Announcing: Unofficial Google+ Film Festival

Mission: To strengthen collaboration with the Google+ Film Community in order to bolster its online presence, discover unique talent, facilitate interaction, cultivate discussion, and connect passionate filmmakers with a contemporary audience.

Adam J Cohen and Johnathan Chung
What’s this?
At SocioloG+, one of our biggest goals is to be recognized as a hub where people (artists, intellectuals, etc.) can come together and find a way to collaborate with each other. Christina Trapolino showed the social media world the power of organizing a collaboration between artists with The Great Google+ Art Experiment.

My own endeavor, which quickly became a SocioloG+ endeavor, was aiding the launch of the Unofficial Google Plus Film Festival, founded and run by Adam J. Cohen of www.blindlylefilms.com. Adam was kind enough to let us help him get that project going, and soon we had dedicated part of the SocioloG+ team to lending a hand.

We used our collective brainstorming power, G+ connections, and resources to make sure we could give the festival its due credit and visibility. Now, we are announcing that SociologyPlus.com is going to be the sponsor for the festival. We’ll have more on this story as it continues to develop.

Interested in entering? Here are the guidelines:

Who can submit?
Any filmmaker who owns ALL the rights to his or her film may submit it to the film festival for consideration.
You must also have a Google Plus account. If you need an invite, send a quick message to gpffinvite (at) BlindLyleFilms (dot) com. I’ll be happy to send you an invite to get started.

We will be showing the films live during the event, and we may want to record the event so that others can view it in the future.

You must own all the rights to the film so everyone is happy. Blind Lyle Films will be asking for NON-EXCLUSIVE viewing rights to your film for the duration of the event. We may want to record this event, so let us know if you would like to have your film available for viewing after the event as well. We may also consider posting your film on our website in the festival archives.

How much does it cost?
At this time this event is free, so feel free to submit your best work.

How long can my film be?
Keep it short. The shorter, the better. I’m not going to put a time limit on the films yet, but I am more likely to pick films that are less than 10 minutes long so that I can pair those videos up with a few others and then have a discussion with people in the Hangout. I will say the likelihood of choosing a film longer than 20 minutes is VERY small since part of the idea is to have the audience engage with many films in a short period of time. In the future, I may extend this, but initially, I want to see what the reaction is.

How do I submit my film?
Send a private message to Adam Cohen on Google Plus with a link to the film so we can view it online.

I don’t want to post my film online for everyone to see, is there a way to do this privately?
Yes, upload your film to vimeo.com and make it private. Then make it password protected and send the link and the password to Adam Cohen on Google Plus.

How many films are you accepting?
To be announced. This depends on the amount of submissions and how long we expect the event to last. There will be an announcement about this soon.

How will I know that my film has been accepted?
You will be contacted by e-mail or G+, so make sure you include your contact information with your submission.

What else are you expecting from the filmmaker?
We expect you to be available for the block of time that your film is viewing online and afterwards for the Q&A. This should be anywhere between 15 minutes to an hour depending on the block your film is chosen to play in.

We will also need to get a digital copy of your film so we can piece them together for your block.

What if I have other questions?
Post your questions in the comment’s section below.

This is so cool, I want to give you money so you can keep doing this (go to www.blindlylefilms.com to donate).
We would love to keep doing this, and if you want to help us, send us some love by donating whatever you can.

I don’t have any money but I want to help, what can I do?
Get the word out about this. Invite other filmmakers to submit content, get film bloggers to talk about this, write your own article about this festival, tell all your friends to sign up to be notified about the festival, or if you have some other expertise that you think might be helpful, get in touch with Adam Cohen and see how you might be able to help.
A special thanks to Keith Barrett for helping to make the broadcasting of this event possible.