UWOL LONG-FORM Contest Rules

[Meryem Ersoz]

I'm breaking these out of the discussion thread, so that people can easily find them. We will be tweaking these a bit. These rules are a work in progress, for the moment.

UWOL LONG-FORM

1. You must sign-up on the long-form contest sign-up thread at Dvinfo.net before the contest begins. The thread will close after two weeks, and no new entrants will be allowed after the thread is closed. A free account at DVinfo.net is required to play. Activation of your account may take up to one week, so if you are new to UWOL and DVinfo.net, you will need to get this done quickly.

2. By signing up, you are committing to one full year to make a long-form film
Minimum length: 20 minutes Maximum length: 90 minutes

3. You are required to post short versions of your work on a feedback thread 4x throughout the year. Your work can be defined as scripts, storyboards, footage – anything that brings you closer to the final production of your film. Your feedback thread should: give some context to your work, explain the effect you desire to achieve, and ask questions that you think will guide your community to giving you useful feedback.

4. You will give feedback to other players and receive feedback on your work on your threads on an ongoing basis. You may use these thread to pose additional questions throughout the year.

5. Your postings will take place during the weeks of February 16-18, May 10 - 13, August 9-12, and October 11-14. This should give you a window which will allow you to plan for these in advance. You must post to your feedback threads within each of these windows to be eligible to continue participating in the long-form contest. Missing a deadline disqualifies you from continuing on to the next deadline.

6. Keep in mind that the sooner you post, the more likely you are to receive the valuable feedback that will strengthen your project.

7. You must post a minimum of five minutes worth of footage during each feedback period. The sole exception to this rule is during the first feedback period, February 16-18, when you must post a minimum of 3 minutes worth of footage. The planning stages may consume more of your time on the front end, so the footage minimum is more relaxed.

8. File dimensions cannot exceed 428 x 240 and cannot exceed 180 mb in size. If you are making a longer film, we would suggest either shrinking the file dimensions or posting your draft footage to your own website or to the free footage site of your choice and providing a link back to your feedback thread. You are free to host your own draft material, if you decide that you want to exceed UWOL’s file sizes and dimensions.

9. Your final project must be posted the week of November 15, at which time your entry will be available for final judging. You will not post a feedback thread at this time, instead you will upload your file to the UWOL site. We will have a thread announcing the finalists and linking to your entry. This will be the one Giant Final Feedback thread that will serve all the finishers.

9. UWOL will archive your final project, but all draft footage materials will be discarded at the end of the contest, to save server space.

10. The winner will be announced December 1, 2009

11. We must have a minimum of five completed entries for the judging to take place.

12. Many of you will be basing your long-form project on an idea that you formulated during a previous Challenge round. Therefore, you can use up to 3 minutes of footage shot for previous UWOL short-form contests. All other footage must be unique to this Challenge and shot specifically to meet the requirements of the long-form contest.