MARKETING Magazine Asia

The vertical film festival VERTIFILMS is back with its 3rd year. The festival celebrates movies and content created specifically for mobile phone screens.

Several hundred vertical films from 29 countries, including the USA, Mexico, Italy, France, the United Kingdom and Germany, have entered the Tall Idea Prague competition. Affected by the extraordinary situation, the festival will take place online.

The official opening ceremony will take place on November 1, and a selection of hundred films will be available online for 30 days.

Members of the international jury of the VERTIFILMS 2020 competition are new media filmmaker L. Michelle Salvant (USA), uprising film director Jacob Salzberg (USA) and Chief Creative Director of BBDO and vertical storyteller Tay Guan Hin (Singapore).

The winners will be announced on November 15.

For the first time, viewers will also vote in the Best of Vertifilms 2020 Red Bull competition.

Festival director Kryštof Šafer adds, “We are affected by the coronavirus pandemic so we have to move the festival online. So we prepared an industry section called the Pocket Conference, which contains a short vertical presentation of various global speakers on the subject.”

The Pocket Conference will present the best of new vertical content from around the world. One is the award-winning big-budget film Apple Stuntman which gives the story of the film The Stunt Double travelling in time in nine minutes.

Its creators Adam Alshin and Paul Wysoca of MediaArts will share how the idea came about and their experiences in preparing and making the film.

Walter Woodman, Patrick Cederberg, Matthew Hornick and Greg Francis of shy kids film collective will share how Australia’s first vertical comedy series, Content, was created. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) has launched the series on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. The ‘vertical’ TV Emmy nominated show unfolds entirely from the perspective of a wannabe influencer’s smartphone.

Chief Creative Officer from BBDO Tay Guan Hin (picture) has been a Creative Vertical Storyteller for brands like Nestlé Kit Kat, Unilever, CIMB, VISA and other blue-chip organizations. He will share inspiring creative mobile examples to create engaging thumb-stopping content designed to suit today’s consumer’s mobile behaviour.

The 3rd Vertifilms Festival of Vertical Films will take place on www.vertifilms.com, starting on November 1, 2020, at 12:00 noon CET to November 30.

The partners of the event are Red Bull and the City of Prague.