Submissions have opened for the second Vimeo Festival + Awards, celebrating the most creative and original videos online. Vimeo will award Grants of $5,000 to all category winners as well as $25,000 for the Grand Prize winner, writes David Fox.
The number of online viewers has risen dramatically over the past couple of years, allowing content creators to reach a large audience very quickly – for example, one of YouTube’s top channels, Machinima, captured more than a billion views during November, with 116 million unique visitors. Although, Vimeo doesn’t have the reach of YouTube, it is the place where filmmakers are most likely to show interesting new content, and its Awards should consolidate that.
“Since our inaugural event, we have watched online video explode into a primary medium for new talent discovery,” said Jeremy Boxer, Director of the Vimeo Festival + Awards.
“More and more creators earn visibility, credibility and, ultimately, work by showcasing their videos online. We created the Vimeo Festival + Awards to celebrate the best of the best of these videos.”
Entries will be open until February 20, 2012, for one of 13 different judged categories, four of which are new this year: Fashion; Action Sports; Advertising, which is has to become more inventive to capture online audiences (such as the notable Nokia Gulp campaign); and Lyrical (one of the judges for which will be London-based director and DoP, Phillip Bloom), which is looking for dramatic creative style, including slow motion and time lapse.
An independent jury will judge the entries, which includes all of the category winners from 2010 plus two industry experts per category.
Submissions cost $20 per video ($5 for Vimeo Plus and Pro members). Entrants can submit any original work that premiered anywhere online between July 31, 2010 and February 20, 2012 or any original work that has never been premiered before.
The winners for 2011 were:
Narrative: Thrush by Gabriel Bisset-Smith
Documentary and overall winner: Last Minutes with ODEN by Phos Pictures (pictured top)
Music Video: Liars ‘Scissor’ by Andy Bruntel
Animation: Between Bears by Eran Hilleli (pictured above)
Original Series: Break-ups The Series by Ted Tremper
Experimental: oops by Chris Beckman – it was then chosen as an Official Selection at Sundance Film Festival 2011, and Beckman went on to direct for such brands as Motorola.
Motion Graphics: Triangle by Onur Senturk (pictured left) – after winning, Paramount asked Senturk to create the motion graphics credits for Transformers: The Dark Side of the Moon.
Captured: Fluid Sculpture by Charlie Bucket
Remix: Breakdown the video by Kasumi
