One Minute Movies is a new site from BBCi, and it’s designed to give everyone the chance to show their short film to the world.
The site gives the reason they’re doing it: “There are many websites about making films but we thought they were all a bit too serious, a bit too technical. The spirit behind One-Minute Movies is to just pick up a camera and shoot.”
With strong advice and tips on story, directing, sound and editing the site even has a small collection of classical music you can download and use for your own project. Tips come from professional film makers like David Lynch and Ann Coates and there’s also a facility for sending on your own tips and discussing them on the message board.
The rules are simple – basically it has to be all your own work and not break any laws. It doesn’t even need to be only a minute long.
We like this idea. Although the idea is not unique to the BBC, they are getting high profile exposure for what we feel will become a popular form of content, particularly on mobile devices.
They have made the smart move trying to ensure a certain degree of quality by providing lots of information about the process. The site concentrates on making films with the equipment lots of people would already have, without requiring any additional expense from software or hardware.
Although just about anyone could shoot a short film and host it themselves, having a movie on the BBC site will give it a much larger audience. Be aware though, as with all these things, submitting your film to BBCi gives them the right to do whatever they like with it, forever.
Making something only a minute long might seem simple, but it can be extremely challenging – and rewarding. Perhaps we’ll get round to finishing that stop-motion Lego film that nearly drove us insane at Christmas.
