Sci-fest - The Prizes and Rules

Quick question on the BEST SCREENPLAY AWARD:

How is best screenplay determined, since the actual film may differ some from the screenplay, or may come across differently ... especially if the writer was someone different than the one who actually directed it and/or edited it?

During the Academy Awards, they'll typically show/read the opening of a scene of the winning screen play to show how rich the writing was, how well detailed the scene, etc. Will the film makers be submitting PDF's of the screenplays as well?
 
I have no doubt yours would/will be a contender ... especially with how confident you are of it (or from what I've seen in the posts).

Jack's will probably rock as well, especially with all his theater/writing experience.
 
Yeah. Jack's Zombiefest short was really good as well!

It's so subjective, you know. I'm really confident in the script, and I really like it, and worked hard to get it to where I like it, but... other people may not think the same...

I'm excited about this competition, we'll see a lot of great stuff!
 
ha, thanks!

but as my script was just completed Sunday and the number of days to shoot before christmas is constantly shrinking, I'm afraid a script is all I may have, lol.

With Zombie fest the mythology was so known within a few well known vaiables. Not so whith sci fi where its up to the writer to invent things out of thin are from the single individually percieved phenomenon to whole worlds like Blade Runner and Mad Max. So its been hard to whittle all that exposition down into 6 min and tell a story -- so that's why my script was just completed and my productions in jeopardy -- are the actors still on call -- can we shoot before Christmas can we actually pull off the art direction, and prop this thing in 4 or 5 days -- etc.

On the Script thing though -- Maybe they would let us start a script thread once the contest is officially opened and then whover wants to could post links to their scripts there.
 
I like that idea (posting links to scripts, etc. ... once the contest has started - or however Jarred wants to handle that).

I couldn't get my story within 6 minutes either, so we've got an 11 page script, and a film that'll pace out to 12-13 minutes. But, I already know what scene(s) we're going to cut for the DVX fest to hit the six minute mark. We've anticipating that the entire short (the 12-13 minute version) will be good enough to send to other festivals afterwards, as well as possibly sell the DVD with tons of BTS, etc. Put it this way, you'd be AMAZED at the cool props you can put together from the Fred Meyer garden center products. :)

Who knows.
 
Cool- Very much the same situation with our film. It's an 11 page script. Times out to about 11-12 min. But, I'll be doing some creative editing to keep the story intact, and the flow, into a 6 min. piece for DVX fest.
 
Y'all are doin' it wrong. It's not try-to-trim-it-down-to-6-minutes, it's try-to-avoid-going-over-6-minutes. Hitting it from the other end.
 
For those who only want SHORT SHORT films, then I'd agree with you. But I've already made my five minute film that met the previous festival. I don't really want to make just another 5-6 minute film.

Both waltind and I agreed from the get go that we were going to just let the story go where it took us, and expected we'd be in the 10-15 minute range. I personally want experience doing longer & longer films until it's at a point that I can crank out a feature length film.

It's also no small task to take a longer story & still have it be captivating & make sense after editing down to the 6 minute mark. So for us, it'll be the best of both worlds ... getting to make a longer film, in addition to the editing task of seeing what has to sit on the sidelines as we cut it down to a 6 minute version as well.
 
I just have a quick question regarding the aspect ratio. The rules say 16:9. I was wondering if a 2:35 aspect ratio would be accepted. Any thoughts Jarret? :)
 
anything in a 16X9 frame is fine.

If your sci fi is all POV from a space visor and you want 8:1 aspect ratio its fine as long as it's letterboxed within a 16X9 frame.

idea is not to limit creativity but to make them all widescreen DVD compatible, which means 16X9. So even if you shoot and turn in 4:3 letterboxed to 16:9 -- if your short makes the DVD Jarred will chop it to 16X9 and your 2.35:1 crop will still be fine with little black bars on top and bottom.

this has been covered but sure it's hard to find in this tome of a thread :cheesy:
 
2.35:1 is fine. It should be letterboxed in an anamorphic 16:9 file.

HagerNYC said:
I just have a quick question regarding the aspect ratio. The rules say 16:9. I was wondering if a 2:35 aspect ratio would be accepted. Any thoughts Jarret? :)
Click to expand...
 
oh ( I hate to open this up again) but I had thought that 16X9 cropped in 4:3 was fine as Jarred would batch process for DVD.

of course you wouldn't want ananomorphic for the web.

But might as well require us to blow up to true ananormphic frame so we will have control over any weird cropping and so jarred doesn't take his forum and go home :)

so that's the word now -- true anamorphic shaped 16X9 widescreen, not letterboxed 16X9 in 4:3?
 
you can still do that -- just drag it into an 16X9 timeline when you are done, change the aspect ratio to 33 and then drag the scale up until the black bars disappear.

(on FCP anyway) -- hold on I'm going to search back through this thread -- we may be getting confused on this again.
 
briceman, I always shoot 4:3, then crop it in a 16x9 timeline ... works great, as it gives me room to reframe up/down as needed.

jdanstan said:
If your sci fi is all POV from a space visor and you want 8:1 aspect ratio its fine as long as it's letterboxed within a 16X9 frame.
Click to expand...



That's kind of a cool idea, thanks Jack!
 
Yeah... same here... I always shoot that way too... we're just checking to make sure that's a correct workflow for this competition.... I believe it is.
 
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