What was once just a peaceful film festival has evolved into a no-holds-barred cage match, pitting the best creative advertising minds in the Midwest against each other in a competition for filmmaking superiority.
For the first year, the Midwest Independent Film Festival and the AICP are asking advertisers from the Great Lakes region to submit their most stunning non-commercial film work by July 29 to be considered for competition, which will then be judged by EVPs and CDs from agencies like DDB, DraftFCB, Euro RSCG, Leo Burnett and Story. Pretty frequently, ad industry folks on the coasts accuse the Midwest advertising scene of being dead or just plain boring. Well, now’s the time for ad creatives from the Heartland to prove them wrong. As Arc/Leo Burnett CD Michael Starcevich (you know, one of the guys responsible for that touching Father’s Day music vid) states, “Now the gloves really come off: no briefs, no rules, no excuses! We’ve already got people chomping at the bit to participate. This is gonna be fun.”
If that end of the month deadline seems threatening, the competition states that any short film work done in past five years can actually qualify for submission. For a full list of rules and deadlines, click here.