Rants and Ramblings: random commentary about culture, media, politics, technology and whatnot.

ff2003: flash film festival

Note: This entry is being posted after the fact. I took notes during the session, but didn’t have a chance to write it up in narrative format until Monday, March 30.

The Flash Film Festival is a semi-annual event honoring Flash-based websites held in conjunction with the Flash Forward conference. This time around, there were four finalists for each of 15 categories (plus a “People’s Choice” best-of-show award).

I was kind of sad to note that so few of the winners were actually present. However, given that so many of the nominees and winners were non-American, perhaps they were just unable to come to the conference. I was also bummed at how scaled-down the event seemed this year than at the 2000 NY — the host that year was Chuck D, as opposed to convention organizers Lynda Weinman and Stewart McBride. (Not that they weren’t good. They just don’t have the celebrity factor going on.)

So here are the winners. My impressions of the various finalists are based on their 45-second “trailers” sent in for the film festival, not the sites themselves.

Motion Graphics - Elevation won this category, but I was more impressed by Knock Action Marketing and Reality Sucks, Films Are Cool. The other finalist was Eccentris.

Application - GModeler won in this category. Other finalists included Amazon-Search, My Real Net Worth and Text Editor.

Educational - BrainPOP won in this category. While I enjoyed their fun trailer, made especially for the film festival, I was turned off by the acceptance speech, which had been e-mailed in and sounded totally PR. Other finalists included the trippy anti-drug site Bubblemonkey, CBC4Kids and Wonderville.

3D - The cute TokyoPlastic won here. Other nominees included GE: Imagination at Work, the Lexus ‘Minority Report’ Experience, and the nifty MediaramaS.

Story

Life of Pi won top prize here. Other nominees: Une Huere Cing, multimedia journalism effort Face to Face, and inside nothing.

Art

The Beauty of Details, whose trailer had a number of “technical difficulties,” took home the top prize. My favorite in the group was the pretty-yet-exploitive manga-esque site tokidoki. Also nominated were Rolitoland and La Villette.

Typography

Winner: WDDG, which, to me, was the only nominated site with any kind of clean design and type. Other nominees: Les Halles de Schaerbeek, Roadtrip, tenmetal design.

Navigation

The winner in this category was perfectfools, which had a very pretty site, but I wasn’t impressed by the page-turning navigation. (It was cool from a technical standpoint, but not a particularly efficient way of navigating through a website.) The owner of this site was present to accept the award, by the way. Of the nominees, I was most impressed with SchmidtFoto, whose navigation may not have been the most intuitive or efficient, but was certainly very full-featured. I also enjoyed Cube6Media’s ‘South Park’ trailer, if not their navigation. Also nominated was 01importexport.

Cartoon

I really liked the winner in this category, Kunstbar, a quirky cartoon about an artist’s bar. Other nominees included the subversive The Misfitz, the cute Max and Isa, and the simple-yet-animated Mortadella TV.

Commerce

Nike Basketball was the big winner here. Other nominees included firestorm PC, Husky, and Volvo XC90.

Original Sound

Defenders of the Universe won here. I was more partial to PHOTO.mondo. The other nominees were ieMix and superhere.

Technical Merit

A two-time winner tonight, the owner of GModeler also took home an award for gskinner.com. I was also impresed by uncontrol. The other nominees were CLCS Arquitectos and When I Was 19.

Game

Battle for the Sudan, which had a fantastic trailer, won in this category. But all the nominees here were pretty cool: Fly Guy, Jingleballs, and Law and Order: Dead Money.

Experimental

The nifty musical site repercussion won in this category. I was far more impressed by the Sim City-style world created by the Alexandria, VA, owner of Zanpo. Other nominees included GeoTracker and pitaru.

Video

Corporate site Eagle F1, with its high-energy video, won here. I was partial to the more subtle Magnolia website (but then they won me over with the Aimee Mann music), despite its more difficult navigation. Also nominated were Flood and In the Woods.

People’s Choice - MediaramaS