Hyundai Short Film Contest 2012
This morning started off with a trip to Hyundai at the KPMG Center along Ayala Avenue. It’s pitch day for the top 20 finalists of the Hyundai Short Film Competition, and we had to present our film concept, character designs, and other things with top notch panelists. Hanz couldn’t make it today, so it was just us girls who did the presentation.
Last week we attended a workshop for the finalists at the Bonifacio Global Center with some of the best screenwriters and cinematographers in the Philippine industry today. We learned a lot about films, and the current state in our country.
Since we got past the 15 second video competition, our second round was composed of pitching ideas and producing a 5-minute short film featuring the Hyundai Eon. This meant presenting the title of the project, allocation of roles, character descriptions, locations, general shoot plans, synopsis, and sequence treatment.
The groups before us were late, and extended an hour over the time set-up for the meeting. Because of this, every other presentation was delayed and we found ourselves in a waiting room with two other groups, who were much, much older than us.
I mentioned in my recent post about the workshop we attended under Hyundai about oddity of the fact that we are neither art or film students, and how it appeared to be a handicap for us to create a better film. I want to correct myself and say that maybe it isn’t exactly handicap. It’s actually a secret blessing in disguise.
We were dressed up in respectable attires that could make us pass for professionals who did this for a living. The group before us took a little over an hour, while we managed to do it efficiently within half an hour. We were clear, concise and responsive. We were very much open to their comments because they were genuinely things that we did not think of and could be incorporated into our concept to increase the depth of the characters.
It was our first taste of marketing, and it was goddamn exciting. The judges laughed a lot, and seemed to really enjoyed the contents of our presentation. It was clean cut enough to be professional, but still had that youthful vibe, which is probably the best card we had considering none of us are older than 18.
We’re not sure yet when the results from the panel will be released. Only the top 5 out of 20 proposals will accepted and produced. However, we have agreed that win or lose, the experience was already enough. It was an anomaly in itself that we managed to get so far into the competition considering our only background in producing films came from Loyola Film Circle’s Isapelikula sessions.
