The stage is set...
Last Friday we were lucky enough to be invited along to the global final of the Jameson Empire Done in 60 Seconds (DISS) competition, where the 29 global finalists were whittled down to 5 finalists who were sent on to the Jameson Empire Awards, for one final winner to be crowned.
To enter, short filmmakers remade a film of their choice, but had to condense it down to a mere 60 seconds. All the entries were shown online and the UK films were shortlisted down to five finalists by Empire Magazine readers – watch all the 5 UK finalists who parody films from The Thing to War Horse over on our previous post here. These 5 UK finalists were joined by 24 more global entries on Friday to decide on the final global 5 at a special event held at the London Film Museum.
The judges..
With the Jameson cocktails in full flow, the judging panel consisting of Chris O’Dowd, Alex Zane, Gareth Edwards and Empire Editor Mark Dinning spoke to us first about their thoughts on the awards and how the internet is opening up the possibilities that short filmmaking can offer people – check out this video with highlights from the interviews over on The Hollywood News.
After a chat with some of the UK finalists we sat down with all the attendees sat down for a (delicious) meal and the ceremony began. Whilst most award ceremonies see short clips from competing films shown, the beauty of the DISS awards is that there was more than enough time to show all 29 films in their entirety. The films chosen by entrants varied from recent popular fare like Drive and Limitless to classic reincarnations of cinema staples including Titanic and Forrest Gump, as well as Hitchcock films like The Birds and Psycho. Whilst some of the shorts simply tried to condense the plot into 60 seconds, some of the funnier ones also twitsted the film for comic parody effect. Also popular was the inclusion of the odd Empire Magazine or bottle of Jameson Whiskey!
The 5 winners
After all the films were shown and briefly discussed the judges had just 10 minutes to pick their 5 winners. The lucky 5 were Phillip Askins for his Herge version of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Spiderman by Gonzalo Ruiz & Joaquin Vergara (Chile), Edward Scissor Hands by Rosen Lliev (Bulgaria), District 9 by Andrew Norton (Ireland), Black Swan by Indira Suleimenova (Kazakhstan). All 5 attended the Jameson Empire Awards on the 25th March, where Indira Suleimenova was crowned as overall champ for Black Swan.
For more information on the competition visit: www.jamesonwhiskey.com/DISS or visit the Youtube channel to watch all of the videos. Get cracking on those entries for next year now and make sure you keep an eye on the 5 winners, future film directors in the making!
Here is the winning film for this years Jameson Empire DISS award:
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