Brickfilms.com :: A Peculiar Event Contest

Brickfilms.com is proud to announce our second film contest since the launch of the new site. This time the theme is "A Peculiar Event." Films entered to this competition should be about a strange, spooky, unusual, inexplicable, abnormal, quaint, or weird occurrence. Ideally, the stories will have some kind of unexpected twist near the end to further add to their sense of strangeness or peculiarity. For inspiration, look to old episodes of The Twilight Zone.

We've got some great prizes for this contest, with the grand prize being a full version of Stop Motion Pro animation software, graciously provided by the folks over at Stop Motion Pro. We're also introducing "The Sisters Film Award," which is aimed at young brickfilmers. Scroll down for more details.

Grand Prize	Digital Dave - The Hand of Fate
Second Prize	Hali - Hit and Run
Third Prize	Mark B - Reality, What a Concept!
The Sisters Award	Ferder - The Museum
The Mister Rogers Award	Boettcher - Lionheart's Birthday

Director	Film	Story (50%)	Presentation (30%)	Animation (10%)	Sound (10%)	Total
Digital Dave	The Hand of Fate	85 (1st)	54 (3rd)	36	41 (3rd)	66.4
Hali	Hit and Run	45	47	61 (2nd)	54 (2nd)	48.0
Mark B	Reality, What a Concept!	60 (2nd)	37	29	25	46.5
The Janitor	Prey	25	64 (1st)	81 (1st)	64 (1st)	46.2
Brickbrock	A Frosty Welcome	15	57 (2nd)	55 (3rd)	32	33.3
Holgor	About a Door	46 (3rd)	13	10	9	28.8
Ferder	The Museum	18	14	20	32	18.4
AMS Director	Cause and Effect	14	20	16	29	17.5
Leftfielder	Abducted!	10	16	16	29	14.3
Richard Creel	An'D	12	8	6	15	10.5

	Grand Prize The finest in Stop Motion Animation software, Stop Motion Pro is one of the most sought after tools in the Brickfilms community. It allows up to 50 levels of onionskinning, plus it has frame averaging built in, which we've shown really improves image quality. You can also record and sync to audio right in the program, and you can add titles. One lucky winner will have a copy of this great software shipped directly to them from Stop Motion Pro.
	Second Prize The grand prize from the Words of Wisdom contest is returning as the runner-up prize for A Peculiar Event. Lego set 9293, "Community Workers" will go to the contestant with the second highest overall score. The set consists of 30 minifigs, complete with accessories and vehicles.
	Third Prize Lego's set 10067 contains 50 pieces of headgear, which will go to the third place winner. Hats, visors, hair, helmets, headresses, goggles and caps, it's all here.
	The Sisters Award With the intent of encouraging young filmmakers, The Sisters (Kim and Esmerelda) will be sending a Logitech Quickcam Pro 4000 to the contestant who submits a film that shows they are a particularly promising director. The Sisters will carefully screen the entries, taking into account each director's age, recent filmography, and what camera they're currently using, and award the prize to who they feel is most likely to use it to produce great brickfilms in the future.
	The Mr Rogers Award Also provided by The Sisters, Megabloks set number 9881, "Dragons: Battle Gate" will go to the contestant who The Sisters deem as having the most clever use of the phrase, "hey, that's my monkey!" in their film.

Film Requirements	All films must: 1) be animated and primarily composed of stop-motion animation. 3D, Flash, or other animation techniques may be used to supplement the stop-motion. 2) contain Lego or similar toys (Best-Lock, Megabloks, Playmobil, etc.) 3) be submitted in enough formats to be readable by Windows, Linux, and Macintosh computers (No .wmv only entries this time!)
Submittal	All entries must be received in the form of an e-mail containing: 1) a working link to your film* 2) the names of all directors 3) the usernames in the forums of the directors if they have them. E-mails are to be sent to joshua@brickfilms.com *If you are unable to upload your film, please ask for access to the A.P.E. ftp directory in your submission e-mail and you will be provided with a username and password that will allow you to upload your film directly to the brickfilms server.
Deadline	Entries must be received by midnight on Monday February 16, 2004 Mountain Standard Time. Entries cannot be made publicly available prior to the submission deadline.
Time Limit	There are no time limits for the A Peculiar Event film contest.
Multiple Entries	Multiple entries are permitted, as well as cooperative entries from multiple directors. In the case of a cooperative entry, the directors must decide before the submission deadline who will receive any prizes won by the entry.

Decision of the winners will begin with a committee creating a list of nominees through discussion. The number of films nominated will not be pre-determined and will be decided by the committee at the appropriate time. The committee will consist of any Review Panel members not entering the contest, any Patron Saints not entering the contest, Paul Howell of Stop Motion Pro, The Sisters, the site admin, and any additional persons the site admin feels could make a positive and unbiased contribution to the nomination process.
Once the nomination committee has completed their task, the nominees will be announced and the winners will be chosen by a voting system. All contestants whose film was not nominated, along with all 24fps or greater Patrons without nominated films will be asked to rank the nominees in each of the categories listed below. A film ranked at the top of a category will receive a number of points for that category equal to the number of nominations, a film ranked second will receive one fewer point, and so on. Each of the categories will be weighted and an overall score for each film will then be calculated.

Please note that this judging process applies only for the Grand, Second, and Third prizes. The prizes awarded by The Sisters are determined solely by methods decided by the The Sisters, and can go to any film they choose, nominated or not.