Tune in to BEHIND THE LENS on Monday, February 15, 2016 at 11:00 am PT/2:00 pm ET as Timur Bekmambetov joins debbie elias live to talk about his latest venture, “Screenshare Filmmaking”, a new storytelling concept and program from Bazelevs which will take place in Austin, Texas in conjunction with the SXSW Film Festival!
Visionary filmmaker Timur Bekmambetov is offering a unique opportunity for bold, creative new artists to try their hand at the “screenshare” filmmaking – verité storytelling set entirely on the screens of digital devices which he introduced with last year’s hit thriller Unfriended. His production company Bazelevs is looking for submissions from filmmakers from around the world to participate in an open source screenshare workshop that will begin on March 7th in Austin, Texas in conjunction with the SXSW Film Festival. The end goal of the workshop is to shoot and edit eight screenshare shorts over a course of a week and live-stream the whole process of production on the site www.screensharefilms.com, which will function as a masterclass in the “screenshare style” not only to participants but to everybody in the world.
“We at Bazelevs take a real interest in discovering and nurturing new talent and pioneering alternate forms of cinema and we’re especially excited by the extraordinary possibilities this screenshare format offers. Our experiment Unfriended was just a beginning. We aim to continue working with young filmmakers to redefine all existing genres through the screenshare language. We have two screenshare movies already in post-production, “Liked” and “Wizard of OS”, and four others in pre-production, but we are constantly looking for creative personalities who could bring their input to the development of this language,” Bekmambetov says.
Screenshare horror-thriller feature, Unfriended, premiered at SXSW last year and was released worldwide by Universal grossing over $64 million dollars theatrically. It was a debut for both Nelson Greaves who wrote the screenplay and Leo Gabriadze, for whom it was his U.S. directorial debut. The team behind Unfriended will share their expertise with the selected filmmakers during the workshop in Austin.
Expenses will be paid for the U.S. filmmakers to come and stay in Austin during the workshop. International teams can participate remotely.
Submissions for potential filmmakers are due February 24, 2016 at 11:59PM PST at www.screensharefilms.com
