Pitt One Minute Film Festival invites submissions from faculty, staff, students

The Center for Creativity has announced Pitt’s first (so far as they know) community-wide One Minute Film Festival.

Open to all Pitt students, faculty, and staff, across all campuses, the festival is intended to allow Pitt creators to make and share visual stories with the only restriction being that they are 60 seconds or less. The submissions can be narrative shorts, documentaries, stop motion, experimental films, music videos, and anything else you come up with.

The deadline for submissions is noon, Oct. 26. To submit your film, simply log in to YouTube Studio, upload the finished film, and send a link to creative@pitt.edu. For more information on submissions guidelines, go to the Center for Creativity website.

From Oct. 26 to 28, all submitted films will be made available for online viewing and viewers will have the opportunity to vote for the Audience Choice Award. All entrants will receive some One Minute Film Festival swag.

Award winners will be announced at the One Minute Film Festival Exhibition on Oct. 29. The Audience Choice Award winner will receive a $250 donation to the student organization of their choice, plus a unique One Minute Film Festival trophy designed by the Center for Creativity staff. Two runners-up also will receive trophies.

As part of the festival, the center will hold some virtual workshops:

Screenwriting 101, 5:30 p.m. Sept. 30: On the basic elements and formatting of a screenplay, the screenwriter’s voice, and an overview of where the writer fits into the process of filmmaking.

Screenwriting 102, 5:30 p.m. Oct. 6: Participants will have the chance to have their screenplays workshopped by the group, both for formatting and narrative structure. The 101 workshop is not required to participate in 102. Those wishing to submit their work should email a PDF document to creative@pitt.edu by midnight, Oct. 4.

The One Minute Film Festival also will host a One-Page Screenplay showcase. In traditional screenplay format, one page is equal to one minute of screen time. This showcase is open to writers with or without screenwriting experience and is intended to open up the festival experience to those with the desire to express themselves in a written form and to those without access to filmmaking equipment. The deadline for submission is the same as for films: Noon, Oct. 26.