Movie Making Madness

Today I announced that Raglan Shire would be playing host to a tiny-centric film festival in February 2010.

On Sunday 7 February 2010 – precisely one month before the Oscars! – the Shires will host the first ever Raglan Shire Studios Film Festival!

More and more clever filmmakers are turning their hand to creating some wonderful mini-movies featuring tinies, and who can blame them? We’re a constant source of fun and entertainment and despite our obvious physical limitations (no facial expressions, for example), we have proven that we are able to portray a whole host of roles, from dramatic to comedic.

As such, we’ve decided that it’s way over time that we showcased the amazing movie-making talent that we have around the Shire in our very own festival early next year.

So why are we telling you now? Well, film-making often takes time (not always, but often) and we want to give everyone who may even like to try and do something plenty of time to practice how to do it and try and make something. What you shoot is entirely up to you (except for a couple of rules below), as long as it’s entertaining and creative.

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How’s it done then? Well, I use Fraps to shoot my films. There is a free download option (which I still use), which only shoots 30 seconds at a time and leaves a name watermarked on the screen (you can see it in most of my films!), but it serves its purpose.

http://www.fraps.com/

You’ll edit your film using whatever editing programs you can; I use Adobe Premiere Elements, and throw in titles, credits, effect, soundtracks or whatever you think works.

Then you’ll upload it to the web. Some good examples are already on YouTube, but you can use any video-sharing site you like. Vimeo is good; I know Blunt uses ATOM too.

If you know of any other filming or editing tools or applications or video-sharing sites, please detail them below and post any URLs that folk might find useful.

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The exact details of HOW we’ll do all this have still yet to be worked out. We do want to have a panel of judges who will view and rate some of the films, and decide who wins what in certain categories (listed below), but we’ll have a few categories that members of the general public can vote for too. We’ll let you and your crew make posters to promote your film, and give up some hoarding space around the Shire nearer the time for you to display your posters on too!

Categories (so far) include:

BEST DIRECTOR (overall, of all entries submitted, judged by panel)

BEST FILM (between 2–10 minutes in length)

BEST SHORT FILM (no more than 2 minutes in length)

BEST ACTRESS (most alluring performance by a female tiny)

BEST ACTOR (best performance by a male tiny)

BEST ART DIRECTION (best use of Windlight effects, locations or creative scenery)

BEST MUSICAL FILM (serving as a video to a specific tune, e.g. Fuzznutz)

More categories may be entered later.

Winners of the categories will win some L$ and also a special gold-plated Academy of Raglan Arts & Sciences Award for Creative Services, which is a pretty long-winded name; I think they look like my pals Bo and Mutley, so we’ll just call the awards the Otters for short! Maybe we'll figure out a way to have the films available throughtout the week, and have a ceremony on the 7th to award prizes etc?

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The rules – so far, this is not an exhaustive list and may be added to or amended as necessary - are as follows:

1. You MUST be a member of either the Friends of Raglan Shire group or the Artisans of Raglan Shire group to enter the contest.

2. Your film, when completed, must be uploaded to an online video-sharing site, such as YouTube or Vimeo (or others) and must be able to be linked for play in-world.

3. Your film must be finished and uploaded, and details of it submitted to the organisers (TBD) by Sunday 31 January 2010, one week before the festival. The organisers will then watch all videos and begin a judging process.

4. Your film must feature AT LEAST two tinies. The tinies that feature in the film do not have to be members of either of the Raglan groups.

5. The film content must be PG, in line with our community guidelines. No explicit language or text (e.g. subtitles) will be permitted. Any films containing either of these will be barred from the festival.


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That’s it for now. We will continue to add to and amend this post as required, so do check back often. Please feel free to post comments, links, tips or anything else that might be useful below this post, so that we can make this the best in-world movie fest EVER!

Should be good fun, as long as we can get plenty of entries...that's why I've given folks 4 months notice!