Since this past January, more than 200 filmmakers from 23 countries have submitted 240 short films to Getty Images, all hoping to be a part of “The Next Big Idea,” a peer-juried online short film competition. The pool of contestants was narrowed from more than 213 to 10, each of whom will have their short film premiered around the world in the coming days.
The catch? The competition asked filmmakers to produce a film between 30 and 60 seconds in length, with at least half of the content originating from Getty Images’ vast online collection of digital film and still imagery. Getty Images offers over 70,000 archival images and clips, available to registered members.
The Big Idea films premiered in 2004 after Getty Images collaborated with seven filmmakers, as well as several media companies, to create seven short films and their accompanying making-of documentaries. According to Getty:
"As new ways of working online deliver new ways of communicating, Getty Images investigated the impact of new methods on the eternal quest for great filmmaking concepts. We partnered with seven innovative directors to capture The Big Idea, working from brainstorming to completion via thousands of digital clip downloads to deliver groundbreaking films through a revolutionary workflow.
"We traveled the globe to interview each contributor and found that the search for The Big Idea is a desire to understand the world and yourself and images, and to play as a child and to play god, to play as if you know exactly what you are doing and enjoying the buzz of only finding out after you’ve done it.
"Our brief is simple: make a film about The Big Idea. Yes, The Big Idea. Whatever that means to you. It could be a narrative. It could be a hallucinatory sensory experience set to music. It could be abstract. It could put forth an argument, it could tell a joke, it could make us laugh or move us to act. It could be something else...something original that you care about and that we can’t predict."
The Big Idea has now spawned “The Next Big Idea,” designed to allow filmmakers from all over the world to pitch their “big ideas” in one minute or less. Chaired by Lewis Blackwell, the Senior Vice President Creative Director at Getty Images, a world-class panel of filmmakers narrowed the field of The Next Big Idea pitches to a short list. Getty Images will announce the $10,000 grand prize winner of “The Next Big Idea” today.
More information about The Big Idea and The Next Big Idea competition are available online
here, where visitors can also watch several of the short films in competition. - Daniel Lehman
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posted by Matthew Ross @ 5/19/2006 01:36:00 PM
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