Press release from Kodak
Kodak is, once again, supporting and promoting young creative talent in commercial film production through its sponsorship of the Young Director Award, established 10 years ago by the Commercial Film Producers of Europe (CFP-E).
Winners of this year’s Young Director Award will be presented on June 24th during the Cannes Lions Advertising Festival. Winning commercial directors will benefit from exposure to the advertising industry, and promotion both in Shots magazine and on the YDA website. They will also receive Kodak Color Negative Film in support of their next project.
According to Kodak, the primary purpose of the Young Director Award is to “support and promote young creative talent in commercial film production from anywhere in the world.” Young directors who participate in the competition will have the chance to get noticed and network with around 10,000 key industry players from across 94 countries all congregating at the festival to view the best in international advertising and creativity.
Deadline for entries is April 30th 2009, and commercials may be entered in one of five categories; test commercials and broadcast, the recently added student category and two new categories, viral commercials and branded short films.
Submissions must be one of the first four commercials ever made by the director and student category entries are strictly for students of film schools. Categories are further divided into European and non-European with first and second prizes on offer. Effectively, twelve prizes will be awarded with the addition of a Special Jury Award.
“Kodak is proud to support this important program again this year,” said Nicole Phillips, Segment Manager, Image Capture Commercials, Kodak Entertainment Imaging. “Commercials push the boundaries of visual storytelling and Kodak’s sponsorship of this initiative forms part of our worldwide program to support and recognize talented filmmakers at an early stage of their careers. Our goal at this festival, and at so many others each year, is to be available, visible and helpful to
filmmakers. So many aspire to shoot film because nothing else enables them to tell their stories without compromise- and we want to help them do that.
“Directors are very skilful in their ability to use subtle variations in colors and contrasts to create moods and textures to support their stories and evoke emotional responses; originating on Motion Picture Film is still the best way to achieve this,” she continued.
“All the richness and the nuances in the visual content need to be experienced by the viewer because the images are the heart of the story. The CFP-E competition is one way we can recognize excellence in this demanding and sharply competitive art form.”