"Hello, Future" Music Video Challenge

As part of The 21st Saatchi & Saatchi New Directors’ Showcase at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity 2011 (19 – 25 June), Saatchi & Saatchi partners with Vimeo and Moby to discover fresh filmmaking talent. There was an unprecedented response to the competition, and almost 600 entries from film directors who responded to the brief to interpret and bring to life the idea of “Hello, Future” in the form of a music video for 1 of 3 of Moby’s tracks from his new album “Destroyed”.

The winning video will be unveiled at The Saatchi & Saatchi New Directors’ Showcase in Cannes on Thursday 23 June, and the Director offered the chance to work on a project in a key office in the Saatchi & Saatchi Global Network.

Moby said: "When the idea of doing the contest was suggested to me, I thought we would maybe have 50 entries or 100 entries, and now we're up to almost 600. So I'm kind of overwhelmed in a really positive way, by the number of people competing, and the quality of the entries".

Tom Eslinger, Creative Director - Digital, Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide "As the entries rolled in, we were immediately impressed with the level of quality, how directors were using low-cost/ high impact photography and post-technology to make slick/ highly professional works, and most of all the depth of storytelling talent. With nearly 600 to choose from, getting to the final 10 was hard-choice time. Showing the winning film at New Directors’ Showcase in Cannes, and working with truly-new directors has us all very excited."

The 10 finalists are; Frank Beltrán, David Evan Bowers, Alberto Gomez, Brian McCann, Lindsay MacKay, Antonin Pevny, Oden, Martin Rodahl, Alexey Terehoff, and Roland Wittl.

Jeremy Boxer Vimeo's Creative Director, Film and Video added: “We were blown away by the global response to this challenge and the overall quality of the entries. We think that the ten finalists all show amazing potential and wish them all luck in the next round."

David Knight, Curator at BUG Music Videos, and one of the judges commented:
“Due to Moby’s inspirational music, the fantastic prize offered by Saatchi & Saatchi, and the power of Vimeo to engage with a worldwide filmmaking community, we had an amazing, and completely global response to this competition. But what is truly astonishing is the invention and quality of the extensive number of entries, produced within the timespan of less than four weeks. Arriving at our ten finalists was an almost impossible job, but these are the filmmakers who in our view have risen most completely to the Hello, Future Music Video Challenge. Each one of them is a winner.”

The 10 finalists are from all corners of the globe; Frank Beltrán was born in Mexico, and lives and works in Mexico City where he studied communication. Alberto Gomez also comes from Mexico, and studied at Vancouver Film School. David Evan Bowers hails from Southern Louisana and moved to New York City to set up The Manship Society film collective. Brian McCann studied cinema at Binghamton University, and lives in Brooklyn, NYC. Lindsay MacKay is a Canadian writer/ director living in Los Angeles. Antonin Pevny lives and works in his birthplace of Vienna, Austria, and is a trained graphic designer. Oden Roberts was born in Oslo, Norway, studied at NYU film school, and now divides his time between Venice, San Francisco and Williamsburg. Martin Rodahl is also from Norway, and studied film at Northwestern University in the USA. Alexey Terehoff comes from Belarus in the former USSR, and graduated from the Art Academy in Poland. Roland Wittl is a designer and photographer from Germany, who studied at Georg-Simon-Ohm Hochschule Nuremberg.

To view an interview with Moby and the 10 finalists’ videos go to:

www.vimeo.com/saatchiandsaatchi

Moby’s new album ‘Destroyed’ is his tenth studio album. Moby has made three tracks available exclusively for the ‘Hello, Future’ Music Video Challenge, which you can download from the Vimeo site. The selected tracks are; Be The One; The Day; and After.