M33M the 6th |

On Wednesday, January 29, 2014, M3’s 6^th Micro Movie Marathon screened 44 short movies – 3 minutes or under. A few entries were rejected (multiple entries from the same people) to keep the show time a reasonable 1:55. That’s a first, having too many entries. M33M 2014 Winter was a solid cross section of the “ecosystem”, with commercial, experimental and student work represented.

Northwestern Michigan College had an unprecedented slew of entries from Caroline Schaefer-Hill’s Time Based Media class in the Visual Communications Program. The Career Tech Center’s Film and New Media program alumnie were also out in force with Tyler, Micah, Naomi and Jake Lewis entering work. With the exception of the stalwart Jake Burgess, current FNM students were AWOL, as was the Interlochen Center for the Arts – mainstays of previous shows. Scott Tompkins and Lesley Tye, report to the dunk tank.

Commercial (high production value) entries were offered by the Ciaglaski brothers, Aaron Dennis, Bill Latka, Joe Carter (Tedx!) Andrea Claire Maio and Justin Warnes. M3’s in house production ‘Building an Industry’ offered key insights for our creative ecosystem from Jeff Gibbs.

Narrative features in distribution were represented by Rich Brauer with a trailer for DOGMAN2, now sneak previewing in select local theaters.

This year the Major Awards honored the ubiquitous Like of social media. Facebook® may or may not be considering adding a little more fuzzy logic to the Standard Like, specifically Almost Like and Super Like. Quick to glom onto anything remotely trendy, the M33M committee assigned marbles to each shade of Like, as follows… green marbles = Almost Like, red marbles = Standard Like and lavender marbles = Super Like. Three highly responsible audience members without a dog in the fight were asked to tally the votes.

The Golden Boot explained in bullets… 1) regional creatives take more risks and are less concerned with whether the bumper jury is capable of recognizing unadulterated genius or no, 2) entries to the TCFF bumper contest are more plentiful and robust because entrants know that the M3 audience is decidedly hep, 3) hard work by aspirants to excellence is celebrated with a public screening that includes Major Awards, snacks and dudes in high heels.

Only two bumpers vied for the Golden Boot, Scott and Kirk Ciaglaski’s Tape and Carolyn Shaefer-Hill’s Drawers of Memory.

Video highlights of the Major Awards