Accomplished Filmmakers to Judge Rootclip Competition

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"

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.