Beardy’s Note:  It’s our second ever Guest Post!  This one comes from a great video contest filmmaker and a longtime reader of VCN, Shane Free.  Shane is from Pennsylvania originally but he has been working in Los Angeles as a trailer editor for movies and videogames for the last 11 years.  He even made a documentary called “Investigating the Afterlife” which you can find here on amazon.  Shane has won a number of video contest prizes over the years and his most recent win was third prize and $2,000 in 3M’s “Couple Speak” contest on Zooppa. ()  In his guest post, Shane talks about his experience entering an amazing film/video contest called “The ABCs of Death.”  At the end of the article, I’ll link to shane’s entry.  But let me tell you right now….it’s awesome!  Even if he hadn’t done this post I would have written about his entry…and the guy hasn’t even won the contest yet!  So now, on with the guest post….

What I really want to do is direct…

As a filmmaker, I like to enter video contests because it allows me to make mini films while getting feedback on my work and occasionally winning a few bucks.  However, every now and again, a contest comes along that I would enter even if the prize was a bag of jelly beans because the reward could be so much greater if successful. This is the case with Drafthouse Films’ The ABC’s of Death competition.

From website:

Established filmmakers and emerging new stars will make up the diverse roster of creative talent that will showcase these tales of termination, beginning alphabetically with the letter A and eradicating all life right through the letter Z..

Each director is assigned a letter and every letter represents a word that acts as a springboard to tell a short story about death. A linking device will open, connect and close.

Twenty-six directors will participate from all corners of the world: Australia, United Kingdom, Serbia, USA, Japan, Thailand, Chile, India, Denmark, Indonesia, Finland, Mexico, Belgium, Mexico, Spain and France.

This unique anthology will be a celebration of death in all its forms, from the shocking and exotic to the humorously droll. It’s up to each director to interpret the letter they are assigned as creatively and outrageously as they see fit.

So as a filmmaker how do I get involved? Well, they have not selected a director for the letter “T” and are holding a worldwide competition in which filmmakers are invited to make a short no longer than 4 minutes (not including credits). The winning filmmaker will become the 26^th director and their submission will be included in the final feature. One of the requirements is that the short start on a frame of red and end on a frame of red, and no pre-existing horror shorts are eligible.

The way it works, you upload your short to the site and then begin the process of begging for votes. You can vote once for each film, and the voting system makes you enter your email address and then confirm the vote through an email link for the vote to count. The 10 films with the most votes move on to the final round in which the other 25 directors then choose the winner. There is a caveat in the rules, which I think is pretty cool:

Producer Amendment. Producers reserve the right to add one, two or three shorts to the Top Ten (making it a Top Eleven, Twelve or Thirteen) if they feel great work is somehow being overlooked by the public voting system.

This is great, so if you were working on your film and got it in late with not enough time to accrue votes you still could get into the finals if the producers think your film is worthy, what a great idea.

Having my short appear as part of a feature length horror anthology gets me more excited than the million dollar prize Gain was offering up, I know that sounds crazy, but filmmakers are crazy.  I applaud Drafthouse Films for creating this contest, as there are so many filmmakers out there just looking for a chance for their work to be seen and competitions like this don’t come around often enough!

The short I entered in this contest is called “T is for Table” and it’s a concept that my father and I had the idea for and I am very excited to have brought it to life. So if you enjoy it please send me a vote and help me get into a top 10 that I hope is filled with quality films.  Prepping this shoot was the most extensive prep I ever had to do. A month before I shot I worked closely with a production designer I found on craigslist to build the table, once that was built he made the book and the drawings. I was able to borrow a friend’s Panasonic AF-100 for the shoot, this is a great camera it’s basically a DSLR in a camcorder body, so you can switch out the lenses and get that nice 35mm depth of field. I rented a pocket dolly and lit the film with LED lights.  I had a very small crew just myself and a sound guy, we pretty much did everything. All of the actors are people I know and have acting backgrounds . The post production was where it got tricky, I used two different effects artists, a mixer, and did color grading for the first time. I highly recommend color grading with someone who has properly calibrated monitors. I never trusted my computer monitors because they all looked different, so by going to a post house you can be sure to get your film represented properly. I also wanted this done fairly quickly so I could gather votes once the film was uploaded so I shot on August 28th and 29th and uploaded on Sept. 14th. All in all, I am very happy with the results and sometimes working on a deadline can be a great way to get a project done without procrastination.

I will also point out some other entries I think are really good and deserve a look, T is for Toilet, T is for Talk, T is for Tracking and T is for Toss.

Submissions end on Oct. 1^st but voting will continue until October 31^st and then the final winner is decided on November 15th.  To watch and vote for T is for Table, click here:  http://26th.theabcsofdeath.com/t-is-for-table/

—–     Posted by Shane Free. Twitter @freestyleflicks    —–