90-Second Newbery Film Festival Video Contest
The 90-Second Newbery Film Festival is a video contest in which filmmakers of any age make a movie of an entire Newbery Award winner in 90 seconds or less.
The Newbery Medal, named for eighteenth-century British bookseller John Newbery, is awarded annually to the author of the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children.
Festival creator James Kennedy has found that any book, no matter how worthy and serious, becomes "pleasingly ludicrous" when condensed to 90 seconds. And, according to the rules, the whole plot must be dramatized, no book trailers or video book reports.
Now in its third year, the film festival has become greatly successful with annual screenings at the public libraries in New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, Portland, Tacoma and more.
The rules are pretty simple:
- Your video should be 90 seconds or less (unless it's absolute genius, you can make it up to 2 minutes)
- Your video should be about a Newbery Award winning book (click here for the winners)
- No book trailers and no video book reports
- Your video should be a dramatization with mostly child actors (if you use them) that tells the book's entire story
- You will need to upload your video to a video sharing site like YouTube or Vimeo and email James Kennedy
James has a wonderful section of his website that goes into great depth about the festival.
He's also created a helpful guide that provides you with tips and tricks for making a 90-second video. You can also find a page dedicated to successful Newbery videos that will hopefully provide some inspiration.
Don't take too long to just think about this project though; the deadline for this contest is December 10, 2013.