UWOL Announcements and Discussion - Talk Amongst Yourselves!

[Trond Saetre]

Yes, I would like to see the short ones extended to 4 weeks since it's only 4/year.
Maybe that can give more people some time to complete the challenges.

[Vegard Paulsen]

This sounds great!

But the long 1 year competition might be a bit to long for most people.
Its very easy to say for everybody now to say it sounds perfect, but it demands ALOT of everyone to stay focused over time. I guess all the people falling of the challenge over time would make it boring for those that are left competing as well.

Teaming up with other people would help the contestants staying focused over time and keep working on the project and will also give another level of collaborations across the borders :) I would recomend people afraid for falling of the 1 year competition teaming up with eachother.

Still i think that a 6 or 8 months competition would have been better for this first time long competition. And if people make it work, then you can make it 1 year the next time?

Im totally up for changing the short uwol challenges to 4 weeks !

[Kevin Railsback]

I think a year will go by a lot faster than people think.

I like the idea of having all the seasons at my disposal. If I finish early, there are still the short form films to work on so it's not like I'll be sitting around twiddling my thumbs.

If you limited it to six to eight months, you eliminate the opportunity for me to shoot Iowa at it's best in the Fall.

Winter and Fall are the best times here for me to film. Spring is so-so and Summer is down right ugly, hot and humid.

People will drop out no matter what the length. It's the nature of the beast. If Meryem extends the short form challenge to four weeks, there will still people who will drop out.

I'd rather have more time than I need than less time for the long form.

If I try to do any of the short form challenges, that shortens the amount of time I have to work on the long form.

[Mat Thompson]

Originally Posted by Vegard Paulsen

This sounds great!

But the long 1 year competition might be a bit to long for most people.
Its very easy to say for everybody now to say it sounds perfect, but it demands ALOT of everyone to stay focused over time. I guess all the people falling of the challenge over time would make it boring for those that are left competing as well.

Still i think that a 6 or 8 months competition would have been better for this first time long competition. And if people make it work, then you can make it 1 year the next time?

I have to say despite all the positive discussion on the 1 year/ 20 minute thing I'm still very much with Vegard on this.

I was actually sitting there the other night and pondering various potential options and I've almost talked myself out of doing this. Writing something 20 minutes long that has the ability to hold a viewers attention and present enough quality footage for me to be happy with I think is a step too far. I still think 10 minutes is a much better story length for where most of us are at in the development of our skills.

I'm not so bothered on a personal level about the 1 year time frame but for UWOL I don't think it will be good because I think we won't get many finishers. Again, call me pesimistic but thats my gut feeling on this!

[Kevin Railsback]

Why even put a limit on it?
If someone wants to take a year to make a 60 second spot then let them.
If someone wants to make a two hour film then let them.

Do away with the whole minimum time limit and let everyone make their film the length they feel is best.

[Jeff Hendricks]

I think that people will struggle with 1 year and 20 minutes …I will…but isn’t that what this is all about? Struggling, climbing the 20 foot brick wall to achieve something great, learning by making mistakes, and then sharing your joys and frustrations with the UWOL community? I think that it will be very hard and at times very stressful…but if it was easy everyone would be making movies. I believe that what is so great about this concept, is that we can share every aspect of the filmmaking process with the community; from pre-production to story to production to post and all along the way, because of this setting, because we are sharing, there will always be that hand reaching out to us to help pull us out of the fast moving stream and on to dry land when we are screaming for help.

I am still for 1 year and a 20 plus minute film…

[Kevin Railsback]

I fully expect to feel moments of frustration and futility where I feel like I want to chuck the whole thing and make it go away.

If I didn't feel those things I'd worry about my passion for the project.

I'm sure we're all going to hit the wall at times and struggle and feel that we're not making progress. But if you can push through it with help from fellow filmmakers in the same boat I think when you're done it's a journey you'll be happy you made.

Twenty minutes plus will be tough, no doubt. To hold an audience that long without falling asleep will be a huge challenge in and of itself. But I figure that's why all you are here to let me know what's working and what's not.

[Meryem Ersoz]

If you think 20 minutes is too short, go after your 90-minute feature-length documentary, and good luck with it, it is totally doable, and I would love to see some of the amazing talent in this group take that quantum leap.

20 minutes is a minimum. Just a minimum.

Once again, we have a range of skills and abilities within the long-form challenge, so the goal is to make this as flexible as possible for the greatest number of people.

Some of you will think 20 minutes is an eternity, others among you will think it is too easy.

To some degree, y'all have to take responsibility for these choices. No challenge will be all things to all people. And no one has to sign up for these, in order to make their own films.

Really, all that UWOL does is provide a context and some support for your ideas that you can't get elsewhere. The rest is entirely on you.

[James McBoyle]

I think these are great ideas, even if a 20 minute / one year project looks like an unreachable mountain off in the distance to me. :-) Still, it'd be great to try even if not as an official contestant. Having longer for the 4 short rounds would be a help too, especially after finding life dealing me no time to try for the last one.

[Mat Thompson]

Originally Posted by Jeff Hendricks

I think that people will struggle with 1 year and 20 minutes …I will…but isn’t that what this is all about? Struggling, climbing the 20 foot brick wall to achieve something great, learning by making mistakes, and then sharing your joys and frustrations with the UWOL community?

I am still for 1 year and a 20 plus minute film…

I agree with you, BUT ! Learning something in 3 weeks, digesting what you've learnt , seeing the results and then changing, re-thinking and trying something different in the next 3wk challenge is a fast moving and eductional process. A fast process that see's people develop, make mistakes but not worry too much because the next UWOL is just round the corner.

[Kevin Railsback]

So why not make the long form players exempt from having to sign up and if they want to participate in the short form challenges they can do so after the theme has been announced?

They can still get the feedback they want right away after the challenge while still working on their long form project.

[Meryem Ersoz]

One other point...you can finish your film in 8 or 9 months or whatever...and start shopping it around to film festivals or other venues. There is nothing stopping you from finishing it earlier than the deadline, in fact, I encourage it. They will just all be judged at year-end, at the same time. But you don't have to take the full year to finish it, if you're done early, great. Just submit and wait.

Then get started on your next one...Just kidding, those of you who have ever finished a long-form film know how much more work it is to shop the thing around and submit it and find proper venues. Finishing a film just means that you're ready to take on the next round of work: MARKETING and DISTRIBUTION!!

And we will stick with the sign-up process, and time frames, and the deadlines. What makes UWOL work is a combination of the commitment that the players have and the discipline that the Challenge imposes. The model is proven, and we're not radically changing the model, just the parameters of the model, to give some of you more room to develop your ideas.

[Per Johan Naesje]

Well, I've been spinning my head for next year uwol and here's some of my thoughts. I will be planning long form entry based on my local wildlife area. There's lots of ground around here I never been to and I think this challenge could help me to fullfill the wish I have to make a documentary of this area. My plan is to make the documentary within one hour drive from my home.

I also planning to make the narration in my native language, what do you think about that guys? Don't think you're gonna understand a word of what I'm telling (except for Trond, Geir Inge..., maybe Marcus too...?)

This area consist of mostly forest divided by small lakes and rivers. No high peak mountains, no musk-ox and so on...

But it's a diverse wildlife there, you got moose (Alces alces) - the king of the forest around here, the smaller roe-deer (Capreolus capreolus), red-fox (Vulpes vulpes), the hare (Lepus europaeus), if I'm lucky maybe I'm able to get some footage of a sparrowhawk (Accipiter nisus) or a goshawk (Accipiter gentilis). I've already started to feed the non-migrating birds in a small hide in the local forest, sunflower seed and tallow is the favorites! Some red squirrels (Sciurus vulgaris) is already common at the place.

I will try to show you how the wildlife and scenery are changing during the seasons, the quiet and cold but still very beautiful wintertime, spring where everything explodes to life, summertime - flowery meadows, creepy crawlers (some spectacular macro-shots!) and the colorful autumn.


I'm not quite sure if I understand the new rules for next year uwol. Could I use footage from the long entry form in the regular 4 entries or must they be something completely different? Meryem, anyone...?

[Meryem Ersoz]

By this coming weekend, I'm going to draw up a formal set of rules for the long-form contest, I think, and post them. That will give another week for anyone just signing on, to voice their opinions on this thread, before I finalize things. For the long form, I will allow some previous footage, but there will be a limit -- maybe 10% or 3 minutes or something like that...because I know a lot of you will be basing a long-form project on something that you already shot for UWOL.

Unless anyone objects strenuously, I think I will extend the short-form to 4 weeks each round. There seems to be a lot of desire for this, and I have no objections. If it looks as if it is creating more room just to be a slacker, I can always push the deadline back to 3 weeks, but I'm happy to try it out...

[Mat Thompson]

Hey Per

I think this is exactly the sort of idea that would potentially work for this type of challenge. Its realistic, constant and and develops throughout the year. Finding a interesting story within this framework of course is still a big challenge.

I wouldnt worry too much about understanding it at the moment fella. Its just all up for discussion at the moment, still no decisions made as yet....well at least not that I'm aware of!