Last year’s Musicbed Film Initiative was a roaring success for the production music company, with more than 7,000 submissions and over $50,000 US of grants distributed. Part of the secret of that success must surely have been the fact that you didn’t have to actually make a film to enter. In fact, that’s the whole point: the competition seeks to discover the best films that haven’t been made yet and help them make the leap to production.
To enter, Musicbed want a short synopsis for your unmade masterpiece together with a pitch PDF, which can include anything from a treatment through mood boards all the way up to a completed script. One lucky winner will receive $70,000 US worth of production assistance to make their project a reality.
This year the judging panel includes:
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Jesse Nickson Lopez, Writer, Stranger Things
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Ian Durkin, Senior Curator at Vimeo
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Tom Davia, Venice Film Festival Programmer & CEO of CINEMAVEN
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Patrick Beisemans, Filmmaker and 2016 Musicbed Film Initiative Award Recipient
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Nancy Jacobs, President of Batya Communications: A Director’s Talent Agency
You can see what last year’s winner Patrick Beisemans submitted in a Dropbox folder here. It’s fair to say it’s an impressive document and really shows a considered, cohesive visual treatment for the short. You can watch Embers and Dust, his meditation on the Orson Welles broadcast of War of the Worlds, below.
Had your imagination sparked? Head over to the Musicbed Film Initiative site and tell them about your filmmaking plans. You’ve got just over three weeks to enter: the competition closes on March 24 and the winner of the initiative will be announced on April 7. Get dreaming!
