Hey GW, Sorry I've been gone for a long time but it looks pretty hopeful that I'll be getting internet back over the next week and if that is the case then we need to celebrate by doing something awesome. And what is more awesome than making movies! It's a hard thing to do but I think it is pretty awesome and special when people submit their little short movies and nobody comments on the hours of slaving over editing, hard work and convincing your best mates to humiliate themselves on film for you so I think let's all do it.

It's about time someone came in here and said hey let's do a FILM MAKING COMPETITION because that would really lend the forum some credibility other than sifting through the topics of "hey guys i just watched the number 23 and I THINK IT IS TRUE IT IS RULING MY LIFE EVEN THIS TOPIC HAS 18 LETTERS IN THE TOPIC TITLE THAT CAN BE DOUBLED TO MAKE 36 AND 36 MINUS 13 IS 23 HOLY SHIT!"

So Welcome to GamingW's first short film making competition and hopefully you will all enter and it will actually be pretty fun and awesome rather than a complete a failure. (most likely)

So What do we have to do?
Well I'm going to keep this pretty simple. You have to create a short film over the next couple of weeks/months (whatever we deem necessary.) There is no restriction on the length of your film other than "short," this is generally between 2 - 6 minutes depending on what you do with your film but if you want to submit a 50 second stop motion animation of a caterpillar then that is rad and if you genuinely have made a feature length documentary on birdwatching then I guess that is cool too but if it bores people and they turn it off it's your own fault.

You MUST keep a development diary of your film making so that we not only know how your film is faring and that you are still working on it but we can keep up with the trials of film making and the problems you encounter. You don't have to give away the storyline and the plot twist at the end but it's for those of us who are interested in finding out about these hidden stages of film making and it eliminates that 2 month silence where we are all just waiting for each other to finish. Hopefully this will be pretty cool.

You must prepare a short trailer to be submit along with your "feature" this will be aired to the "public" (General forum maybe?) before the films are all released for hype purposes or whatever. You can approach this however you want, if you don't even want to show footage of your feature that is cool but this is a stage of the competition that is pretty important. After all if you can make people excited over your film before it's even released you've already got a pretty good chance of getting the votes. THE HYPE FACTOR.

Lastly, The films will all be released and put up for public vote and review to determine the winner of the competition.

If all that was a bit much I'll break it down for you all now -

 - Write Script (If Applicable)
 - Film Short Piece
 - Keep Development Diary
 - Release Trailer
 - Wait
 - Release Feature

Hopefully this will get the creative juices flowing.

Over the next few days we can use this topic to see if there is actually an interest in people doing this, let them get their ideas in motion and start on their scripts or whatever and generally just say "hey yeah I am in this." also please point out any flaws in the plans I'm pretty much making this all up improv so anything you don't like about the competition or think could be improved/added please let me know and we can discuss that.

Other than that, who's in?

You replied so fast, did you even read the topic?

i would like to enter this but i don't know how it will work out cause i'm about to move across country. put me on the list and i'll be able to tell you if i have time or not later.

I'd love to be in, but since I'll have to rent material from the school, I'll have to see how long we have to do this first.

I'm going to try and do one.

Ok Hey guys, sorry about my lack of posting but my ISP has promised me internet by the 28th which is pretty soon. There were a couple of things I was thinking about before we start this such as "hey bm can I use a piece of film that I filmed ages ago but would really like to use." My first answer was yeah sure why the hell not but then I decided to change my mind. This pretty much eliminates you from the trailer and dev log side of the competition. You could edit a trailer but the whole dev log thing. I'm afraid I'm going to have to say all new material here guys, but thankfully nobody has asked to do this so that whole problem was avoided.

Secondly it's pretty cool that some of you have already finished and started work on these, get it done while the inspiration is fresh but myself (and a few others commented) will probably be taking a little time to do this. I want to wait til my internet is set up before I begin so I can keep my dev log updated and then I actually need to film and stuff.

Thirdly, what do you guys all want to do about dev logs? Do you think it's cool that we all make a post each and keep it updated as we see fit or would you like to use some external source. If you're really inspired you could even make yourself a little website (if you have the skillz,) if people wanted to do that. I don't want to say YOU MUST MAKE A POST AND UPDATE IT because I think if someone made a promotional website/dev log for their film that would actually be really rad.

Finally, It's pretty awesome that you guys are all up for this. I was kind of worried you would all turn around and say "OH GOD LAME IDEA MAN GET A LIFE." Some of you have said you are nearly finished already or that you actually ARE finished which I feel kind of bad about because it could be quite some time before some others of us are finished and you might end up waiting around for a while. Go ahead and hold on to your entries for now and from the 28th you can send me your entries.

Lastly Lastly, I guess we can go ahead and say GO! If you guys all want to start working on it then go ahead. It's up to you if you want to do your dev log in a topic or create your own site.

Good luck everyone and stuff.