All Hallows Fest

Supposedly it was always 5 with a "grace minute".

In other words 5 is strongly suggested, but make better movie at 5:40 rather than cram a movie that should be 5:40 into 5:00.

Hopefully that's still the case. The extra minute makes a huge difference.
 
Brandon Rice said:
So it's easier to watch all the films! :)
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Of course there are storage and time issues, but it is not just an issue of finding a story that fits 5.

I find there's are 1 minute film form, a 3 minute film form. And then there's a vague 4 to 7 minute form where you can do a bit more.

With the 6 minutes you get a nice 1.5 minutes / pages setup, up to 3 minutes/pages of developing conflict / middle, and 1.5 minutes / pages to honor the climax fully and have some sort of small [SIZE=-1]Denouement or falling action.

It's also really hard to judge page to minute count in the ultra short form. It averages out over a feature. But not necessarily for these less than 10 page scripts. So you may shoot your 5 page script. Then be faced with seriously compromising it because it really translates to 5:30 when properly shot, performed, and edited.
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I'm totally with Jack on the notion that there's different film forms that fit different running times. I've argued repeatedly that people who are clamoring for more time are approaching the festival wrong -- you don't want to try to cram a 20-minute story into five or six minutes, that'll just cripple your film.

There's definitely an art form to the 30-second commercial, and the highest-rated television program on earth is a showcase specifically for that. The 60-second commercial is an entirely different animal. And the 2-3 minute film is totally different from that, in scope and in type of project that you approach.

Thing is, there's got to be a cutoff -- there's got to be rules. Someone asked if their film came in 10 seconds over, is that a problem? Why, yes -- your film will be disqualified if it's 10 seconds over. It'll also be disqualified if it's one frame over. There are rules, and there are rules for a reason. What if someone said "I've got this incredible idea for a film, it's gonna be the best ever, but I can't fit a wine glass into it, so can I just get a waiver on that rule?" Of course not.

About the five-to-six minute issue: when we first set the time limit, it was five minutes. People had problems complying with that, their stories stretched further, so we implemented a "grace minute" that let you go up to six minutes, while being strongly encouraged to stick to five minutes. After that, people took six minutes for granted and we started getting entries that exceeded six minutes. We set the rule at six minutes firm, any longer than that and you'd be disqualified.

Barry_S has set this fest at 5 minutes. If there's any "grace minute" or extension, it would be up to him to implement that change. Don't count on it unless/until he says otherwise.

For those who simply cannot make their film fit in the running time restrictions, I humbly suggest that you're probably planning the wrong film for this festival -- or the wrong festival for that film. Stay true to the art form that your film dictates -- don't try to cram something into a timeframe that it won't fit -- but if it exceeds our running time, don't submit it here. It'll just be disqualified if it runs too long, and if it's chopped to fit the runtime it probably won't flow properly and therefore wouldn't place highly anyway. Try to embrace the unique artform that our running time dictates. If that means abandoning your current idea and developing another one, then that's probably the better course of action rather than hampering the needs of your existing idea.
 
The rule specifies 5 minutes and that's a hard limit, including credits. After AdFest, I saw how tight some of you could edit and frankly the fest was getting to be a bit long with six minute entries. I've noticed some people dragging out titles and credits and being a little sloppy with editing and story lines. These aren't really supposed to mini-features, so let's see if we can tighten everything up with our original format of 5 minutes. For a lot of you, that'll be cutting 30 seconds of overlong titles/credits and shaving a couple seconds off of your shots--likely for the better.
 
But i have a 6 minute car crash thats integral to the story ;)
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Hey, that's great, but again -- not for this festival.

But I think we'd all want to see how you could stretch a car crash out to six minutes... :thumbsup:
 
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