30 Seconds of Zen: Call for Short Film Clips

The Department of Film and Creative Writing is pleased to announce a new collaborative filmmaking project for 2020-21, which is open to all University of Birmingham students, staff and alumni.

Given the challenges of the past year, instead of a competition we are issuing a call for clips that are ‘30 Seconds of Zen’. Throughout the first lockdown, numerous students and colleagues in the Department enjoyed filming calm moments in nature and their homes.

We are now asking the wider University community to share their own ’30 Seconds of Zen’ clips, with the aim that we will subsequently produce a longer mindful film, comprising multiple submissions.

The project is open to all University of Birmingham students (undergraduate and postgraduate) and to staff and alumni. We will aim to produce the final film by the end of June and share it with all participants and across our social media channels.

• Please visit @SecondsZen on Twitter for inspiration

• Your film must be 30-35 seconds long – this allows us to trim it to exactly 30 seconds.
• You must have copyright control of any audio or visual material that goes into your movie. This means you cannot film human subjects without their permission, nor include music that is copyrighted.
• Ideally, we would prefer an entirely diegetic (natural) soundtrack. Please do not underlay your clip with music.
• Use whatever you like to film your clip – a camera, phone, tablet; it’s up to you!

13:00 on Friday 28 May 2021

Zen clips can be submitted via a service such as WeTransfer to ftv@contacts.bham.ac.uk.