SciFi London short film and flash fiction competition winners
May 31, 2018 7:35 AM   Subscribe

Every year, as part of their science fiction film festival, Sci-Fi London organise a challenge in which entrants are given a title, line of dialogue and description of a prop, and then have 48 hours to turn in a completed 5 minute film or piece of flash fiction. The winning films and flash fiction stories from the SciFi London 48 Hour Challenge are now available to watch and read.

This year's shortlist of 5 minute films are all available to watch here. Using those as starting points, clicking around on Vimeo will find you many, many more entrants!

And because it looks like last year's winners weren't posted to MeFi:
Missing Edge - (2017's winning 5 minute film)
The Truth Value [NB: direct PDF link] - (2017's winning flask fiction)

Previously, Previouslier.
posted by metaBugs (9 comments total) 21 users marked this as a favorite
 
Yeah, the first story is excellent. I'm off to read and watch everything! There goes my day!
posted by goatdog at 8:05 AM on May 31, 2018


Is this related to the 48 Hour Film Project here in the US? Same rules.
posted by Liquidwolf at 9:53 AM on May 31, 2018


I particularly liked the first and third place winners. Is there anything that shows what the line of dialogue and prop description prompts were? I couldn't find it.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 11:12 AM on May 31, 2018


Aaaaggghhhh! Watchus interruptus! Those videos were all damn good. The second was more like a trailer for a longer silly movie (that I want to see), but the other two were remarkably self contained.
posted by mondo dentro at 11:59 AM on May 31, 2018


The first one was better than most disaster or end-of-the-world drama movies that have been made.

Second one was charming, loved the little twist.

Last one was neat too, don't usually read a story where I'm rooting for the protagonist to lose by the end of it.

I'm at work so could not watch the video art.
posted by GoblinHoney at 3:16 PM on May 31, 2018


> Hoooly shit that first one. Is. Terrifying.

> The first one was better than most disaster or end-of-the-world drama movies that have been made.


Wow. Yeah, that was ... something.

I'd really really like to find the prompts / dialog / props specified in the challenge - I guess I could read all the stories and see what is in common, but is there an easier way to get at them?
posted by RedOrGreen at 10:16 AM on June 1, 2018


I'd really really like to find the prompts / dialog / props specified in the challenge

Yeah, me too. The competition used to require a card at the start of each film listing the prompts, but apparently they stopped that a few years ago. Sometimes if you go to the film's Vimeo page it's in the description, but otherwise I don't know how to find out.

Each team gets a different set of prompts randomised from fairly long lists, so it isn't really possible to work it out from the film/story.

It's a shame, because seeing how the prompts were interpreted and woven into the story by used to fascinate me; they often went in brilliant directions from those premises that would never have occurred to me.
posted by metaBugs at 1:01 PM on June 1, 2018


> seeing how the prompts were interpreted and woven into the story by used to fascinate me; they often went in brilliant directions from those premises that would never have occurred to me.

Yeah - reading story #3 (The Charm), it makes a huge difference whether the dialog sentence provided was:

We’re doing MACH 12 already, but it still feels like we’re standing still. How does that even work?

or: Maybe she’d even get away before the radiation damage became irreversible.

or: ‘Why do you call yourself Tin?’
posted by RedOrGreen at 2:17 PM on June 1, 2018


Really great stuff. I don’t know why the third place film, Details to Follow, didn’t come in first place. The first place story, Survival Mechanism, was ruthlessly succinct but I could also see it being expanded into an excellent full-length film. It’s wonderful what people can create in 48 hours.
posted by ejs at 7:44 AM on June 3, 2018


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