YouTube and Vancouver Film School Scholarship Contest

VFS and YouTube have just announced an international scholarship competition that should knock Chris Crocker off the front page and into the obscurity which has hungered for him ever since the Leave Britney Alone fifteen minutes started.

The prize is a full tuition scholarship to internationally-respected Vancouver Film School, the school out of which Kevin Smith dropped to go on to produce the magnum opus, the veritable Big Chill of his generation, Clerks. Like I ever saw that.

I’m old, yo.

Anyhoo. The challenge is to make a compelling YouTube pitch explaining just exactly why you’re the natural choice to win. Anyone with enough self-confidence to go into film should have no problem with this part. The school picks the finalists, and then the viewers on YouTube make the final choice.

Official Rules

Full Press Release (PDF)

A few more details, from the FAQ:

This competition is about making film school accessible to everyone. The YouTube community will award three aspiring artists (that includes directors, animators, actors, sound designers and more) with full-tuition scholarships to the Vancouver Film School program of their choice.

Between March 18th and May 9th, submit a short film, animation or creative pitch addressing the theme “What Matters to You.” You must start your video by identifying the VFS program you wish to attend and you must limit your video to no more than three minutes. On May 20th, we will announce the 10 finalists, selected by Vancouver Film School.

From May 20th to May 27th, the YouTube community will view and vote for their favorite videos.

On May 30th, we will announce the 3 scholarship winners.

What programs are up for scholarship awards?

1. Foundation Visual Art & Design
2. Acting Essentials
3. 3D Animation & Visual Effects
4. Classical Animation
5. Digital Character Animation
6. Houdini™ Certification
7. Acting for Film & Television
8. Digital Design
9. Entertainment Business Management
10. Film Production
11. Game Design
12. Makeup Design for Film & Television
13. Sound Design for Visual Media
14. Writing for Film & Television

Some handy tips:

Be creative. Don’t just tell us what’s important to you – show us. For example, if you’re a director, make a short film or documentary about an issue you care about. If you’re an animator, animate a story about an issue, person, place, etc. that matters to you. If you’re a writer, pitch a fresh screenplay concept about something that matters to you. If you’re a makeup artist, transform a stranger into someone who matters to you. These are just ideas and we know you can do better, but the point is: think creatively!

What gets into the shortlist?

Vancouver Film School will judge submissions based on the following criteria:

a. Creativity and Originality (up to 25 points)
b. Relevance of the video to the particular program of study selected (up to 25 points)
c. Technical Execution: Camera/Sound/Lighting/Editing (up to 25 points)
d. Overall Impression (up to 25 points)

And after that, it’s all up to the community on YouTube, so start sucking up building relationships now!

St Patrick’s Day cartoon: savage chicken vs leprechaun

You don’t want to mess with a Savage Chicken!

St Patrick’s Day leprechaun vs Savage Chicken

St. Patrick’s Day Irish Jokes

St Patrick’s CatThese are the best Irish jokes you’ll hear all day, unless you go over to Smoke&Mirrors where I stole them from and read the whole whack all at once.

It should be noted (or is that “noted it should be”?) that:

I’m Irish Catholic on one side and Irish Protestant on the other, my favorite pub is the impeccably authentic Irish Heather, I host a literary gathering that meets at the Shebeen, the women of my immediate family are somewhat, and quite inconveniently from time to time, renowned for the Second Sight, my uncle goes over to Ireland on vacations to teach them how to play the fiddle, my grandfather was an infamous warlock, and there’s a Bend Sinister in the gene pool somewhere for bonus points.

So I have total Celt cred.

1586 words of the most amusing Irish jokes around over the jump. But not the leprechaun nun one. Gross!

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Continue reading

Quiz: what will the movie of your life be called

Here we present a soothing balm to the surprisingly incendiary in a Cute Overload sort of way quiz: which movie do you belong to? featured earlier.

Stolen from Mia’sMadness

There, isn’t that just so much better?

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Sex and Death for St. Patrick’s Day

Michael Hutter’s painting on sex and death

How Irish. It was either post about sex and deathor go read some James Joyce, and who can handle that sober, eh? I ask yez.

In news sure to warm the rapidly-cooling cockles of convenience-minded necrophiliacs and suicidal sex addicts alike, the Swiss self-offing rights group Dignitas has opened a sort of members-only Hotel California(you can check out, but you have to leave in a box via the freight elevator) next door to a brothel.

From the Guardian:

Dignitas had launched a mobile service after being forced to leave its Zurich flat. It admitted last November that it had dispatched four people – including two in public car parks in Swiss beauty spots.

The country’s law insists that agencies that help arrange assisted deaths do it for ‘honourable reasons’ and do not profit from death, apart from charging basic fees. Dignitas claims that the cost of organising suicides is £5,000.

Karl Rütsche, a spokesman for Schwerzenbach council, said it was not happy when it heard Dignitas had settled in its community but was powerless to act. ‘Of course, as a council we tried to stop them moving here and we fought the Dignitas decision tooth and nail. We didn’t want the country’s biggest sex club and largest death factory side-by-side on our doorstep.’ He added: ‘Having lost the battle to keep them away at least we can say that – on a positive note – everyone now knows where Schwerzenbach is.”

True, dat. Too bad they won’t exactly become regular visitors. In related Irresistible Metaphor News, both the cat house and the death house are in the soul-killing confines of an industrial park. And Dignitas lost its earlier location because of some kerfuffle about corpses in the elevators. How undignified!

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