The BPM (Beats Per Minute) song assignments have been posted. If you are competing, click here to see your song assignments. Check back here on Sunday for information about the public screenings at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema. Good luck teams, we'll see you at the check-in party at Wahoo's!
Friday, February 29, 2008
BPM Uploading Tips
Hi BPMers,
As you're prepping up for the shooting of your music video over this weekend, I wanted to send out this quick note about uploading movies to the FilmmakingFrenzy.com website as well, just to make sure that any new members of the Filmmaking Frenzy community are 100% up on how that process works.
It's insanely important that you upload your movie properly, obviously, as the first round of judging and finalist films will be taking place online through user voting. If you haven't uploaded with us before, I recommend having someone on your team familiarize themselves with the process BEFORE Sunday afternoon, because we're not going to have any wiggle room for movies that are uploaded after the timeline.
If you've already successfully uploaded a video with us in the past, then you can feel free to ignore the rest of this email. The one suggestion we have for you that's different than the process for the REWIND KINDLY contest is that we're asking everyone to create their own Brightcove account instead of signing in through ours. That will let you know right away if there was a problem with the upload and then you can get in touch with us and we'll figure out a solution with you.
If this is your first Frenzy, welcome. Uploading your movie is super easy, and just as simple as uploading to YouTube, but people get confused, so here's a step-by-step.
1) EXPORTING YOUR MOVIE
When your movie is finished, the first thing you want to do is export it properly for Internet consumption. That means that you need to compress it down and don't want to try to upload a full-screen HD movie because
a) our server won't be in HD anyway and
b) even if it was, it would take forever for your movie to download onto a viewer's screen, and no one but your mother would have the patience to wait for it, so your mom would be the only person to ever watch your movie.
We can accept a wide variety of videos in Flash, WMV and Quicktime formats and have no problem accepting most encoding methods, so if you have a preferred method for generating web videos, feel free to stick with the tried and true. We've found that the best results come from videos that are deinterlaced, 320x240 in pixel size, 500 kbps bit rate, with a frame rate of 14.98 and a keyframe interval of 30. The audio bitrate should be set to 64 kbps. Higher quality is allowed, but as I said, that may result in decreased playback performance on slower computers. And our server will not accept any files larger than 100mb. For a video under five minutes, however, you shouldn't even be coming close to that large of a file.
Save your movie with a file name that reads "YourTeamName - YourMovieName". This will help us find it on the Brightcove server and make sure we link the movie properly to your team.
If you haven't exported a movie from your editing system for web distribution before, try that now with some old footage you've got. If you run into any problems or don't understand any of those suggested export settings, you'll want to have extra time to get in touch with us and have us clear up your issue for you. Don't forget! To be eligible for prizes, you must include the filmmakingfrenzy.com bumper tag at the end of your movie. You can download the AVI at http://www.filmmakingfrenzy.com/bumper.avi.
2) UPLOADING YOUR MOVIE
Now that you have a properly-encoded web-ready version of your movie, you're ready to upload it to our server. To begin that process, you'll need to access your team's page. Log in to your user profile on FilmmakingFrenzy.com, and you'll see your teams listed at the bottom of the page. Click on your team name and you'll be directed to your team's profile page. Above the image for your team, there'll be a gray square button that says "Edit Team." Click on that, and you'll be taken to a page where you can edit all of the information about your team, including adding an image and writing a description of who you guys are. If you haven't filled out that information already, you should, because soon people will be watching your movies and wanting to know more about you.
Near the bottom of that Edit Team page, you'll see the box for Frenzies, including a subheading under "Your Frenzies In Progress." On that page, you can click on "Upload Your Team's Film," and you'll be taken to the first page of the Upload process.
That page will offer you more directions on how this process works, but the important things to notice are that we use the Brightcove service to host our Filmmaking Frenzy videos, and so when you move away from this page you'll be taken to a page on our website where you can create a Brightcove account. If you already have a previously existing account, feel free to use that. If not, just follow the simple box asking for your email address and a password and you'll be signed up. Brightcove won't send you any spam, the service is 100% free, and you won't be asked for any other personal information. Creating your account just lets you be in direct communication with Brightcove, which will come in handy in the unlikely event of a problem with your upload.
After you input your email address, you'll be able to create a Screen Name for your Brightcove account and a brief bio, if you wish. That information is all 100% optional, however. Click on the Create Profile button, and you'll be taken to a long text box full of terms and conditions you have to agree to. This is the Internet, after all, and no one can let you do anything without presenting a lot of text you won't read and asking you to click an "I Agree" button. We've read this text, and it's perfectly safe to agree to it. You don't lose ownership of your video or anything silly like that. Push "Continue" and you'll be taken to the Upload Video section.
Click the "Browse" button to find your web-ready version of your movie on your hard drive. Make sure the file isn't open in the background, and that the movie is stored on a local or mounted drive (not on a network drive that you share with other computers).
Enter the same title you used to save your web-ready file (YourTeamName - YourMovieName), then enter a brief description of your movie (200 words or less). This description will be displayed below your movie on the list of available videos to view and also beneath the viewing window on your film's page. Make it as funny or as serious as you like, but keep in mind that viewers will probably be judging you and deciding whether to watch your movie or not by what you write there.
In the "Assign Tags" field, please provide your Filmmaking Frenzy team name. Again, this will help us make sure we properly assign your movie to your team.
Click on the "Upload" button, and watch your status bar fill up! Do not close your browser or navigate away from that page. After your movie is uploaded, click on the Continue button, and you're all set.
Your video will not be immediately linked to your team's page, but as long as you don't get an error email from Brightcove, you are 100% uploaded correctly. We'll be linking movies to pages manually after they're uploaded, so it might take us through Monday evening to link every movie. Voting will start once all the movies are up, though, and every film will have the same chance to become a finalist. Congratulations on making it this far, and go get some sleep.
If you're running into problems, send me an email at henri@originalalamo.com or text me at 512-297-7269, and I'll get back to you as soon as possible. Like I said, however, test this process out ahead of time, because we don't have a tech support call center in India and I'm just one guy. If there are 50 filmmakers all trying to talk to me at the same time, some of them are going to miss the deadline, and we won't be able to do anything about that.
Friday, February 22, 2008
New Frenzy announced: Beats Per Minute!
Filmmaking Frenzy is proud to announce our next action-packed filmmaking competition, the 2008 edition of BPM (Beats Per Minute), a 48 hour filmmaking competition. At the beginning of the contest teams will be given a song from one of the artists performing at the Red Bull Moon Tower. Once everybody's checked in, we'll say "Go!" and immediately you and your team start scrambling: listening to the song, decoding the lyrics, making the shot list, borrowing and stealing guitars, wigs - whatever it takes to make the most entertaining video of them all.
Grand prize for this Frenzy is an AMD-based Dell laptop loaded up by Guitar Center with a music editing package, second prize is an AMD-based Dell laptop and third prize is an Epiphone guitar provided by Gibson. The top 40 films will also be posted on the Red Bull Moon Tower Facebook page., and the top 40 teams will be invited to the Red Bull Moon Tower where their videos will be played in between the live sets of the bands from the competition.
Teams have from between Friday, Feb 29, 7:00 PM and Sunday, Mar 2, 7:00 PM, to produce a music video for a band that will be performing at the Red Bull Moon Tower. All films will be posted online for voting by March 5 at 5:00 PM.
Sign up for a team and see all the rules and info here
Rewind Kindly Winners Announced!
Austin, TX, February 22, 2008: Last night at the Alamo Drafthouse Ritz Theater, the top fifteen films (determined by online voting at
Grand prize was awarded to Team Black Magic Rollercoaster's version of Don Coscarelli's 1982 cult-classic Beast Master, featuring an army of extras, lots of special effects, and the wrangling of live ferrets, snakes, dogs, birds and horses. The real star was the charming and talented 6 year-old actor in the title role. Team Captain Thomas Humphries accepted the grand prize of a $4000 custom AMD/Dell editing workstation.
Second prize was awarded to team Mascot Wedding for their rendition of the 1988 quintessential action flick Die Hard. With upbeat pacing and cameo performances by some of the biggest names in Austin comedy, this comic send-up was both an audience and jury favorite. Team captain Mac Blake accepted the 2nd place prize of a 17" Dell Inspiron notebook computer.
The Audience Award from the local Austin screenings went to Team Media Lick's Predator. A surprise dark horse contender, Predator was not among the top 15 films ranked by online voting but was the audience favorite at the preliminary screenings.
The top fifteen finalists in the Rewind Kindly Filmmaking Frenzy are as follows:
Back to the Future Trilogy by Team Bullet Time
Bambi by Flan
Be Kind Rewind by The Beta Maxx
Beast Master by Black Magic Rollercoaster
Die Hard by Mascot Wedding
John Carpenter's The Thing by Syracursed
Labyrinth by Dirty Hand Art
The Princess Bride by Cupcake Monkey
The Princess Bride by The Inconceivables
Purple Rain by Corporate Malfeasance
Say Anything by FOGAR
Speed by Banana Pants
Speed by The Dancy Compound
Terminator 2: Judgment Day by Lightning Bulb
Top Gun by The Fighting Pacifists
Filmmakers who missed out on REWIND KINDLY are not out of luck. Look for an announcement later today about the next Filmmaking Frenzy that is fast approaching!
Filmmaking Frenzy on Buzzsugar.com
Entertainment news hub buzzsugar.com recently checked out the swedes at Filmmaking Frenzy. Quoting buzzsugar, "Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the target audience for Be Kind Rewind, the majority of videos are for 80s flicks, like The Karate Kid, Back to the Future and Mannequin. Judging by the multiple entries, it looks like Top Gun and Jurassic Park are some of the most popular films to remake for a 5-minute movie. Some of them are seriously funny, and they're all goofy enough to elicit some chuckles. I especially enjoyed the use of an orange housecat to simulate an R.O.U.S. (Rat Of Unusual Size) in The Princess Bride." I too was quite smitten by The Princess Bride, and so was the Filmmaking Frenzy community. Both versions in the comptition (Team Cupcake Monkey and Team Inconceivables) made the top 15 and were invited to the finals.
Check out the complete buzzsugar.com article here.
Filmmaking Frenzy on Film Threat!
Thought you guys would like to know that the gang over at the legendary Film Threat prefer your swedes to the actual Michel Gondry film. Quoting Film Threat's Mark Bell, "Okay, now I’ve already watched a few (”Commando” is my fav thus far) and I strongly suggest, rather than go see “Be Kind Rewind” when it finally vomits onto your local multiplex, that you just start watching these flicks. Really, THIS is the good stuff." Now, "vomits" is awfully strong, we still think you should check out Gondry's film that inspired the contest, but kudos to the filmmakers once again for turning in some really enjoyable 6 minute swedes. Check out the complete article here.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
REWIND KINDLY Finalists!
The votes have been tallied, and I've got the list of finalists for you. As always, this is the tough time of these contests, because there were a lot of amazing films that I wanted to see again up on the big screen in tomorrow's award ceremony, but there just wasn't enough time.
When we counted the votes, we developed a formula that would rate a movie higher if it had more votes, so Andrew's non-existent "test movie" with one perfect score didn't beat out the movies with 890 "ten" votes and 600 "eight" votes. Make sense? Good.
The top ten finalists are:
Back to the Future Trilogy - Team Bullet Time
BEAST MASTER - BLACK MAGIC ROLLERCOASTER
John Carpenter's The Thing - Syracursed
Labyrinth - Dirty Hand Art
Purple Rain - Corporate Malfeasance
Say Anything - FOGAR
Speed - Banana Pants
Terminator 2: Judgment Day - Lightning Bulb
The Princess Bride - The Inconceivables
The Princess Bride - Cupcake Monkey
The top ten finalists will have four tickets to the screening tomorrow night at the Alamo. We'll be screening and subjecting our panel of actual video store employees to the top FIFTEEN, though, and any film from the fifteen could end up being the grand prize winner. If you're not in the top ten, please come down to the screening anyway and we'll try to squeeze you in. The other five finalists chosen by online voters are:
Bambi - Flan
Be Kind Rewind - The Beta Maxx
Die Hard - Mascot Wedding
Speed - The Dancy Compound
Top Gun - The Fighting Pacifists
It's in the panelists' hands at the screening on Thursday night now. We'll have results of that posted here tomorrow night, and we'll also be making all of the scores every film received public and viewable on the site again.
Thank you to everyone who participated in this Frenzy, and we hope to see you all again for our next contest, BPM, which we'll have full details for very, very soon!
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Rewind Kindly coverage on AMC Monsterfest
Matt Kiernan from AMC Monsterfest wrote a cool story on REWIND KINDLY from the horror enthusiast's perspective. Quoting Kiernan, "The number of classic horror films being 're-imagined' these days is impressive: The Shining, King Kong, Predator, Alien, The Exorcist -- to name a few -- all of them remade with a lot of love and respect for the originals. Fun to watch, if not all that skillful (hey, they're cheap remakes), they exhibit more flair than most major studio movies. Start with the remake of John Carpenter's The Thing and we promise that you won't stop. Enjoy!"
Check out the complete article.
Finalists announced on Wednesday at midnight!
We are very close to handing out the blue ribbons and wanted to give everyone a heads up that the finalists in the Rewind Kindly competition will be announced this Wednesday, February 20 at midnight immediately following the final screening of the group F films.
Rewind Kindly Competition hits the Florida Sentinel
Alamo creative director Henri Mazza was quoted in a Florida Sentinel article which explored the increased popularity in "sweding," or “re-making something from scratch using whatever you can get your hands on.”
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