Are You An Epic Film Editor? Prove It and Win — Epic Editing Challenge at COLLECTIVE

  • Two scenes for you to recut COLLECTIVE Epic Editing Challenge

The online artist community COLLECTIVE has just launched another new filmmaking contest to enable and challenge emerging filmmakers. If you haven’t visited COLLECTIVE yet, do it now.

COLLECTIVE is a community of passionate creatives changing the world one frame, pixel, and note at a time. Members live to unlock their potential by learning from each other.

As an exciting way to spread ideas and spark conversations about the creative process — and a regular thrill for its members — COLLECTIVE puts together exclusive challenges or members that are created and judged by its resident pros.

In this latest COLLECTIVE challenge, running July 28 to September 1, 2018, prove your skills by taking the Epic Editing Challenge. Your objective: cut a scene using the scripts and dailies from two film scenes for a chance to win some awesome creative tools from a prize pool worth over $10,000.

LaCie Collective Epic Editing Challenge Judges

 

We’re teaming up with two highly respected filmmakers and educators

The contest was ideated by, and will be judged by, two of COLLECTIVE’s Resident Pros — Kris Truini and Sven Pape. They’re providing scripts and dailies from two film scenes from past projects they worked on — so COLLECTIVE member, artists like you, can take a shot to remold those scenes in your own vision.

Kris Truini is a director and cinema color expert who runs a YouTube channel based on the idea of free access to filmmaking education. The channel has over 250,000 subscribers and is a small step towards fulfilling Kris’s ambition of making filmmaking knowledge accessible to all.

Sven Pape is an A.C.E. Award nominated film editor who has cut for directors like James Cameron, James Franco, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Mark Webber, including the 2012 Sundance Film Festival favorite The End of Love. His storytelling-focused YouTube channel has over 150,000 subscribers who watch him work on cutting scenes. Sven’s latest film Alt-Right: Age of Rage was directed by Adam Bhala Lough and will hit theaters this August.

How to enter the Epic Editing Challenge

To get in on the fun, visit the Epic Editing Challenge contest page. You’ll start by signing up for COLLECTIVE, if you’re not already a member. Then download the dailies and script and your instructions to edit the footage into a final scene. There are two scenes from different films you can choose from; work on one or both scenes, and submit each of your unique edits to COLLECTIVE as a contest entry to win prizes. Each participant can only submit one version of each scene.

The whole point of the challenge is to see what the diverse talent among all the  COLLECTIVE members will do differently, using their personal vision, references, attitudes, skills and approaches to editing. You’re free to stick to the script provided, or choose to ignore it. You can restructure the scene, eliminate or repeat the actor’s lines in any way you see fit.

Timeless behind the scenes Vehicle to Vehicle Shot

 

The scenes: footage from movies Sven and Kris helped bring to life

The footage provided for the contest is taken from two past film projects Sven and Kris worked on and helped bring to life.

Sven’s scene is taken from the independent drama The Ever After, which premiered at the 2014 Los Angeles Film Festival. The scene takes place in a hotel room and is technically very simple but will require creative editing to bring out the story. Yes, there is a script — but the dailies show a highly improvised scene, which gives you freedom to shape the arc!

Kris’s scene is a vignette taken from his short Timeless. The scene tells the story of a man reuniting with his car in an abandoned Sicilian factory. In his eyes, the car is as clean as the first time he drove it years ago. With this in mind, the challenge is to highlight those memories with the cuts and pacing. Anything can happen! You have the creative freedom to do something entirely different with the scene.

Be sure to get very familiar with the material you are cutting and putting together. To dive deeper, I would recommend you create a timeline where you gather your first pass at selects that could work or stand out to you. From there, leave plenty of room to play. A good idea could be to create sections in your timeline or new sequences all together where you can play with small chunks and really dial in the pacing or the way the pieces connect with each other. This has been my preferred way of tackling scenes, especially for longer edits. – Kris Truini

Snapseed crew awaits shot

 

A little guidance on preparing your film editing project

Now, although as editor you’ll have free reign to cut each scene using your own vision, you can only use the footage provided. So, no playing director on this one — you may not reshoot the scene or add additional shots to the material. You can certainly add your own music, provided that you own the license or it falls under a free creative common license (before you can win a prize, COLLECTIVE will request a license agreement to verify your right to use it — any copyright violations disqualify the entry).

Sven and Kris suggest that your entry be between 1-3 minutes. It must not be longer than 5 minutes.

During judging review, each submission will be anonymized so the judges will not know the name of the entrant — so please don’t use your name as a credit in the scene!

After all the entries come in, the judges will select one grand prize winner and three runner-up winners. And — bonus — a separate Audience Award winner will be selected through a public vote. It could be you! And even if it’s not you, you know you’ll enjoy the challenge and the opportunity to practice your skills and share your vision with your COLLECTIVE artist community!

We encourage you to check out the YouTube channels of the Resident Pros judging this contest. In their most recent uploads, they discuss the contest and share tips on how to cut with story in mind as well as how to manage and organize footage for editing.

If you’re an editor, here’s a chance to work on your storytelling skills and win some great prizes

COLLECTIVE is honored to work with revered filmmakers to bring creative professionals opportunities to learn, exchange information, and win great gear on COLLECTIVE contests. Go visit the Epic Editing Challenge to sign up!

Oh, did I mention prizes? Check these out:

PRIZES

Grand Prize (1 winner)

  • Macbook Pro Touchbar
  • LaCie 2big Dock 20TB
  • LaCie DJI CoPilot
  • Annual Filmstro (full) License
  • Adobe Creative Cloud (12-month) license

Runners-up Prizes (3 winners)

  • LaCie DJI CoPilot
  • Annual Filmstro (limited) License

Audience Award Prize (1 winner)

  • LaCie 2Big Dock 20TB
  • Annual Filmstro (full) License

As you can see, if you’ve got a vision as a filmmaker, now’s a great time to share it. Enter the Epic Editing Challenge. And join COLLECTIVE and stay informed about future contests!

2018-08-14T10:31:10+00:00

About the Author:

John Paulsen
John Paulsen is a "Data for Good" advocate, with more than 20 years in the data storage industry. He's helped launch many industry-firsts including HAMR technology, 10K-rpm and 15K-rpm hard drives, drives designed specifically for video and for gaming, Serial ATA drives, fluid dynamic HDD motors, 60TB SSDs, and MACH.2 multi-actuator technology.