The vertical film festival VERTIFILMS is back with its 3rd year. The festival celebrates movies and content created specifically for mobile phone screens. Several hundred vertical films from 29 countries, including the USA, Mexico, Italy, France, the United Kingdom and Germany, have entered the Tall Idea Prague competition.
The official opening ceremony will take place on November 1 and due to COVID-19 the festival will take place online. A selection of a hundred films will be available online for 30 days. Members of the international jury of the VERTIFILMS 2020 competition are new media filmmaker L. Michelle Salvant (USA), uprising film director Jacob Salzberg (USA) and Chief Creative Director of BBDO Singapore and vertical storyteller Tay Guan Hin (pictured above). The winners will be announced on November 15. For the first time, viewers will also vote in the Best of Vertifilms 2020 Red Bull competition.
Festival director Kryštof Šafer (pictured below) said: “For the third time, we present the best vertical works from around the world. This year we are affected by the coronavirus pandemic so we have to move the festival online. Still, we want to bring a great experience. So we prepared an industry section called the “Pocket Conference”, which contains a short vertical presentation of various global speakers on the subject. This conference is on November 10. With the jury member and co-organizer of the festival Tay Guan Hin from Singapore, who gives the festival an impressive Asia-Pacific reach, we have selected the best vertical speakers. They will inspire you to create even better engaging vertical content. ”
The first year of the Pocket Conference will present the best of new vertical content from around the world. One is the award-winning big-budget film Apple Stuntman which gives the story of the film “The Stunt Double” travelling in time in nine minutes. Its creators Adam Alshin and Paul Wysoca of MediaArts will share how the idea came about and their experiences in preparing and making the film.
Walter Woodman, Patrick Cederberg, Matthew Hornick and Greg Francis of shy kids film collective will share how Australia’s first vertical comedy series, Content, was created. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) has launched the series on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. The ‘vertical’ TV Emmy nominated show unfolds entirely from the perspective of a wannabe influencer’s smartphone.
Chief Creative Officer from BBDO Singapore Tay Guan Hin has been a Creative Vertical Storyteller for brands like Nestle Kit Kat, Unilever, CIMB, VISA and other blue-chip organizations. He will share inspiring creative mobile examples to create engaging thumb-stopping content designed to suit today’s consumer’s mobile behaviour. Key takeaways include vertical creative principles that can be applied immediately to your next content.
Other inspiring pocket sessions include: Wildmoka Auto ReZone™ transforms automatically and in real-time horizontal layouts into vertical ones. Lucille Mari will share how this works.
L. Michelle Salvant works on Life Film Immersive Journaling Experience, and she will explain about her year with Snapchat glasses.
Lastly, Adnaan Wasey put a lot of thought into grammar and what works on social media for narratives, such as documentary or animation.
The 3rd Vertifilms Festival of Vertical Films will take place on vertifilms website, starting on November 1, 2020, at 12:00 noon CET to November 30. You can also sign up here.
