My friend Tricia and her friends entered Virgin Radio Fake Film contest and made it to the top twenty finals on January 28th. Their film “The Matrix in 59 Seconds” came fourth.
To be the top, non-ex-flm student/actor/special effects entry is #1 in my books. Their film had cross-cultural flair with Asians in non-Asian roles… and
just being mainstream is great.
Tricia's role in the film was to play Trinity, the role created by Canadian actress Carrie Moss.
Tricia wrote to me about the experience:
spots were nabbed by amazing films, created by ex-film
students/actors/special effects people, and we really didn't stand a
chance against them. Out of 197 films, to be in the top 4 was an
unbelievable honour.
Photos of us with the trophy are on:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?fbid=189454827739604&id=185974568087630&aid=46451
The
films were for the Virgin Radio Fake Film Festival, first time they ran
the contest. The top 20 films were first selected by public voting
(which was a bit of a gong show… there were some people who kept
making accounts to vote their own films as 5 and vote all the high
ranking films as 0.). So we were lucky to have friends and fans to bump
us past this hurdle of making top 20.
The top 20 were then judged
for accuracy, quality and promotion by 3 main judges (a film critic
from Vancouver Sun, a writer from the Province, a radio host's mom) as
well as the Virgin Radio promotions department.
The top three
films were no doubt, amazing in cinematography, effects, acting and
plotline, and I had predicted they'd come in top 3. Beyond that was
really anyone's game. Watch them, and you'll see that they're quite
professional: http://vancouver.virginradio.ca/FakeFilmFestival/Top10.aspx
There were also a ton of other professional-looking films that didn't
make it to top 10 either.. I'm glad they looked at them from a fairly
level playing field.
On the contrary, our video was directed and
filmed by an incredibly creative sister duo, Julie Ng (dentist) and
Natalie (accountant), and the cast consisted of an occupational
therapist, financial advisor, engineers… none of whom had any previous
experience in film or acting. We found out about the contest really
late… ended up filming over two weekends and promoting non-stop the
third week.
The origami rabbit doubled as a promotion tool
because there's a quote in the movie that says “Follow the white
rabbit”, and also, this year happens to be the “year of the rabbit”
(Natalie & Julie)
See the amazing “The Matrix in 59 Seconds”:
The Matrix in 59 Seconds – Virgin Radio Fake Film Festival
Watch Neo discover the Matrix and fight the computer-generated dream world enslaving mankind, in 59 seconds. A fourth place finish out of 197 …
Of course, I loved the amazing origami rabbits that they folded as part of their promotions project. – photo courtesy of Tricia.
see more pictures:
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=188443317840755&set=a.188444034507350.46091.185974568087630