Cinemania

kentuckycinemania.org has posted a new item, '2014 KY Cinemania Contest: 1st Contact'

Hello to everyone!

You are receiving this email because we show that you’re listed with a team registered to participate in the 2014 STLP Cinemania “48 Hour” Video Competition at this year’s STLP State Championship. This is the seventh annual competition and continues to be a very popular event. This year, we have 81 teams registered overall, with 24 at the K-5 (EL) level, 25 at the 6-8 (MS) level and 32 at the 9-12 (HS) level. As in years past, awards will still be given for the 1st and 2nd place in each category.  This message will serve as an overview of our plan for this years competition.

For new participants, the Cinemania competition challenges students to be creative in a very compressed timeline. Within an established window of about 48 hours, an email is sent that contains this year’s “elements” (props, names, actions and such) to be used in a video production. Students will create and produce a video of no more than 3 minutes in length, including as many of the elements in the release as possible. Those videos will be submitted for judging and winners will be announced at the STLP State event on Tuesday, April 22nd. If you’re brand new to this, our advice would be to spend some time on the kentuckycinemania.org web site, look at a particular year’s release elements and then look at some of the video submissions for that particular year. You’ll see the information provided to teams as well as some finished products.

Regarding the submission process, we again ask teams to upload their video submissions to YouTube. You’ll want to test this ahead of time to ensure that you can successfully upload a video to YouTube, as some districts’ Internet filters and local policies may present a challenge. As one of the tips below mention, you won’t identify your school or district name in the video itself.  We will use the emails and registration info to tie your school to the YouTube link you’ve provided. We do this in order to eliminate any perception of bias and to accommodate “blind judging” as best we can, making every effort to avoid a judge being able to identify the school’s video that he/she is judging. One benefit of using YouTube as a resource is that it allows you to ‘test’ a video upload to make sure that you’re able to upload on the day of the competition.  If you are unsure how to upload a video to YouTube, view the guide on Google’s support page at https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/57924?hl=en, Make sure that the video is set to ‘public’ and published in order for judges to view the video submission.

Two things from the judges’ perspective over the years has been (1) dealing with copyright-related concerns and (2) dealing with questionable topics or content. My advice would be to avoid putting a judge in the position of trying to interpret copyright law (or parody) or whether something is appropriate for all audiences. I am sure that valid arguments can be made for or against when these topics surface, but the fact is that the judges are volunteers and we’re asking them to review and score quite a few videos in a short amount of time. We can’t expect all judges to have the knowledge or the time to dissect these issues, so the best course of action is to steer clear of anything potentially controversial.

Teams often like to see previous videos and associated documentation. At the Kentucky Cinemania site, you’ll find a page that has all of the submissions from the past 2 years (assuming they are still at the originally-provided links) – see: http://kentuckycinemania.org/student-video-submissions/ If you will access this link - http://kentuckycinemania.org/2013-elements-released/– you’ll find LAST YEAR’S release of elements as well as a link to a sample scoring rubric that the judges will be using. Also, give extra attention to the following details (this will serve as a reminder for your students).

As the competition has grown, we’re having to adjust to better accommodate the large number of entries to be judged. This year, we’ll be using an initial round of judging prior to the day of the STLP championship. Thus, our creation window will take place prior to the two days preceding the state event. This year’s release of video elements will take place via automated email from this “kentuckycinemania.org” site (just like this email) and should occur on Tuesday morning, April 15th at approximately 8:00 AM Eastern Time. Videos should be uploaded to YouTube, as stated previously. When the upload has completed, access the ‘ask questions’ area of the web site – or click http://kentuckycinemania.org/contact/ – and submit an email to the web site by Thursday, April 17th at 12:00 PM Eastern Time.  In the submission, put your name (as the sponsor) along with the school name in the “Name” field. Place your email address in the “email” field and, in the body of the note, include the YouTube link and a note that this is your official Cinemania 2014 video submission.  See example:

Ideally, Tuesday and Wednesday would be your work time and Thursday morning would be used for upload. If you DO plan to perform video work on Thursday, be warned that we will hold fast to this submission deadline, so plan accordingly and be sure you have an idea how long your video upload will take before the last minute on that Thursday. Also:

• In the final product to be judged, make sure not to identify student or school/district names in any way in the video itself (this is for anonymous judging).
• We don’t plan to have a formal Cinemania booth.  This shouldn’t be required since we’ll have the uploaded videos before the state event.
• This is less of an issue with today’s technology, but note that Cinemania teams will use their own equipment in the creation of the videos submitted.  No equipment will be provided.
• There’s no tasks or ‘work’ for teams on the day of the state competition. Judges should have access to the videos and the final judging is all that will take place on that day.
• As of now, we plan on the first round of judging to yield approximately fourvideos at each of the three levels. We will reveal those videos on the website during the morning of the state competition. Once final judging occurs later that day, we will reveal the top two of each grade category both on the website and at the “wall of winners” area at the STLP competition.

 

We are really looking forward to participating in this event with you and your students. Our overall goal is to have fun with this project, keep it simple, and let the creativity of our student shine! Let us know if you are NOT participating in this year’s competition – you can do that by submitting a ‘question’ to the Cinemania web site.

Thanks so much and let us know if there are questions.

Jody, Marty & Fonyam | KY Cinemania Team