Here are directions for voting for the winners of the APE contest. Hopefully this will be easy enough for everyone involved to understand. Also, hopefully we can get this wrapped up fairly quickly so we can announce our winners!

Who Votes

Unless you have a film that’s been nominated, you will be voting if you:

1) are a 24fps, digital, or saintly patron
2) entered a film in the contest

How to vote

In each of the four categories, you will choose your five favorite films for that category and rank them. You will then create four neat lists, label them clearly, and submit them to me in an e-mail. Here is a sample e-mail:

“Sample e-mail ballot” wrote:
Story

1) beststoryfilm by director1
2) nextbeststoryfilm by director2
3) thirdbeststoryfilm by director3
4) fourthbeststoryfilm by director4
5) fifthbeststoryfilm by director5

General Presentation

1) bestGPfilm by director8
2) nextbestGPfilm by director4
3) thirdbestGPfilm by director7
4) fourthbestGPfilm by director10
5) fifthbestGPfilm by director2

Sound

1) bestsoundfilm by director3
2) nextbestsoundfilm by director10
3) thirdbestsoundfilm by director1
4) fourthbestsoundfilm by director2
5) fifthbestsoundfilm by director8

Animation

1) bestanimationfilm by director9
2) nextbestanimationfilm by director10
3) thirdbestanimationfilm by director2
4) fourthbestanimationfilm by director8
5) fifthbestanimationfilm by director4

You most certainly do not need to use the same 5 films for each category. Do your best to keep the categories separate and rank each film according to its strengths in only the particular categories.

Where do I send the e-mail

joshua@brickfilms.com

You must send it to this address. I have this address taken off of spam filtering so that everything gets through. In the past people have sent e-mail to the address in my profile and it gets cut down by spam software. If you send your ballot to the wrong e-mail address, I’m not going to count your ballot. It’s that simple. It’s harsh, yes, but I don’t know how else to get it across. I’ve even give the e-mail address its own category on these instructions.

How will winners be chosen

Each film will receive a cumulative category score based on the rankings it gets in peoples’ ballots. Placement in first place earns 5 points, second place earns 4 points, etc. Then an overall score is calculated for each film, weighting each of the categories as described on the contest page:

“APE contest page” wrote:
Story – 50% Weighting – The most important category is story. Creativity, originality, and keeping with the theme are all factors that will determine a film’s success in this area.

General Presentation – 30% Weighting – General Presentation is the second most important category in the APE contest. Basic filmmaking skills apply here. Good cuts, pans, zooms, pacing, lighting, and set designs are some examples of things that will help you score high in this field.

Sound – 10% Weighting – Speech, sound effects, and music add a great deal to a film’s believability and enjoyability. Enough for ‘sound’ to get its own category in the APE contest.

Animation – 10% Weighting – Stop-motion animation is the core skill of the Brickfilms community, so it seems fitting that it should have its own category. The Animation category focuses on an animators ability to bring a film’s subjects to life. Smoothness of motion, realistic actions and gestures, and the overall illusion of life will earn a film points here.