Spark, Facebook and Colenso BBDO call for entries to inaugural Tall Shorts Film Festival

Spark, Facebook and Colenso have joined forces to create the Tall Shorts Film Festival, flipping the traditional landscape film format on its side with a vertical-format film festival for the mobile age.

The Festival’s call for entries asks that submissions be no longer than two minutes, that they are shot in portrait format and that they incorporate the theme of light.

Says Sarah Williams, head of brand, communications and experience for Spark: “Right now in New Zealand we have over three million potential filmmakers, each carrying a powerful camera in their pocket. The Tall Shorts Festival honours their format of choice for capturing and sharing their lives, elevating it from our everyday social feeds to its own festival.”

Says Dan Wright, ECD, Colenso BBDO: “The constraints and opportunities of the vertical format provide a creative challenge for compelling storytelling, so we’re looking forward to seeing what people come up with.”

Award-winning director Taika Waititi will judge entries, with the entire showing and judging conducted through the Facebook Live platform. Waititi will be looking for films that embrace the format for storytelling and composition.

Not only will the winner have their work seen by the film icon and promoted by Spark, they will also take home a prize of $10,000.

To exemplify the kind of creative filmmaking that can be made in mobile format, Spark has released a short film called Dot. The clip is a love story with a twist, based on the ‘three dots’ scene from the Little Can Be Huge video launched last year.

Says Andy Blood, creative strategist at Facebook: “Orson Wells said something like, ‘The enemy of art is the absence of limitation’, so it’s nice to see a film festival with a new limitation: that entries must be shot in portrait format (9:16).

“While the older generation might find this tricky, younger film-makers won’t think twice about it. And with so many native tools to play with (Camera AR, Boomerang, Gifs, LIVE,) we could see some really genre-bending entries. I’m looking forward to seeing how people push, stretch, accommodate, or break the format.

“As the Guardian just wrote (about Steven Soderbergh’s made on iPhone movie ‘Unsane’): ‘It’s the skill of a great artist to turn a limitation into a strength, and indeed, Soderbergh has harnessed the potential of the gizmo in your pocket to create a striking and affecting new visual dialect.’ This is a new visual language. I can’t wait to be wowed.”

Entries are open from April 1 to May 13. To enter, contestants must post their films to the Festival’s Facebook page Facebook.com/SparkTallShorts, where it will be checked against the competition rules before appearing on the wall.

Live judging will take place on the evening of May 20. More information can be found at facebook.com/sparktallshorts.

Client: Spark

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