DV Challenge #1 - and the winners are...
 

Here are our competitors for the first DV Challenge:


Lorinda Norton
www.bluejeanvideo.com/clip.htm

Barry Gribble
http://www.integralarts.com/trapped/trapped.htm

Mitchell Stookey
http://zed.cbc.ca/go?c=contentPage&C...itchellstookey

Jon Jones
http://homepage.mac.com/lunarparcel/...heater102.html

Aaron Koolen
56K version = http://www.aza-n-dee.net/trapped/footagemodem.html
256K version = http://www.aza-n-dee.net/trapped/footage256K.html
1MB version = http://www.aza-n-dee.net/trapped/footage1M.html

And The Winner Is!
 

While I'd like to say that everyone who finished their film in time is a winner (and you all are), as the saying goes, there can be only one...

Before we get to the winner, thanks to the judges for helping out.
The judges were:
Rob Lohman
Ed Smith
Michael Wisniewski
Keith Loh
Dylan Couper (wait, that's me!)

On to business.
The winner of the first DV Challenge is.....

Aaron Koolen!

Congrats Aaron!

Please email me your shipping address, I'll get your giant gold trophy* out to you in the mail.

A big thanks to all who competed. I hope you all had as much fun putting your projects together as I had putting the challenge together and watching them.

*By giant gold traphy, I mean cheap paper certificate off my printer.

I started a thread in the DV For The Masses section for commenting on these films.

Well, I'd like to thank my mum.... ;)

Can't wait to get home and see the other entries. It was a lot of fun and craziness all round doing this thing in such a short time. I'll definitely try and be in the others. Thanks a heap to Dylan for kicking this off. Next time, we need more than 5 entries making it in!

Cheers
Aaron

Congratulations Aaron!

I also wanted to say I enjoyed watching and judging all the entries. It was a blast seeing what people came up with. I think everyone did a good job. But I do want to congratulate Aaron for having what I thought was the best all around story.

We need best of subcategories.

Best screaming.
Best French accents.
Best whining girlfriend.
Best red background.
Best Satan.

We had fun
 

Thanks to Dylan for putting this together. -Maybe a little stressful during late-night editing when finding out that we still needed to chop off another minute or so - but it was great just getting together with a few friends and saying "OK - You're Satan, You're God, You're a BUM - and you play one in the movie too!"

A perfect excuse to have some pizza with some friends after shooting for an hour.

My wife got into it also - she had surgery on her knee the next day, so she was a sport and told me to sneak a little hand-held into the hospital while she was being prepped to catch a quick shot of her 'waking up'. Good stuff.

Congrats, Aaron on a job well done. I loved the concept and the punch was great - as well as the panic at the end.

Mitchell - the shot on the stairs made me freakin' jump out of my seat. I think I had the volume up to loud. Good stuff.
Thanks everyone - it was fun.
-Jon

Congratulations, Aaron!!!

Because I'm still on dial-up (one more week till high-speed wireless!) I'll have to wait to see your movie. Producing a movie in six hours, you rascal! That's great!!!

And thanks again for helping me try to get mine on the Website. You're a winner in every sense of the word.

Aaron nice work man! I honestly loved everybody's! It was super fun to watch and see what everyone came up with. I had originally wanted somebody trapped in a household appliance but didn't know how I'd swing it, so it was cool to see a guy in an engine. WHO EXPLODED! haha. That was really good. That was fun everybody, thanks Dylan!

Thanks guys. If anyone wants to see a production page with some info and pictures of our shoot. Go Here

Aaron

Congratulations to all producers. These shorts look terrific and you should each be proud of whipping together such creative pieces in such a short time. Bravo!

Congratulations Aaron, and to everyone for great films!

Congrats Aaron! It was a fun experience to watch and judge, but hard at the
same time as well. Difficult to choose! The blood from Aaron's movie really
had me cracking up, nice work!

Great work by all and let's hope we can continue our very own DVInfo challenge!

Congrats Aaron... I liked the piece a lot. The characters were very nice, and the concept was funny... fine shooting also.

Kudos to the rest also... nice to see the different directions a single word can take you.

Thanks Dylan for running it... a good time had by all.

Well done all. Must say it was pretty tricky picking a winner!

I must also congratulate Lorinda for incorporating the XL1 into the story!

Can't wait for the next competition…

Congrats to Aaron, and all the entrants!

I wish I could have followed through but school got very hectic. As prestigious as Dylan's certificate must be, my other films are for grades ;P But the semester is over soon, so I'm looking forward to the next competition!

Hey everybody, I got my short all shot but didn't have enough time to finish editing it all for the deadline. Good job to everyone who completed the shorts, and congrats to Aaron for winning!

Forgot something!
 

To Rob, Ed, Keith, Michael, and Dylan:

For taking the time to judge these entries, "Thank you." Three minutes each might not be terribly painful (at least I hope it wasn't!) but it's still a lot of work. Your willingness to do that made it possible for this old girl to have a very enjoyable first try at moviemaking.

Excellent work! Congrats to all the entrants, and to Aaron for the first "win"! Thanks for hosting it, Dyllan. I was one of the "stiffs" who said I was in, but I couldn't pull it off before the deadline. I now have inspiration for the next one!

Dyllan, I know you weren't eligible for the prize, but did you post your completed video?

Michael

Hey Micheal, I got my script written, but didn't have the time. It ended up being a bit more work than I though.

As far as incentive for people who signed up but didn't submit a film, to compete again, there WILL be a wall of shame with all the DNF's. The only way to get your name off the Wall Of Shame is to compete again and submit a film. My name WILL be on the list too. :)

Dylan. I know this is setup through DVInfo, but do you think you'll have a web page? There you could place the Wall of Shame, finished film links etc and it might be easier to find these threads and not miss them.


Aaron

Aaron
If we do another, we'll put up a seperate info page for people to reference, with the Wall Of Shame and links to films. Maybe I can talk Chris into giving us our own little forum here so we don't keep abusing DVinfo Announcements.


(ps, got your email with the add, thanks!)

Well Done
 

Well done you creative people who threw together such masterpieces at short notice. I liked the entrant from Lorinda Norton at Blue Jean video. The interplay between live actors (we thought they were the villains) and a camera that out did them all. As a consequence I now treat my xl1s with great respect. I make sure it's comfortable, I speak oh so nicely to it, and would never even say nasty things about it behind it's back!!!

Aaron! You sick SOB!
 

I Loved It! You guys "down under" have quite a sense of humor!

Had a few requests as to how the rest of the competitors stacked up.

While I think we'll keep them under wraps this time, I will say that the other four films were extremely close together, with only 4 points seperating the spread.

Thanks Hugh - I take that as a complement ;)

Aaron

Hi Aaron,

Congratulations from another N.Z.er. Are you going to make a trilogy of it like another famous N.Z. film maker?

Hi Owen. Yeah who was that guy that did that trilogy thing, wasn't it a dungeon and dragons movie or something? ;)

Hey out of interest, are you able to sound record and be available for the 48Hours film comp (13-15th May), because we may need a sound guy for our team? We have gear if need be and failing that we'll have to pull someone in, so would like someone who knew a bit about it if possible!

Private Message me if you're interested and available and we can chat some more.

Cheers
Aaron

Aaron:

It was a compliment.

How do the points work?
 

Just for the future competitions, how does the grading work? How many points can be awarded, and what categories? I'm just interested to know what the scoring all entails. Thanks.

5 judges, who individually choose their top 3 choices, 3pts for 1st, 2pts for 2nd, 1pt for 3rd. Film with most points wins. Judges make their choices subjectively based on a 50/50 consideration between story(use of theme) and production quality (cinematography, acting, editing, etc...)

In the future, we might add secondary categories.

So you guys are doing a 24 hour film thing again this coming weekend?

Were you talking to me Laurence? If so, Yeah, we entered out city's 48 hours film project. It was insane. We didn't get anywhere and our film was mediocre. These things really hit home the areas where you lack skills - I have quite a few. Also our writers seemed to have a thing against a story and so we basically had gags held together by some sort of weakish storyline which was a problem. Combine that with my inadequate directing and well, there you go ;)

But it's great to do these things, cause each time, I try to concentrate on one aspect. In the 48hours, I concentrated in camera work (Given our small number of options) and I think it came out OK for the most part. Next time, all my energy is going to story analysis - I'm bad at that.


Aaron