Off-topic, but when you announce that montage deal, I call the CIA Vault Break-In from Mission Impossible.

I don’t know… this whole show biz thing being forced upon us by the brickfest folks just doesn’t feel right. I don’t know if I’m all that thrilled with the basic premise of this contest.

“Watson Films” wrote: I don’t know… this whole show biz thing being forced upon us by the brickfest folks just doesn’t feel right. I don’t know if I’m all that thrilled with the basic premise of this contest.

I just want to say I agree. I find the 30-second clip more interesting than Show Biz. But ah well.

Hmm. Stupid me. This was the first place I came after school…

I’m going to have to second Watson, this doesn’t sound very interesting at all. Have any of the other brickfests even had themes? And if there was, did we follow it? I mean, unless they have specifically requested that you conform to the general theme, why should we?

If we must go with the “show biz” theme, why don’t we just have a “Golden Age of Film” contest? Someone mentioned that “show biz” is usually associated with the “golden age” of film, so I think that would work. Black and white, noir, serials, etc. etc. etc. It would be fairly wide open, but still follow the general theme. I’m having a hard time explaining what exactly I’m thinkin of, but do you guys what I’m getting at?

EDIT: Ah, I guess we don’t have to follow the theme.

Hopefully RevMen won’t mind my attempting to clarify some of the things An Old Ore mentioned.

While the Brickfest showcase of brickfilms is the basic impetus for the Brickfilms.com “Annual Big Contest”, it is functionally a separate event. This means that selection of films presented has nothing to do with Contest judging. The “review panel” or “filter” that Leo mentioned is, to my knowledge, RevMen; and I have the utmost confidence in his ability (not to mention motivation) to present Brickfilms in its best possible light. RevMen could conceivably choose not to show a contest entry at Brickfest and yet that film could do quite well in the Contest; he has to consider the audience in this decision. A case in point is that last year a showcased film caused some children in the audience to cry and yet, even had the decision been made to exclude the film from Brickfest, it would still have been eligible for the Contest (the film in question was the overall winner of the HaV contest.)

The prizes have, in the past, been awarded in a “pool” fashion, which tends to mitigate the chance of the winner getting something he or she “doesn’t want” (as for the runner-ups, well, they didn’t “win”). From what I’ve seen, all of the prizes in previous pools have been desirable and a sufficient incentive for entry (as if that is needed).
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BACK ON-TOPIC

I like the idea of a community project to put on a musical or vaudeville show. I am not sure how it would fit into the competition aspect of the annual big contest but, perhaps if members were willing to accept the additional restrictions of such a framework (or eschew competition altogether), short clips could be coordinated to produce a longer presentation such as Richard Frost suggested.

All of the films won’t be shown at BrickFest. In 2004 I created a small panel to choose films to be shown there, and in 2005 I used the top placers in the contest. This year I am simply going to try and put together the best and most appropriate show I can. Having experienced the BrickFest crowd first-hand I feel like I am pretty qualified to do that.

The best prizes are awarded on-line, where all of the films are judged in a somewhat elaborate and very fair judging system. Just take a quick glance at the previous contest pages and you’ll see how it’s accomplished.

The only award given at BrickFest is Audience Choice, which we didn’t even do last year. We will do it again this year, however, as I think I’ve devised a pretty fair way of doing it and Joe Meno requested it.

I think people are getting confused about “Show Biz.” That’s the theme for BrickFest, not our contest. We need to come up with a theme for our contest that is in some way related to Show Biz. It can be very loosely related, but it needs to at least make some sense.

30-second clips is so far from being acceptable for our big annual contest that this will be my last post ever that even acknowledges it.

As for the musical, I’m going to try and form a Community Project around it. It’s doubtful we’d be able to finish it in time for this BrickFest, but if it’s as awesome as I think it could be we’ll be sure and show it at whatever festivals are available when it’s finished. I would absolutely not want to find some kind of shortcut to get it done in time for this year’s BrickFest. This idea of a grand musical is bouncing around in my mind and I’m really starting to get obsessed with it.

“RevMen” wrote:
As for the musical, I’m going to try and form a Community Project around it. It’s doubtful we’d be able to finish it in time for this BrickFest, but if it’s as awesome as I think it could be we’ll be sure and show it at whatever festivals are available when it’s finished. I would absolutely not want to find some kind of shortcut to get it done in time for this year’s BrickFest. This idea of a grand musical is bouncing around in my mind and I’m really starting to get obsessed with it.

Yeah. I thought of making a full blown musical a few months ago, but canned it because I’m musically retarded. I’d be happy to help out though.

Like I don’t have enough projects already or anything.