The Sundance Film Festival is announcing its fourth annual Sundance Online Film Festival, which showcases the most innovative and creative storytellers using new digital technology.
Editor: The following press release was submitted by Sundance.org and may not necessarily reflect the Dtheatre.com crew's opinion. We hold no responsibility for inaccuracies or hoaxes.
The Sundance Film Festival is announcing its fourth annual Sundance Online Film Festival, which showcases the most innovative and creative storytellers using new digital technology. We invite all emerging and established digital artists, filmmakers, and storytellers to submit works in the following competitive categories:
Animation- Animation showcase will display some of the immense talent working with cutting edge technology to create stories and images that resonate.
Short Subject- fiction and nonfiction short films sampling various types of storytelling.
New Forms- Comprising some of the most innovative work by media makers using interactive, non-linear and new forms. New Forms will present a diverse selection of works that range from entire imaginary environments to full immersion documentaries to three-dimensional experimental journeys, and points to the future of storytelling.
Gallery- The living platform for artists, live web art, is an emerging art form. This non-competitive section showcases an eclectic collection of websites constructed to function primarily as on line aesthetic galleries, story presentations and the early stages of long form new media. Ideal works include visual environments, action paintings, and mini video loops. Must include video or motion graphics of some kind.
Posted by A random shemp (No Email) on October 19, 2004 6:24 AM
KU student casts wide Web toward film career...By Reading Eagle, Reading PA
Hayden V. Craddolph creates a movie-makers' Internet site as a thesis project, and soon will kick off an Online Film Festival.
By Tony Lucia
Reading Eagle
Thousands of film festivals are held every year, from as near as Philadelphia to as far afield as Sarajevo, Bosniz-Herzegovina, and Tampere, Finland.
Now there's one being planned for Berks County.
Sort of.
Actually, the Haydenfilms Online Film Festival, which promises a $10,000 first prize, will take place mostly in cyberspace.
The festival is the brainchild of Hayden V. Craddolph, a Kutztown University graduate student pursuing his master's degree in electronic media, and his start-up, Haydenfilms LLC, which operates the Web site, www.haydenfilms.com, where the festival will take place.
The Web site also happens to be his thesis project.
A longtime movie fanatic, Craddolph said the inspiration for the film festival began a few years ago when he was considering penning a script for his thesis.
The 1999 film "The Blair Witch Project" was a marketing inspiration its filmmakers had used the Internet to spark interest in their independent feature and as Craddolph developed his plans, he knew he wanted to find a way to use the Web to further his career.
"I wanted to create pre-buzz," Craddoph said in his Kutztown apartment, which also doubles as Haydenfilms' headquarters. "I want to make sure I keep control of my whole Web site."
A meeting in April 2003 with the university's Small Business Development Center helped change his focus: Rather than pitching a movie idea, he became interested in creating a vehicle that would give his future movie-making efforts credibility, while helping other student and independent filmmakers.
"There wasn't anything really to help students," he said. "There are things where you can send your movie, but nothing where you can network and gain skills."
While beefing up his credentials with courses that would be useful to a filmmaker from fundamentals of acting to costume design Craddolph also took a marketing and communications course and worked with a team that laid out a marketing plan for Haydenfilms.
"Then, I knew where we were heading," Craddolph said.
His plan is to create a one-stop shop for aspiring filmmakers, listing resources, a crew database where filmmakers can find contacts for various locations and a production board detailing current shoots. There's also an industry chat room.
Craddolph said startup financing has been raised and he plans an initial $60,000 marketing campaign to get the word out. Web-site ads and sponsorships should keep the ball rolling, he said.
The plan for now is that as of Oct. 30, the Web site will begin accepting entries. The cutoff is May 15.
A panel of judges will narrow down the contestants to between 20 and 50. Then, from June 30 to Aug. 30, visitors to the Web site will judge those entries. Their votes will determine the winner, to be announced Sept. 30.
If all goes according to plan, the next festival will begin accepting entries Oct. 30, 2005.
A key element of the plan is that finalists will be sent Haydenfilms marketing kits. By drawing viewers to the site to boost their films' chances, they also will be marketing Haydenfilms.
"That's the element that is really going to take us to the next level," Craddolph said.
The entrepreneur is optimistic that as computer technology makes filmmaking more accessible and affordable, movie-making will become less of a vehicle to sell Happy Meals and other ancillaries and return to being a vehicle for interesting stories. And he wants to be part of that transformation.
"I'm trying to create a brand," he said. "Maybe three or four years from now, if I knock on someone's door with a movie idea, they're going to say, ?Hey, I know who you are,'" he said.
Contact reporter Tony Lucia at 610-371-5046 or tlucia@readingeagle.
Haydenfilms Online Film Festival
Entries will be accepted as of Oct. 30. All must be received by May 15. A $30 entry fee is required for all submissions.
Films must be in English or subtitled in English.
Maximum submission length is 10 minutes. (The entry may be an edited sequence of a longer film.)
Films can be in any format film, digital video, animation, etc. but must be submitted on DVD-R at full-screen, high-resolution quality.
Major-studio releases are not eligible.
Finalists will be shown on the www.haydenfilms.com Web site from June 30 to Aug. 30. Winners will be chosen by viewers voting online. There is no charge for viewing.
The grand prize is $10,000. The top three finalists will receive Movie Magic Screenwriter software and other prizes valued at up to $1,500..
![Digital Theatre [DTheatre.com]](images/logo.gif){kind=logo}
