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Online film festivals are an offshoot of the traditional film festival that takes place entirely over the internet. These film festivals first appeared in the late 1990’s and have taken a variety of forms to fit the changing landscape of the internet and internet use. The most common form of online film festival is a website that selects and hosts a series of films to stream online to an web based audience. There are wide variety of online film festivals that range in focus from genre, to film length, to film origin region.

History
Online film festivals were largely shaped and influenced by the development of the internet and society’s changing use of it. In the late 1990’s as the internet grew into a mainstream resource, the online film festival was born.

The Sync Online Film Festival, recognized to be the first film event to take place on line, was founded in 1998. The Sync Festival was notable in that it not only created a film festival in a unique new environment (over the internet) but it also adapted the traditional film model to match the capabilities of this new medium. Unlike traditional offline film festivals the Sync Online Film Festival was not constrained by the limitations of space and time. Traditional film festivals work by drawing large numbers of people to a certain location for set period of time. The founders of the Sync Festival set it up as a year-round, 24-7, film event. Every month opened a new festival cycle; new films were added to its online platform, audience members could watch them at any time, vote on their favorites, and finally awards would be presented to the winning films every month.

According to some film critics this format actually disqualified the Sync Festival from being a true film festival. However, despite these criticisms the Sync Online Film Festival is still generally recognized as the first of it’s kind and it was soon followed by several additional offerings in online film festivals. The Seoul Net Festival and FIFI Festival are two other examples of early online film festivals. The FIFI Festival, started in 1998, is notable in that it was founded as a celebration of the kinds of film that were created and distributed around the web. Instead of accepting applications for entries and displaying the accepted films on it’s website, the FIFI festival only provided links to exemplary pieces that were hosted elsewhere on the internet.

This early generation of online film festivals were shaped by two factors in the development of the internet. The first was the limited capacity of the internet infrastructure to stream long or high definition films. This made it impractical for the early online film festivals to show the kinds of pieces that were the staples of traditional film festivals, namely feature length films and high definition shorts. Instead the Sync Festival and others focused on videos made exclusively for consumption on the web. The second web related factor that impacted the early online film festivals was the boom and bust of dot coms in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. Like many other segments of the internet economy, online film festivals were deeply impacted by the implosion of the dot com era. This time period saw the closure of many of the early online film festivals. Today visitors to the URL’s for many of the original online film festivals will only find a page announcing that the domain is for sale.

There is one notable exception to this rule. The Sundance Online Film Festival was both the first online film festival to be launched by a mainstream established offline film festival and one of the only ones to survive the dot com crash of the late 1990’s, early 2000’s. In 2001 the Sundance Film Festival launched an online counterpart to it’s festival. This festival was designed to focus on exclusively web based videos and would run simultaneously to the popular offline festival. This approach however ultimately did not work out for the Sundance Film Festival as the festival directors struggled to find webfilm content that matched the high standards of their offline festival.

In 2005 DivX and GreenCine partnered to create the first online film festival hosting feature length films. This was a deeply significant change for the world of online film festivals. Due to improving webfilm technology and the increase of internet bandwidth webfilm was no longer limited to short, low-quality videos made exclusively for consumption on the web. Now online film festivals could open themselves up to the same kinds of content that their were the norm in their offline festivals. The Sundance Online Film Festival immediately took advantage of this shift and in 2005 started to offer some of the same feature length films shown at the popular offline version of the festival on its online platform.

Online Film Festivals and Media Richness Theory
The film festival is a traditionally offline event complete with the rich interactions that result from bringing a large audience with similar interests into the same physical space at the same time. In contrast to this the online film festival suffers from all the complexity of computer mediated communication in addition to losing out on all the richness brought by an audience’s shared time and physical space.

Festival Administration
When one thinks of film festivals what might come to mind is Sundace or Cannes, but what if you don’t have the time or can’t afford to fly to France or Utah? Well there is another option, and it’s doesn’t involve travel, in fact you can experience it just from your laptop. What makes these online film festivals unique is its simplicity and openness to all kinds of applicants looking to get their films noticed and critiqued. For example to get a film into Tribeca Film Festival, all an applicant has to do is complete their online application and upload a photograph by a required date. This means industry professionals who would otherwise be scoffed at from major festivals like the ones mentioned above, have a chance to display their works to the public just like the big name directors. Also if your film is accepted you have the opportunity of future works having a precedence based on your passed films nomination.

The application itself requires firstly basic information such as name, address, contact information as well as a brief description of your publication company. After that is completed then comes a copy of your film in a proper format which is easily viewable, and thus completes your submission.

Another example of the simplicity of online festivals can be seen in the Viewster Online Film Festival (VOFF). All an applicant has to do to submit their film is upload it to the sites ‘Submit Page.’ Surely a film festival that is so easy to be involved in would have some sort of drawback, like huge costs to submit. But as it turns out in VOFF the fee for submission of a film is completely free, which is even cooler considering the grand prize is a purse of 50,000$.

What makes online film festivals even more interesting is how they incorporated the viewers of the film part of the process. On Viewer the fans who are allowed to vote are also able to live chat with the director to ask questions and further gain opinions that untimely help shape which film the person votes for. After the public has voted, it is then up to the panel of experts to place their vote and ultimately decide the winners of the festival, as well as who gets the prizes.

Notable Examples
In the film festival community, there are many notable film festivals. But there are three film festivals that are considered to be the most prestigious. They are the Cannes, Berlin and the Venice film festivals. Some people relate like to call them the “Big Three”. All three of these film festivals are located in France, so they created this thing called “The Three Color Trilogy”, were Blue is for Venice, White is for Berlin and Red is for Cannes (wikipedia, film festival page)

The Cannes film festival was founded in 1946. “It is a celebration of cinematographic art. We exist to showcase the new writing, new genres and new visual innovations of our time. Every year in May, Cannes gives a sort of snapshot - both ephemeral and lasting, when one adds up the years - of what constitutes the art of cinema." (Official website). This is considered to be one of the most publicized film festivals. The first Film Festival was in 1947 and the films presented were from sixteen different countries. At the start of this Film Festivals they faced some problem with their budget, so the festival did not take place in 1948 or 1950. This is a very unique film Festival because it is invitation-only. (Cannes Film Festival Wikipedia page) Over time this film festival has become very significant platform for European films. This platform has allowed filmmaker advertised their film because of all the media exposure; it gives them a chance to have their film noticed by the numerous movie stars and film produces from all around the world.

The Berlin Film Festival, also know as the Berlinale was founded in West Berlin in 1951. It is known as one of the world’s leading film festival. It is held in Berlin, Germany and has taken place every February since 1978. The Berlinale is “an exciting, cosmopolitan cultural hub that never ceases to attract artists from around the world. A diverse cultural scene, a critical public and an audience of film-lovers characterize the city. In the middle of it all, the Berlinale: a great cultural event and one of the most important dates for the international film industry. More than 300,000 sold tickets, almost 20,000 professional visitors from 124 countries, including around 3,700 journalists: art, glamour, parties and business are all inseparably linked at the Berlinale” (official website). This makes this film festival Unique because worldwide it is the biggest publicly attended film festival, because of its attendance rate.

Last but not least, there’s the Venice Film Festival was founded in 1932, it is the oldest as well as one of the most important film festivals in the world. It takes place on the Island of Venice Lido in late August or early September. This film festival is apart of what is known as the Venice Biennale, which was founded in 1985 by the Venetian City Council. It is made of a variety of events, which is what makes this film festival one of the best-known events. Henrylewismann (talk) 01:53, 28 May 2015 (UTC)