The 2021 DVMISSION 48-hour Film Challenge invited participants to enter an immersive world of spies and double agents – who is watching and who are they watching?
DVMISSION is a 48-hour film competition based on the south coast of the UK that has for the last 17 years been challenging filmmakers to get creative and join a local community of creative media makers. Having just staged our 17th edition we can stake a claim to being the second longest, continuously running 48-hour film challenge in the world (the Springfield And The Ozarks 48-Hour Film Challenge beats us by a year).
How does it work?
We give challengers a line of dialogue, a title and a genre and they make a 2-minute film in 48 hours. We then get our judges to award the coveted Pompey Oscars for 14 categories of prizes. The 2021 Challenge Obstructions were:
- Genre: Cold War Spy Movie
- Title: Deception Point
- Line of Dialogue: “Do you know what love is? I’ll tell you: it is whatever you can still betray.”
- Extra Obstruction: an eastern European location (the extra obstruction is for previous winners).
For this year’s DVMISSION screening and awards event we invited participants to meet agents who would guide them to a place at the spy’s table.
We screened all of the films on Saturday 6th March 2021 via YouTube Premier which you can watch HERE!
We ran an online immersive experience and staged a virtual awards ceremony via ZOOM.
We asked challengers to share their behind-the-scenes stories with us by using the hashtag #DVMISSION21 and you can visit our Social Wall, where you can see all of their posts HERE!
You can download a printable PDF of all of the films entered into this year’s challenge HERE!
The winners and nominees of the 2021 DVMISSION 48-hour Film Challenge are:
1. Best Film (professional)
- Nominees: Red Book Productions, What are the Hours?
- Winners: Red Book Productions
- Comments: Seditious 8-bit filmmaking at its best. Silly, imaginative and entertaining.
2. Best Film (non-professional)
- Nominees: Gothic Art House, Stop Mo Studios
- Winners: Gothic Art House
- Comments: Technically extraordinarily clever, delightfully funny, and bloody good.
3. Best Actor
- Nominees: Sleepy Bandits (both lead actors), A Step Too Far (Seth Jones), What are the Hours (Tippers)
- Winners: A Step Too Far – Seth Jones
- Comments: An engaging, absorbing and beautifully timed monologue.
4. Best Actress
- Nominees: Band Camp, Final Year Productions, Worcester Massive
- Winners: Band Camp – Emily Bridges
- Comments: A nuanced performance with a surprisingly dark turn
5. Most Cinematic Moment
- Nominees: Jim Bob, Surfin’ Ninjas, The Newbies
- Winners: The Newbies
- Comments: A rich, dark and elegantly shot opening sequence that could almost be 1940s Vienna, only the cimbalom is missing.
6. Best Sound Design
- Nominees: JAF, Life’s a Pitch, Truth at 88 Miles an Hour
- Winners: Life’s a Pitch
- Comments: Detailed and suspenseful, a seamless blend of recorded voice, effects and music.
7. Best Editing
- Nominees: MMI Productions, Red Book Productions, Trash Arts
- Winners: MMI Productions
- Comments: Cleverly conceived set pieces create a definite style from minimal resources.
8. Most Inspired Prop
- Nominees: Sleepy Bandits, Trash Arts, Truth at 88 Miles an Hour
- Winners: Sleepy Bandits
- Comments: The fabulously low-tech Wes Anderson animated city-scape perfectly sets the scene for the daftness that follows.
9. Most Astonishing Special Effect
- Nominees: Gothic Art House, Trash Arts, Wholesome Discontent
- Winners: Gothic Art House
- Comments: Wonderful throughout but the layered airport lounge with indoor snow, a passing passenger jet and working televisions is a highlight.
10. Best Story
- Nominees: A Step Too Far, Inglorious Auteurs, What Are The Hours
- Winners: What Are The Hours
- Comments: Economically packaged characterisations cram a satisfying narrative arc into 120 seconds.
11. It’s the way you said it (best use of the line of dialogue)
- Nominees: Band Camp, Red book Productions, Truth at 88 Miles an Hour
- Winners: Band Camp
- Comments: This breathtakingly subversive use of the required dialogue keeps making us laugh.
12. Spirit of DVMISSION (judges special award)
- Nominees: Another 48 Hours, Prop Box Youth Theatre, Worcester Massive
- Winners: Prop Box Youth Theatre
- Comments: Dynamic Zoom-movie making with laser guns, voice effects and a big cast.
13. The Social Media Award!
- Nominees: Life’s a Pitch, Trash Arts, Sleepy Bandits
- Winners: Life’s a Pitch
- Comments: stylish reconstruction of fake documents made us feel they are spies like us.
14. The Audience Raved About it! (premier night audience vote)
- Winners: Red Book Productions
- Comment: a close-run audience vote that saw Life’s a Pitch battle it out with Red Book Productions, in the end it was just a matter of 1% but Red Book one the day.
15. Best Fancy Dress
- Winners: The creative team behind the immersive experience created especially for DVMISSION IMPOSSIBLE.
- Comments: for the second year running Matt Smith and his team of University of Portsmouth staff and students produced an impressive creative response to the brief and set up a wonderfully immersive experience for the virtual awards night.
We would like to say thank you to our sponsors: Creative Network South, University of Portsmouth and Cllr. Steve Pitt as without your support we really couldn’t put this show on the road.
Special thanks to Matt Smith and crew, to Jinx Prowse for hosting the awards and to everyone else working behind the scenes.
We will try and get all the films up online ASAP and look forward to hosting our 18th edition in 2022.
