Gizmo's in the Top 10! Please Vote

My short film, the Gizmo Tree has just reached the Top 10 of the Yobi Film Contest! We started out with 30 movies/semi-finalists and after a month of voting I now find myself only a single round away from reaching the Top 5 - the ultimate round - the Finals!

To skip ahead and cast a much appreciated vote for my movie, click here.

Ever since uploading my work to the Yobi Contest site back in December, my focus has been making it to the finals in the film category. Win or lose, I really just want to feel satisfied that I pushed as hard as I could, promoted as hard as I could, and even if it's just for a week, feel like I had a shot at the top title. Opportunities like this are obviously few and far between.

While I can't deny how helpful the $10,000+ grand prize would be in helping me advance my own career and facilitate a desired move to Vancouver, what's actually fuelling my campaign for votes is the exposure that a contest like this gives my work and myself (which it already has). If I can gain even a couple new contacts to improve my network, the reward can be far more significant and long lasting - being featured as a finalist is a great start!

It's funny to be talking about my serious outlook in relation to a short like, the Gizmo Tree. It's a clean cut, quirky little comedy that seems to serve its purpose and encourage a few laughs - but the positive response and feedback has been incredibly humbling. I've watched it and critiqued it more times than I'd care to remember, and yet it's this easy going flick that has the potential to influence some fairly dramatic personal and professional upgrades.

Your votes, attention, time, support, viewership, feedback, and even your ability to put up with my self campaigning, speaks to the fact that many of you are willing to help me achieve something that I can't possibly succeed at alone. In this case it's a single weekly vote and telling others about my short, which in turn is helping me reach new viewers and grow in popularity. In the last round alone, the Gizmo Tree shot up over 9,000 views.

To cast a vote for the Gizmo Tree:
1. Visit Yobi.tv and use your email address to join the site.
2. Once logged in, simply visit my Gizmo Tree Contest Profile.
3. Click the THUMBS UP under my movie. That's it!

I want to thank you all for your help and support - whether this is the first time you've voted or the 5th, the rounds are only getting more competitive and intense. That said, I'm going to give my weekly pitch again and ask if any of you can mention my short to a co-worker, friend, spouse, family member, etc. it would be greatly appreciated! This is the last round of the semi-finals, and the Top 5 is almost close enough to touch.

Thank you!

The Jumbo Diamond

Date:
December 2007

Associated Video(s):

• The Gizmo Tree
• VOTE for the Gizmo Tree
  

Story:
It was this random Christmas tree ornament that became the elaborate treasure and reward in my short the Gizmo Tree. Just a piece of plastic that hung heavy side down on a cheap holiday display . . . I saw it and instantly thought that it would make a perfect prop for some future project. It didn't inspire the Gizmo Tree, but it seemed fitting for the fantasy element of the movie and made up for the faulty gift plot line - somewhere in the rush of writing the project it was included for the extra novelty and punchline. To this day, the 'jumbo diamond' as I excitedly referred to it in Gizmo, still sits on my desk as a reminder of the project.

I Was Dead (2009)

It's just what mainstream audiences were crying out for, another one of my art shorts! I'm joking of course. As pretentious as the title may sound, I'm not really making any sweeping claims or revelations about my own mortality other than the fact that, like everyone else, I will eventually die.

My death, as you likely assumed was the focus in I Was Dead, felt like a captivating subject for a new art short mainly because of how pointless it seems for me to think about it right now. Being so enamored with getting my life started is far more relevant, and clearly more uplifting then worrying about checking out.

Still, I think we all wonder how we'll be viewed when we're gone, and I became intrigued with the idea of what someone might say if they were visiting my tombstone. Will anyone even visit? What day of the week will I die on? Would this blog post seem more meaningful somehow? The concept of the short was based on the illusion of visiting my own grave site - trying to imagine how I'd reflect on my life and comprehend not existing anymore if it were actually possible to be there after I'd passed.

Last year I had shot a bunch of random footage on my little Samsung cam in the hopes of using some of it for my split screen experiments. Until now nothing ever came of this graveyard footage, but I remembered how beautiful some of it was and thought it would make a nice edit. The 'Fandrich' tombstone is my Grandpas, but seriously thinking of it as my own felt incredibly unnerving.

I Was Dead is an eerie but poignant personal edit, that in my view, presents a stark view of individual mortality and our craving to understand it. We'll all be gone at some point, but to what degree does that mean the end? How will you be remembered?