Academy Award-winning producer Barrie Osborne (The Lord of the Rings) and a panel of judges named the five finalists of the '100% Pure New Zealand Presents Your Big Break' short film competition today.
The five finalists will now travel to Queenstown where they will work with Barrie Osborne to shoot and direct their own short films capturing the essence of the world's youngest country. Post-production will be done at Wellington's world class Park Road Post Production. Academy Award-winning director Sir Peter Jackson will select the overall winning entry.
The competition website - www.your-big-break.com - attracted more than two million views between 31 November and 15 January. Over 250,000 visitors watched videos or read scripts during that time. The average time on the site was 3.5 minutes.
Around 1,100 aspiring directors from 30 countries around the globe entered a screenplay for a three-minute short film that captured the spirit of New Zealand.
Tourism New Zealand Chief Executive Kevin Bowler said the results of the competition far exceeded expectation, both in the number of entries and web-viewing figures.
"This has been an extremely successful project in terms of the number of entries and web traffic and at the end we will also have five excellent short films capturing New Zealand's scenery, people and culture which will be seen around the world," Kevin Bowler said.
The judging panel chose four finalists. The fifth finalist was selected by public vote. All these entries can be viewed on www.your-big-break.com.
Tourism New Zealand is using the campaign as a way to generate interest in New Zealand among its target market in the US, although the campaign has been open to anyone from around the world.
After Peter Jackson personally views and judges the five finalists' films, he will select one overall winner whose film will air just prior to the IFC Independent Spirit Awards in the US on March 5, 2010.
The Winners!
Click to view their scripts and film ideas on the 'Your Big Break' website:
