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3rd Annual Pixie Awards Update -- September, 2002
The Pixie Awards: THE top awards for Internet films, animations, and websites that incorporate motion www.pixieawards.org 1) 2002 Pixie Award Contender Profiles 2) Article: "And Now for our Short Feature Presentation...." 3) Pixie Around the World (She turns up in the most interesting, international locales) Submissions have continued to stream in for the 3rd Annual Directors Board Awards for Excellence in Broadband Motion Pixure Production, aka "The Pixie Awards." Here now some brief profiles of contenders to the throne: a) 2002 Best Pixure contender : Belgian filmmakers Ruben Goots and Toon Aerts for "Dialing the Devil." Belgian filmmaker Toon Aerts teams with 2001 Pixie Award-Winning producer Ruben Goots and Striker Pictures for "Dialing the Devil," an homage to road movies of the seventies such as Spielberg's first film "Duel." When Zeffry Williams decides to sell his soul for a Cadillac, his life gets an unexpected twist. "Dialing" shows that it is "difficult not to sell your soul in a barren landscape filled with devilish apparitions. A good-looking car, an alluring lady, a phone ringing in the launderette: seduction takes many forms. " The hook -- the film was shot entirely in Limburg, in The Netherlands. Link: http://www.dialingthedevil.com/ b) Best Animated Pixure Contender Profile: San Francisco-based animator Moonsung Lee for "Bert" 30,658 people have viewed animator MoonSung Lee's "Bert," a Best Animated Pixure contender and a "poignant journey to find the protagonist's family so that he could be accepted and loved." Lee has served as director, writer, and animator for the film, with music by Trio Voronezh. iFilm viewers seem to love "Bert," with the 4 minute cartoon running a 5-star rating at the site and surfing in raves! Here's what some of those viewers have to say: "Very cute movie. Very much in the style of "For the Birds" by Pixar (Short before Monsters Inc.) or "Gerry's Game". Great Music." "This is one of the best short films I have seen. Style, animation, and directing its really well done. And it has a story~ If you have time check this one out!" "A great take on the "Ugly Duckling" fable. Top notch design and animation as well. A refreshingly atlernative film that displays a true understanding of stylization and great storytelling. I think we should expect great things from this artist in the future." Link: c) Best Actor Contender Profile: Matthew Powers for "Comedy, A Tragedy in One Act" -- at Hollywood.com. Powers also directed this 17 minute film, about a bored Angel of Death who asks deep questions about humor from a two bit, foul mouthed comic. The comic ultimately discovers his desire for life through this exchange with Death. Viewers have generally given this film 4 stars. Powers is staying busy as an actor -- check out his profile here: http://us.imdb.com/Name?Powers,+Matthew Link: http://indie.hollywood.com/movie.asp?ID=909&c=0&cat=&sub= d) Best Animated Pixure Contender Profile: Animator Bill Roth and Apple's i-Movie Software for "Brigit Saves Winter" Animator Bill Roth teams with Apple's Macintosh to create "Brigit Saves Winter," a 3-minute satirical look at environmental issues through the eyes of a 10 Yr. old snowboarder. Brigit wakes up to morning paper headlines: Behemoth Motors introduces "Dinowagon", a gas-guzzling, smog-spewing monster SUV. Behemoth Motors is targeting surfers, telling them that by driving the new SUV it'll be summer all the time (by increasing global warming, of course)! Brigit springs into action and shows the surfer dudes the error of their ways. Link: http://homepage.mac.com/billroth/iMovieTheater1.html 2) Magazine Article: "And Now for our Short Feature Presentation...." Check out this excellent article by Claudia Kienzle in Video Systems Magazine for an excellent overview of the broadband motion picture scene, including quite a bit about the Pixie Awards: "And now for our Short Feature Presentation... Thanks to streaming technology, the Web is ushering in a Golden Age for makers of short films." PDF format: Link: http://images.videosystems.com/files/127/106STfeature2.pdf 3) The Pixie Awards are showing up in some interesting -- and international -- locations. Herein some examples (most of them are in the language of their home country): Belgium: Profile of Pixie Award 2001 Best Pixure Winner, Belgian filmmaker Pieter van Hees: Link: http://cwisdb.cc.kuleuven.ac.be/dcom/campuskrant/495.pdf Opening Sentence (in Dutch): "Amper 31 is hij, m aar eind deze maand wijdt Leuven Kort al een special aan cineast Pieter Van Hees. "Ik ben er eigenlijk wat bang voor. Mijn kortfilms moet je bekijken als een soort kladboek. Het zijn variaties op hetzelfde thema. En het is eigenlijk geen enkele keer goed gelukt." Blijkbaar zagen ze dat in Hollywood anders, want eind september kreeg zijn kortfilm 'Black XXX-Mas' daar een Pixie Award, zowat de Oscar voor internetfilms. werk alleen kan dromen." Canada: News from Canadian firm Fleming Design: Link: http://www.flemingdesign.com/10012001.html India: Shree Raj Travel, "India's Finest Tour Operator," labels the Pixie Awards an "Editors Choice" and puts us in their official "cool archives." Link: http://www.raj-travels.com/4_editorschoice/cool-archives.asp Ireland: The Pixie Awards in a thesis, entitled "The Virtual Film Game," by Kelly McErlean, 2002 (in PDF and MS-Word formats): Link: http://www.hypermedia7.ie/projects/vfg.pdf Link: http://www.hypermedia7.ie/projects/vfg.doc Mr. McErlean is from Hypermedia7, a Dublin-based new media technology training institute: http://www.hypermedia7.ie or http://www.hypermedia7.ie/index2.html This thesis is another complete overview of broadband motion pixures. Here's Mr. McErlean's excerpt about the Pixie Awards: "Online films received a major boost last year with the launch of an online film awards ceremony. The Directors Board of Motion Pixure Arts and Technologies is a non-profit organization that recognizes excellence in the production of Internet films, animations, and websites that incorporate motion (Schleicher 2001). At the Pixie Awards ceremony, short films shot for the web were given the generic title "i-Features" and motion pictures were called "motion pixures." The ceremony was held at The Hollywood Roosevelt Blossom Ballroom, the site of the first Academy Awards in 1929, and winners received a Pixie statuette, [a concrete representation] of a female version of the Oscar -- [a virtual statuette] -- that exists only online. The Pixie Awards web site is www.pixieawards.org. "At the first awards, Joe Nussbaum, co-writer and director of George Lucas in Love (1999) won the Best Director of an i-Feature Film. Many of the films featured at the ceremony were highly creative with excellent scripts and well-developed concepts. The low-budget, high-audience potential combination of the product they were creating seemed to enthuse the cast and crew of these films and push them to produce a product that was entertaining, thought provoking and all the things that good television and cinema should be. To reduce costs, many of the filmmakers had concentrated considerable efforts on pre-production, thereby avoiding costly mistakes later. Solid pre-production and extensive script development indicates that their approach was serious and that they understood the pitfalls of traditional low-budget filmmaking, where the excitement of seeing the completed product on the big-screen leads filmmakers to be happy with inferior work and adopt an "it'll do" attitude." And from way back, a story by Irish Film and Television about one of our first nominees, the Irish film "Short." Link: Italy: An article in Italy's Filmaker Magazine: Ufficialmente sono i Directors Board Awards for Excellence in Online Motion Pixure Production, ma il buon senso li fa chiamare Pixie Awards. Assegnati all'indomani dell'11 settembre 2001, intendono rappresentare la parte sostanziosa del nascente cinema online, finora povero di contenuti e ricco di proclami: "The Definitive Film Portal", si autodefiniva IFilm.com poche settimane fa, prima di essere ricondotto a più moderato giudizio ("The Internet Movie Guide") dalle sferzate della stampa, Peter Howell in testa. Per essere definitivi occorre qualcosa di più di Apocalypse Pooh, con Winnie-the-Pooh infiltrato nelle scene di Apocalypse Now, specialmente se non si offre anche l'originale. Daniele Cossu The Netherlands: "De korte film Black XXX-Mas van Pieter Van Hees heeft tijdens het afgelopen weekeinde in Los Angeles een Pixie award als beste internetfilm gewonnen, zo maakte de productiefirma Striker Pictures bekend. Internetgebruikers kunnen het filmpje gratis downloaden van de site www.blackxxxmas.com of van de in kortfilms gespecialiseerde Amerikaanse site www.atomfilms.com.' (Standaard)" Link: http://www.planet.nl/multimedia2/0,1674,101_1491_200310,00.html If you have an online film, animation, or website that incorporates motion in some way (Flash, multimedia, etc.) we invite you to submit for this year's awards, scheduled for Spring, 2003. Official Call for Entries: Deadline: December 31, 2002 "The Pixie Awards are quickly becoming an online institution as THE award for broadband and Internet movies. Watch the award-winners from around the 'net or submit your own film for consideration." --About.com's guide to online films! Named THE Internet motion pixure award by About.com Dramatic Movies http://dramaticmovies.about.com/movies/dramaticmovies/cs/awards/ and About.com World Movies http://worldfilm.about.com/cs/onlinemovies/index_2.htm and The Definitive Film Resource http://www.tdfilm.com/filmlinks/awards.html and FilmFestivals.com http://www.filmfestivals.com/int/awards/jan_00.htm and iMDB http://us.imdb.com/Sections/Awards/Pixie_Awards/ and Yahoo! Movies http://dir.yahoo.com/Entertainment/Movies_and_Film/Awards/ and Yahoo! UK Movies http://uk.dir.yahoo.com/entertainment/Movies_and_Film/Awards/ |
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