Rootclip News

You might not have noticed that Rootclip.com is hosting two contest voting periods this week. We encourage you to vote and comment on both to support aspiring filmmakers.

Rootclip has some incredible, fantastic, and awe-inspiring submissions in the final round of their film Chance Encounter. These films are all amazing in their own way, and we need everybody to help us pick the best one. Filmmakers in this competition are competing for the $2000 Grand Prize and ultimate bragging rights!

Click here to see the videos and vote for Chance Encounter’s final winner!

Also, Rootclip has gone to colllege and is hosting the University of Tennessee Knoxville 2008 Fall Film Project. These future filmmakers need you to weigh in with your opinion and votes. Please give them support and go check out their excellent films.

Click here to see the videos and vote for the UTK 2008 Fall Film Project’s Chapter 2 Winner!

If you are feeling left out by all this action, and now have the urge to get in on the filmmaking action, we have your fix. Rootclip.com’s newest competition, Doctor Frank is currently underway and taking submissions. The latest contest revolves around a mad scientis named Doctor Frank, his assistant Igor Johnson, and a rather ordinary switch that opens up endless possibilities.

Click here on more details regarding the new Rootclip.com contest - Doctor Frank!

Thanks everybody for your support of Rootclip.com, and good luck to everybody competing this weekend!

Rootclip.com was created to give filmmakers, writers, actors and anybody who just likes to watch movies the ability to collaborate on a video project. It’s a new approach to collaborative filmmaking. Rootclip team members create a short video clip or “Rootclip” to start the story. You watch the video, then shoot your own rendition of what should happen next in less than 2 minutes. Once you’ve created your video, upload it to Rootclip.com during the submission period and compete for votes against the videos from other users.

We’re pleased to announce the launch of the first in the Doctor Frank Rootclip.com contest series. The new storyline revolves around an experiment and an awe-inspiring switch (or not). We think this story has the most creativity potential so far, and are super stoked to see what all you creative Rootclip submitters can come up with to finish the story.

A new story, and new prizes too:

Grand Prize is a $2,000.00 VISA Gift Card and a Porta-Brace SS-2 Side Sling Pack, Retail Value $199.

Chapter winners 2-5 will recieve a $250 VISA Gift Card, a RichardSolo.com Backup Battery for iPhone / iPod, Retail Value $49.95, Boston Bill Sunglasses, Retail Value $30, and The DV Rebel’s Guide: An All-Digital Approach to Making Killer Action Movies on the Cheap by Stu Maschwitz, Retail Value of $44.99. (ARV: $374.94).

To help with story flow this round, we sugest breaking up the chapters with this general outline:

• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: Conflict
• Chapters 3 & 4: Rising Tension
• Chapter 5: Climax
• Chapter 6: Resolution

Also people, take it in any direction you want, but try not to mortally wound the good Doctor Frank if possible. We’re thinking about having his experiments become a more regular feature on the site.

Many thanks to Les Lanphere, better known as killerrobotninja, and his team for putting this together for us. We hope you like it as much as we do!

Good luck everybody, and we can’t wait to see all the crazy directions that you can take this story!

To enter, submit your videos here.

Congratulations are in order for Ya’Ke Smith, one of our esteemed Rootclip.com judges!

Ya’Ke’s film The Second Coming, a narrative short about an estranged father who returns home to make amends with his son, has been selected to screen at the Urbanworld Film Festival, Sept 10-14 in New York City.

The film previously won the HBO Short Film Award at the American Black Film Festival, was nominated for a Student Academy Award and made it national broadcast debut on HBO.

To learn more about Ya’Ke’s films visit his website at ExodusFilmWorks.com.

And if you’re in the New York area come out and show support for his film. Please visit UrbanWorld.org for dates and times.

JakusB has won Chapter 4 of Chance Encounter with their entry Unwelcomed Help. Congratulations and good work JakusB!

Again, this round had some intense competition with Tony’s entry Back in Black: Out of Time, bryceanderic’s entry True Colors, and a comedic sping with Dynomar’s submission Homerun.

Great work by everybody this round! Thanks for your patience while we tallied the last judge votes coming in over the holiday weekend.

Just a reminder that JakusB, FungusRidden and joshutk are ineligible to compete until the final chapter, so we need your submissions next round!

JakusB you’ve won a $250 VISA Gift Card, a really cool Balance Beam from Trig Industries, Retail Value $249.50, a “Video for the Web” training DVD by VASST, Retail Value $80, and The DV Rebel’s Guide: An All-Digital Approach to Making Killer Action Movies on the Cheap by Stu Maschwitz, Retail Value of $44.99.

Also, JakusB is now eligible to compete in the final chapter for the $2,000.00 Cash Grand Prize.

It’s official, Chapter 4 of Chance Encounter is now open to voting.  Go over today and cast your vote today!  Voting is open until Monday morning. 

Click here to Vote.

FungusRidden has clinched Chapter 3 of Chance Encounter with their musical extravaganza Hold on, April!

Competition was fierce this round, with jaytaylorthe1’s entry Citrus with Attitude helping push boundries, and newcomer ChiriSan’s excellent submission AFTERSHOCK. Check out Chirisan’s production website at http://www.karmacauseproductions.com to learn more about their efforts. Great work by everybody this round!

Just a reminder that FungusRidden and joshutk are ineligible to compete until the final chapter, so we need your submissions next round!

So congratulations FungusRidden! For winning this chapter you’ve won a $250 VISA Gift Card, a really cool Balance Beam from Trig Industries, Retail Value $249.50, a “Video for the Web” training DVD by VASST, Retail Value $80, and The DV Rebel’s Guide: An All-Digital Approach to Making Killer Action Movies on the Cheap by Stu Maschwitz, Retail Value of $44.99.

Also, FungusRidden is now eligible to compete in the final chapter for the $2,000.00 Cash Grand Prize.

Onward to Chapter 4!

We have a goal to get our project Rootclip.com on DiggNation and we need your help to do it. If you have a digg.com account, please follow the link below and “Digg” that link. If you don’t have an account, make one, then Digg it!

http://digg.com/movies/Rootclip_Rocks_Encourage_Creativity

If you’re not familiar with it, DiggNation is a weekly web show starring Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht. They run down the list of some popular things on digg.com during their show. Our goal is to get the above Digg story on their show.

How can you help?

1. Send an email out to all of your friends with this link, asking them to Digg it.
2. Use your Facebook account to post a link to it, or mention it in some other way.
3. Send the link out on your Twitter, Tumblr, or IM.
4. Put it on your own blog, telling people to Digg it.
5. Get creative and use any other networking tool you have to get the word out.

We’ll need a pantload of people to Digg it, so pass it on and help us out. Thanks everyone!!

Voting for the next chapter in the film Chance Encounter has begun at Rootclip.com.  Come over and put in your vote to help us choose the best filmmaker.

This round we’ve got filmmakers putting in Lost style flashbacks, Tarantino style mobster flicks, and even a musical number.

Vote this weekend at http://www.rootclip.com

In case you haven’t heard, the Chapter 2 Submission Deadline has been extended due to a few, now resolved, technical problems.  There is still time to get your submission in if you are interested in helping us complete Chapter 2.

From the News Wire:

Collaborative filmmaking site, Rootclip.com, began its second contest with a host of high-profile filmmakers as new judges.

Through Rootclip, amateur and independent filmmakers, writers, actors, and film buffs from around the nation develop short films together. Located at http://www.rootclip.com , Rootclip encourages site visitors to create customized short film storylines.

Judges for Rootclip’s second competition, which runs July 14 through September 22, include five filmmakers with diverse backgrounds:

– Michael Samstag, director and producer for the DVD special features of the first three Harry Potter films

– Ya’Ke, director of Hope’s War

– David Meyers, director of photography for The Oasis and a film instructor at Full Sail Real World Education

– Jeremiah Birnbaum, executive producer of Presque Isle and co-founder and CEO of the San Francisco School of Digital Filmmaking

– Rich Cline, a film critic who covers film weekly for BBC Radio Five Live and the Web site “Shadows on the Wall”

“Our goal is to create connections between directors, writers and actors across the nation,” said Kevin Antoine, president and co-founder, Rootclip. “With their impressive filmmaking backgrounds, this panel of judges will draw more people into the collaboration — making the film an overall more creative, polished product.”

After the successful first contest, titled “Good Luck,” Antoine is eager to see what visitors will create with the new premise, “Chance Encounter.”

“Our new contest revolves around a mysterious event that seemingly panics an entire town,” Antoine said. “The storyline focuses on two friends, who walk the same route each day to catch the bus for work. Their lives are pretty mundane until they meet up with an unknown news reporter waiting at the bus stop. It’s up to our site visitors to show us how their
journey unfolds.”

    How it works

Like all Rootclip.com contests, the development of “Chance Encounter” will play out over a six-chapter cycle. The Rootclip in-house team develops an inaugural film chapter to jump-start the story. Participating filmmakers then view the root clip, a few minutes of content that begins the story but has a completely open-ended conclusion, and then shoot their own rendition of what should happen next. The users upload their one-minute chapters to Rootclip.com, where online viewers and the panel of judges judge the submissions and select the chapter winner. The judges’ scores count for 50 percent of an entry’s total score while votes from Web site visitors make up the remaining 50 percent. Once the winner for that chapter is announced, the open submission period begins again. This process repeats itself four times before culminating in a final chapter competition among all previous chapter winners.

Prizes for each “Chance Encounter” chapter winner include a $250 VISA gift card; a Balance Beam by Trig Industries, a tool designed to add stability and smooth video shots for smaller digital camcorders; and “Video for the Web” Video Training DVDs from Vasst.com. The grand prize is $2,000 in cash.

Participants are encouraged to keep entries between one and two minutes, and to maintain character consistency through wardrobe. Winners for the second, third, fourth, and fifth chapters will be eligible to submit the sixth chapter, and possibly win the grand prize.

About Rootclip.com

Rootclip.com was created to give filmmakers, writers, actors and anybody who just likes to watch movies the ability to collaborate on a video project. Rootclip’s goal is to be the catalyst that gets people thinking and being creative with video in such a way that it infects the masses and brings a new life to the art of filmmaking.