Archive notice: This article was originally published on October 19, 2006. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
Participants from 28 countries had submitted a total of 177 films for the Webcuts 06 Internet short-film festival. From these, the organizers selected 30 entries for the competition, which they then screened for the audience on October 12 at the Cinestar cinema in the Sony Center at Potsdamer Platz in Berlin.
Anyone who could no longer get a seat in the auditorium could also follow the competition via live streaming on the Internet and vote on the audience award.
The prizes were “Web Cats” and non-cash prizes. The Web Cat for best film and the audience award went to Jörg Edelmann, Jörn Großhans, Jochen Haussecker, Simon Schleidt and Marc Schleiss of the Stuttgart Media University with “Video 3000”. The video consists of a mix of live action and computer animation. Key elements are motion control and motion capture. It tells the story of a man who discovers that he can control the course of the world with his remote control. As a reward, there were ten licenses for the Mental Ray rendering software from main sponsor Mental Images worth 10,000 euros.
The Web Cat for best design went to “Trusted Computing” by Benjamin Stephan and Lutz Vogel, which had already delighted the audience at Animago. The prize was video software worth 1,500 euros from the company Main Concept
The Web Cat for best animation went to a big cat, the film “Tyger“ by Brazilian Guilherme Marcondes. The cinematic interpretation of William Blake’s poem of the same name (1794) delighted the jury through the successful combination of the real-filmed tiger moved by human puppeteers with the otherwise virtual scenery. The prize was 3D software worth 1,500 euros from the company Bitmanagement.
The jury presented a special prize to “Elephants Dream,” the world’s first open-source film project. Behind the project was the “Orange Open Movie Project Studio Amsterdam” around Dutchman Ton Rosendaal, which worked mainly with the open-source software Blender. However, the jury was convinced not only by the background of the project, but also by the design of the film, which tells the dream of an old man. The prize was a voucher for a weekend at the Clarion Hotel Berlin.
Further Links:
- Webcuts Blog (with prize win
All videos from the competition at Google Video
