Online broadcasting giant Youtube has announced its fifty finalists for this years Your Film Festival.
The short film festival has been created by Your Film Festival Limited a subsidiary of Scott Free Productions. The production company is founded by acclaimed director, Ridley Scott.
The festival is a global event taking in entries from all over the world from five main regions including North America, Central and South America, Europe, Africa and the Middle East, and Asia and Australia.
From the Asia group six Australian entrants have been shortlisted into the top fifty finalists along with three from New Zealand and one each from Japan and Malaysia.
The only specifications for entries were that they be story-driven, fifteen minutes in length, abide by the YouTube Terms of Service and that they could not have been publicly exhibited or distributed prior to January 1, 2010.
Entries for the festival were officially open from February 2 to March 31. More than 15,000 submissions from 160 countries were whittled down to 50 finalists selected by Scott Free productions.
This is not the first time Scott Free productions and YouTube has collaborated on a global scale. In 2010 the two groups collated more than 80,000 submissions from 192 countries to produce the documentary film Life in a Day. The feature served as a retrospective time capsule illustrating what it was like to be alive on the 24th of July, 2010.
It is now up to the YouTube community to view and vote for the fifty finalists which will be narrowed down to ten by 13 July. Anyone with a YouTube account is eligible to vote for the shortlisted fifty features.
The ten finalists will be flown to the 69th annual Venice Film Festival where their videos will be screened during the opening days of the event. From those ten finalists one will be the recipient of a $500,000 original production grant to work with Scott Free.
The entries will be judged on qualities such as storytelling, creativity, originality, screenplay, performances, technical execution and overall impression. The jury in charge of selecting the grand-prize winner from the ten shortlisted entrants include Sir Ridley Scott and acclaimed actor Michael Fassbender.
The ten finalists will be asked to pitch a concept for what they would do if they were awarded with the grand prize. Your Film Festival Limited will also reserve the right to approach any of the finalists for a potential development deal for future projects.
The Grand-Prize winner will be announced on 3 September, 2012.
For more information or to view the finalists visit the official website Your Film Festival
