at imdb.. ozzymango brought this up in her entry thread, which raises some very interesting questions..

and hopefully he can get some type of interview to have those questions answered..

3) most of the entries (including my own, but especially "inside divx"), had nothing to do with baldrick, even a mild reference.. and should have been disqualified.. although the field would have significantly shrunk..

4) i'm glad a few people liked my entry.. most people seemed to despise it though.. but i did the best at being the worst, so i guess that counts for something

and a special thanks to DereX888 & his kids for their award.

_________________

DereX888 · **Banned** Joined: 24 Aug 2002 Location: beautiful

Well, I thought I saw different amounts before too...
yet it ain't my money, so I have no comments on that.
Lets all be happy there were *any* awards, since its not like Baldrick had to do it, right?

But I agree with your #2.
Perhaps next time the entry rules will be more strict and no professionals allowed?

@lumis:
theyre NOT MY kids, although one of them is my bro

I prefer not to have any children until I'm at least 50... or better yet: never

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Big Brother in the form of an increasingly powerful government and in an increasingly powerful private sector will pile the reasons why privacy should give way to national security, to law and order and the like. - Justice Douglas

vitualis · Moderator Joined: 01 Oct 2000 Location: Australia

jimmalenko · VH Veteran Joined: 27 Aug 2003 Location: Down under

gadgetguy · Contestant Joined: 14 Feb 2002 Location: Michigan, USA

I want a clarification on the whole "Theme" thing, because I read it to mean that the theme of the movie was to be "Baldrick", but it was pretty clear that most people felt that you only had to reference "Baldrick" somewhere in the film. Will you be disqualifying films that only reference the theme word, but don't really have it as the theme of the film? Or will that still be acceptable?

Edit: Just saw Jimmy's suggestion. I think that's an excellent idea.
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Baddox · Posted: Jan 28, 2006 18:49

How many of the films had original soundtracks? I think that's what the category should have been.

ozymango · Member Joined: 13 Jul 2004 Location: Portland, OR

ozymango · Member Joined: 13 Jul 2004 Location: Portland, OR

Baddox · Posted: Jan 28, 2006 23:55

Yes, I mean Best Original Music, or Best Original Score it could be called.

vitualis · Moderator Joined: 01 Oct 2000 Location: Australia

Thanks for the comments!

1. Regarding professional / semi-professional entries

I do not think that the competition should be restricted to "long time" VideoHelp.com members. Simply, it will be too restricted a competition.

I am of two minds about "professionals" entering the comp. Although I can see that it may not necessarily be "fair" for amateurs / enthusiasts entering the competition, it also raises the quality the competition. Just because someone has a degree of technical competence does not mean that they will produce a good short film. Similarly, as shown by the short film by Bo, being a complete newbie does not mean an excellent film cannot be produced.

The problem with "making another category", is that it is yet another criteria to judge AND it raises the problem if we don't get enough entries for that category. My personal opinion is that all clips should be judged equally. I agree with the comments above that for the next comp, we need more disclosure on the background of the entrants.

2. Regarding the theme word "Baldrick"

I have posted this a number of times. "Baldrick" needed only to have been referenced in the short film. How important or unimportant it is to the short film is up to the author. However, "clever" uses of the theme word were viewed favourably, though not specifically scored for.

"The Cunning Plan" fitted well with the theme with the multi-level use of "Baldrick" (the character named "Baldric" who was "helped people" like our own Baldrick, the use of the photo of Baldrick from Blackadder, and the use of the term "cunning plan", again a reference to Baldrick from the series).

3. Regarding "soundtracks"

Firstly, let me remind everyone that how the judges made their decisions were our perogative.

I used the term "soundtrack" in a generic "use of audio" sense. That is, sound effects, music, etc. Some of the other judges may have taken it differently. I "could" have broken the category into more defined "music", "sound effects", "sound production" domains but I simply decided not to. Remeber, I'm doing this in my limited free time, not as a job.

As per the competition guidelines, existing copyright laws cannot be broken. As far as I know, none of the accepted entries did for video or audio content. No complaints from members of the public were raised in the 14 days of public viewing. It's a little bit late now for speculation.

4. Regarding changes in the competition timing and awards

@ ozymango: fair enough.

However, as per the contest conditions, I/we maintained the right to change the competition at any time. Actually, for a while in early December, I thought about cancelling the whole thing since at that stage we had only a handful of entries.

Remember that we have real lives and real jobs too!

I was horrendously busy over the Christmas and New Year period and the film comp simply was not a high enough priority for me to pay much attention to it. It was only a few days before the "announcement deadline" that I actually had enough time to download all the film clips and start judging the clips. offline was a great help during this period. Obviously, as I had not arranged for clips for public download, the annoucement of the "member's choice award" was going to be inevitably delayed. I made an "executive" decision to also delay the judging results so to not influence the public scores to the short films.

As for the cash award, blame Baldrick.

Actually, since he footing the bill for the prizes and provided the bandwidth and webhost, you probably shouldn't unless you want a banning...

5. Regarding promotions

Actually, the only film I considered to be close to disqualification was the "Behind Divx" entry as it was getting somewhat close to a commercial promotion. I think that it would lessen the competition if we allowed adverts, even subtle ones, as entries in the competition.

6. Regarding "brownie points"

I wondered if that turn of phrase would come to bite me on the arse...

No, as part of the judging criteria, there was no specific rating system for "Baldrick-ness". However, how the top films were selected were on a criteria I dubbed "overall impression" -- my logic being, that a film may be fantastic in one or two disciplines but still "suck" overall. Alternatively, a crappy soundtrack with crappy acting may not preclude a short film from actually being really good.

Those films that used the theme word well would have made a better impression on the judges, and presumably, have scored better in the "overall impression" criteria.

7. Regarding my "goals"

It is probably not well known to the current VideoHelp.com membership, but I / the mods tried to organise a film comp about 2 years ago. That sort of fizzled as we had issues uploads, bandwidth and eventually, lack of interest. A lot of the material (e.g., terms and conditions, judging criteria, etc.) used in the comp were actually recycled from the previous comp.

This time around, I decided to be a little bit more proactive... and it mostly worked. Snafus I blame on myself for not allocating enough time to run the comp.

My goals were to be able to see something unexpected. To see creativity in action. And to participate in something completely outside my career discipline. The varied short films submitted, more than met my expectations (you can see what I consider to be my favourites in my blog).

Thank you all for your valued comments.

I do intend to run another competition later in the year.

Regards.
_________________
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vitualis' Medical Rant :: stay updated, read the rant
The Medicine Box
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offline · incognito Joined: 05 Jun 2002 Location: Mondo Caine

You should know that vitualis single handedly resurrected, designed the framework, and ran every aspect of this years competition. He managed this despite, at the end, being exhausted after working a 10 consecutive day week. My role was very minor. The five Judges spent a minimum of 3 hours each just viewing the entries before even entering their raw results, and this was despite two of them being sick and two being particularly busy at that time.

In the end it was worth the effort. Despite the less than expected number of submissions, the quality and entertainment value of those we got was beyond outstanding.

Thank you film makers and thank you to those that voted. Also thanks to Baldrick who made this event possible.

ozymango · Member Joined: 13 Jul 2004 Location: Portland, OR

DereX888 · **Banned** Joined: 24 Aug 2002 Location: beautiful

_________________
Big Brother in the form of an increasingly powerful government and in an increasingly powerful private sector will pile the reasons why privacy should give way to national security, to law and order and the like. - Justice Douglas

Baddox · Posted: Jan 30, 2006 11:59

ozymango · Member Joined: 13 Jul 2004 Location: Portland, OR

Gobs · Member Joined: 30 Sep 2005 Location: Denmark

gadgetguy · Contestant Joined: 14 Feb 2002 Location: Michigan, USA

Baddox · Posted: Jan 30, 2006 14:48

Oh no, I'm far from mad at you. There's nothing wrong with saying that in the application, assuming that the application comments wouldn't be made public. I wasn't directing any disgruntlement toward you--it's just a bit discouraging for admins to say things to the extent of: "Everyone did a great job, take Bo's submission for example, it placed in the top 3 even though he was a complete newbie" when I myself was also a complete newbie. The level of experience really isn't relative. What would be relative would be if someone had the support and budget of a studio. And while it technically wouldn't be against the rules, it would really bug me if a seasoned professional film maker submitted a film and took home all the prize money that he/she doesn't even remotely need. To use a previous example, if Spielberg spent 10,000 dollars for an entry to this competition just to secure a couple hundred dollars of prize money, it would in fact tick me off quite a bit, having worked undoubtedly harder than Spielberg, but to no avail.

I don't know exactly what the gracious hosts of this competition intended the entries to be, but I got the impression that they were looking for very low- or no-budget films that were good because of creativity and resolve instead of experience and technical prowess. Phrases such as "pickup up your miniDV camcorder" lead me to arrive at these conclusions. That being said, no entry looked to me to be backed by a large budget or studio or anything of the sort, and I think the competition was a success--I hope the hosts believe so as well. Please, no hard feelings Gobs, none were intended.