Cliffs of Dover MOVIE COMPETITION | Forums

[Doolittle81]

The Board of Directors of the Flight Sim Movies website hereby announces a.....


Cliffs of Dover Movie Competition


Procedures and rules as indicated below:


Virtual Awards:
The 1st Place Winner will receive the coveted Flight Sim Movies Gold Eagle Award:



Runners up will receive the virtual Silver Eagle Award:


Additional virtual awards, as deemed warranted by the Judging Panel, may be made for specific categories of movie-making, such as for any individual uniquely artistic and/or technical achievement.

Tangible PRIZES:
A total of at least $250 USD will be presented by the FSM Board, as sponsored by Joe90's Wee Bit Studios and other individual FSM Board Directors. The amount will be disbursed at the discretion of the Judging Panel to the top three Winning movies:
First Place: $75 minimum
Second Place: $50 minimum
Third Place: $25 minimum




1C Company, as co-sponsor of the Competition, will provide additional Prizes for each of the top three Winning movies:
First Place: "Complete Collection" from 1C Steam catalog Click Here for Details
Second Place: Five Downloadable games from the 1C Steam Catalogue (Valued at up to $175 USD)
Third Place: Two Downloadable games from the 1C Steam Catalogue (Valued at up to $70 USD)


Additional tangible FSM monetary and/or 1C Company Game awards, as deemed warranted by the Judging Panel, may be made for specific categories of movie-making, such as for any individual uniquely artistic and/or technical achievement or Story.


Additional prizes may become available during the course of the competition, and will be announced in the future, and any additional sponsors willing to offer a tangible prize should contact the Competition Administrator at the 1C Forums (DoolittleRaider).

The Winning Movie will be showcased with the Best of the Best at the Flight Sim Movies website, as well as being automatically considered there for the possible award of a virtual Golden Oleg or Silver Oleg.



Other outstanding entries will be considered by the FSM Board for showcasing at FSM

Entering the Competition…and deadlines:


Effective immediately you can enter the competition merely by posting your high resolution movie entry at the 1C Company "COD Movie Competition Entries and Discussion" thread, with an embedded link to your Movie at either Youtube or Vimeo or BlipTv.


The submitted Movie must not have been publicly released at youtube or any other hosting site prior to 1 January 2012.


Entries will be accepted through 30 April 2012.


The Competition Judging Panel will then select the winning movies, which will be announced not later than 7 May 2012.


General Rules


a. Each competitor is allowed to enter only one movie.


b. This is a “Movie” competition. Gameplay or In-Game Videos are not eligible for entry, and any submitted Movies with visible icons, HUD displays, on-line text/chatter, event messages, visible fraps logo, or any ‘watermarks’, etc, will be disqualified and automatically removed from the “Competition Entries” sticky thread. The difference between IL2 COD Movies and Videos is delineated in detail in the Sticky thread “What is a ‘Movie’? What's an ‘In-Game Video’ or ‘Game Play Video’" at the 1C “Movie-making and Videos” sub-forum.


c. Movies must be “complete”, not segmented, when uploaded/submitted. If a movie exceeds the upload duration limitation at youtube (usually 15 minutes for most youtube accounts), the movie file should be uploaded to either the Vimeo or Blip-TV sites.


d. Primary source material and visuals must be from the IL2 Cliffs of Dover flightsim. Other supplementary sources may be used as well, such as footage from other Games/Sims; CGI; animations; green-Screening; SoundFX; SpecialFX; real-world photos or documentary film footage; and voice dialogue or narration, etc. However, a minimum of 50% of the Movie duration must be comprised of Cliffs of Dover visuals/footage; any and all post-processing techniques, filters, software, etc are allowable.


e. Minimum movie duration of 3 minutes, including credits...however,based on the results of past competitions, it is recommended that competitors strive for a movie duration of at least 5 minutes. There is no maximum limit for duration.

ATTENTION: If you plan to enter a Movie into the Competition, even if you are not finally decided to do so, please send a Private Message to me, DoolittleRaider, at the 1C Forum. This will help me plan for administering the competition in the coming months when the Movie entries are submitted. I will also be able to directly alert and update specific competitors as Competition developments/modifications may occur.


Judging:


Judging criteria will include cinematography, editing, post-processing techniques (to include Special Effects), Soundtrack (to include Sound FX, narration or dialogue, music), originality, and "Story"" or ""message" (very heavily weighted).



Competition Administrator:
DoolittleRaider


Judging Panel:
FSM Directors: 310thFalcon, BBloke, Biltongbru, Joe-90, Monty Dan
1C Company: BlackSix
Unaffiliated: Barfly


Note that Competition Administrator (DoolittleRaider) and Panel Judges will not be allowed to enter the competition.


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Resumes of FSM Judges:
310thFalcon
Executive Producer of "Purple Heart Alley"
Sound FX expert for “Faith, Hope, and Charity” and many other movies


Barfly/JokkerFX
Creator of:
Battle of Britain-The Kanal Kampf
Battle of Britain-The Day Before Adlertag
Battle of Britain Day-The Blitz
Battle of Britain 2.0


BBloke
Creator of the IL2MovieDataBase
Creator of:
Flight of the Gigant
Oasis Run


Biltongbru (Tinus leRoux)
Biltongbru’s youtube Channel
Creator of many highly acclaimed Flight Sim movies since 2008


BlackSix
1С Company, Website Community Manager and COD Mission Designer


Joe90 Joe90 Website
Creator of the Flight Sim Movies Website
Owner of Wee Bit Studios
Resident director of PookyMedia Films
Creator of:
An Irish Airman Foresees His Death
Brothers in Arms
Operation Big Ben
Beaufighters of 455 Squadron
Milne Bay
Bag the Hun
Shoulder to Shoulder
Norden Bombsight Training
Contributing Director and Master Editor of “Faith, Hope, and Charity”


Monty Dan Monty-Dan's Website
Creator of:
Apocalypse Syndrome Episode 2
Adrenalin Rush
Shot In A Million
The Storm of War
Pictures of War
Pictures of War 2
V1
Down Olga Bridge
Contributing Director and Editor of “Faith, Hope, and Charity”




Resume of Movie Competition Adminstrator:
DoolittleRaider
Co-producer and screenwriter for “Faith, Hope, and Charity”
Co-producer and screenwriter for “Brothers in Arms”
Assistant FSM Manager and Oleg Award Administrator
1C Company Cliffs of Dover “Movie-Making and Videos” sub-forum Moderator

[Doolittle81]

Please note that the Prize List has been updated on 31 January, adding:


First Place: "Complete Collection" from 1C Steam catalog [Click Here for Details]

[Doolittle81]

As there may be a number of Community members who would like to enter the Movie Competition but are new to Movie-making, and might not be sure where to begin, we think it might be valuable to present Food-for-Thought with regard to Flight Sim Movies…perhaps to stimulate ideas for a competitive ‘Cliffs of Dover’ movie.


Note that in no way is this competition limited to only Experienced Flight Sim movie-makers. In fact, with exception of 3 or 4, most of the IL-2 Movie-makers of the ‘glory days’ of IL-2 movie-making (2004-2009) have retired from the Flightsim movie-making hobby…or advanced to more professional real-world realms of movie-making.


As has been noted elsewhere, GamePlay videos play a number of very useful roles…to open discussions of on-line experiences and tactics; to offer Training in aircraft controls and instruments; to provide flying lessons in aerial maneuvers and gunnery lessons; to demonstrate positive features or negative bugs of the COD game, to promote Sales of the Game, or simply display on-line kills/achievements, etc. In the main, the sequence of events in the majority of GamePlay videos consists of take-off (sometimes preceded by engine start steps); flying to a point in time and space, sometimes just for sightseeing, more often to encounter enemy targets which are then engaged (either airborne or ground targets, with guns or rockets or bombs); a resolution of the combat engagement occurs which may or may not result in the ‘loss’ of the POV pilot, or a safe return towards home base…often all the way through landing and engine shutdown. Very often, a gameplay video will begin “airborne’ and consist solely of constant, or nearly constant, air-to-air combat action.


Putting Gameplay videos aside for the moment, however, it should be noted that this current Competition is for "Movies", and the very best FlightSim Movies offer the opportunity to present a much greater variety of “events’, specifically orchestrated by a “Story” or “Screenplay” which usually conveys an emotional connection of one sort or another with the “humans” at the aircraft controls. The typical Story or Screenplay (of a Hollywood movie or Broadway/West End stage play) most often follows a general structure in which there is a Beginning (setup), Middle (crisis) and End (resolution), sometimes referred to as the 3-Act structure. The structure is sometimes more refined, such as: Introduction, Rising Action, Climax, Falling Action, and Resolution.


This structure can be applied to even the shortest movie, and most would agree that, with rare exception, simply must be followed with long movies (referring to Hollywood movies, Stage Plays, and novels, etc). Note that the outstanding IL-2 (and Rise of Flight Movies) have been as short as 2 minutes, and as long as One Full hour…but at both extremes the best movies have employed some version of the 3-Act structure.


The simpler way of putting the preceding is that a movie-maker must plan ahead before ‘shooting’ his first raw ‘footage’, plan and think beyond Action-Action-Action. Think about the "story", about the “message” and/or the “emotion” to be conveyed. When we say "emotion", guys, we aren't talking "Chick Flic". You've got Happiness, true, but also achievement, pride, sorrow, respect, fear, patriotism, sacrifice, camaraderie, bravery,cowardice, heroism, etc. It has been proven in FSM movies that it is not impossible to convey emotion without on-screen human actors. I refer you to “Requiem”, "I Promise", and "Not my Time to Die". If, at the end of your movie, the viewer is left Thoughtful, Wondering, Smiling, Laughing, Enlightened/Educated, or even with a Manly Tear in his eye, you've produced a "Movie". I will note that, lacking human actors on screen, voice-over Narration and/or Dialogue can be a very effective technique to convey emotion, and contribute to immersion, in FSM movies.


The very first step, of course, is to establish what “Type” of movie is desired. Below are listed several types of flight sim movies which have been made using the IL-2 series, and to a much lesser degree Rise of Flight, and one or two from other Flight Sims. All of the movies below can be viewed at the FSM Website. They may give newcomers an idea of what is possible, and what appeals to their individual personalities and interests as movie-makers.


For convenience, I have provided direct links to each movie’s Showcase page at FSM.


Flight Sim Movie types


Memoirs:
I Flew for the Fuhrer
Not my Time to Die
Checkertails, Star of Altoona


Docudrama:
Brothers in Arms
Desert Dogfighter
Faith, Hope, and Charity


Comedy:
Bob Storm of War
Nachthexen
Bill et John, Episode 2
The Messenger


Documentaries and Tributes:
Sabres of the 51st FIW
Death of Mannock
Taranto
Mitchell
Against the Odds
Operation Ten-Go
Battle of Britain:The KanalKampf


Dramatic Fiction and/or Science Fiction:
I Promise
Pictures of War
Pictures of War 2
In the Sky


Thematic, Poetic, Inspirational… Music videos:
“Requiem” The Classic IL2 Movie, which has stood the test of time for a full decade
Come with Me
An Irish Airman Foresees His Death
Hearts and Minds


Recreations of Hollywood Movies:
Battle of Britain 2.0 (Recreates opening scene of 1969 BofB Movie)


Unique and Infinitely Creative:
To Do and Die

[Doolittle81]

​First movie has been entered in the Competition on 8 Feb 2012:
Cliffs of Dover Movie Competition thread

[Freycinet]

And now there is a second vid in the running too...