UPDATE: The results are in and Piotr Musial is the winner! Great job Piotr!! Also thank you for everyone else that took part in this contest. I'll be arranging an online chat session with all of those involved to share ideas as well as get personal comments from the judges on your work. More details to follow! Thanks again! Also a special thank you to our incredible judging panel who took time out of their busy lives to review all of the submissions!! Hey all of you composers out there- anyone interested in having another composition contest? Not sure about any prices and such...but I think it would be nice for the community of composers on GD.net and its always good to practice your craft. If there is enough interest, then I'd be more than willing to assemble a panel and we can all set up the guidelines and such. For this one, I'd really like to have more of a post-composition discussion about each piece of music. We can talk about what kinds of inspirations were behind the piece, what kind(s) of software and hardware were used. We could also talk about the post-production side (mixing and mastering). So, any takers? EDIT: The contest is now open! Check the second page for details or read below:

Quote:Original post by nsmadsen The Composition Contest is now OPEN! Basic Details: The contest starts today (May 21st, 2008) and will end on June 21, 2008). Each contestant will score music (style of their choice) to the short film Luftwaffles by William Barr. The film last 1:21 (excluding the credits) and 1:28 if you include the credits. The film is funny, light hearted and features several opportunities for style and pace changes in the music. Feel free to be as creative as you'd like! The Idea: Hold a composition contest where any composer can take a stab at composing to a short film, then have objective and constructive feedback given back to them by industry professionals during the judging process. After this, hold an open meeting for all of the composers who took part (and any judges willing to give their time) where each composer can exchange ideas, feedback and thoughts on all of the submissions. (To me this is probably the most valuable part!) I will be moderating the feedback and open forum after the contest and judging are concluded. It is my hope that all will take part in that since a good deal of feedback and discussion will be held. The Short Film: As noted above, William Barr was kind enough to share this video clip for this contest. His website is http://www.wilbarani.com/. He is a 3rd year student at the Swansea Institute studying 3D computer animation. There are three versions of this video: a Hi-res and Lo-res Quicktime and a WMV file. Should be enough options for most DAWs out there. Update: Added another site to download the video from to keep bandwidth flowing. Quicktime (large): http://www.wilbarani.com/videos/luftwafflesVLargeQTnm.mov Quicktime (large): http://www.madsenstudios.com/luftwafflesVLargeQTnm.mov Quicktime (small): http://www.wilbarani.com/videos/luftwafflesSmallQTnm.mov Quicktime (small): http://www.madsenstudios.com/luftwafflesSmallQTnm.mov WMV: http://www.wilbarani.com/videos/luftwafflesSmallWMVnm.wmv WMV: http://www.madsenstudios.com/luftwafflesSmallWMVnm.wmv The Panel: I'm very excited about the panel that has been assembled for this competition! Please note that I'll mainly be fulfilling the organization and moderating role. Unless needed, I'll not be actually judging the pieces to avoid having an even number of judges (to help avoid the case of a tie). We have: Aaron Marks- Since 1995, his company has been creating original music, sound effects and dialog for video games, radio, television, film and all things multimedia. Aaron Marks and his staff of highly skilled artisans have combined credits on over 300 video game projects, films and theater productions throughout the world! He is also the author of the fantastic book The Complete Guide to Game Audio- which I highly recommend to anyone wanting to be a professional video game composer! http://www.onyourmarkmusic.com/ Will Loconto- With almost 20 years in the recording and videogame industries, Will Loconto brings a comprehensive body of knowledge, experience, and creativity to his work. He was lead vocalist/songwriter for T42 (Columbia Records) and spent several years with Information Society (Reprise Records). In the game industry, Will has served as Audio Director at two companies (ION Storm and Third Law Interactive). With over 20 published titles, Will Loconto has a proven track record of top quality products and on-time delivery. He has been a featured lecturer at Southern Methodist University’s Guildhall, the premiere program for game development. Will is a member of NARAS, ASCAP, the International Game Developers Association, and the Game Audio Network Guild. http://www.willloconto.com/ Sean Beeson- Sean Beeson is an emerging young composer in the videogame industry and a fellow gamedev member. His most recent credits include, Assault Heroes 2, recording a soundtrack with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, "Hairspray (2007)" Trailer", "Eternity's Child" for WiiWare, "I.Q. - Identity Quest", "The Operational Art of War III", "Brain Brain", and Mainland Gaming's "Mojave's Edge " among various other titles. Some of his past film credits include two films nominated for BAFTA 60-Seconds of Fame Awards, the popular animated short "Emelia", which was the #1 iTunes short film for a few weeks, a film highlighting the effect of online gaming obsessions, (The Chronicles of Evanor) and two full-length Norweigan films. As well as being a composer, Sean also produced, engineers, and programs sample libraries for composers, and is the producer behind Tsaiko: The Taiko Drum Library. http://www.seanbeeson.com/ Nathan Madsen- Nathan Madsen is another gamedev member and moderator. He has over 130 credits in the anime, independent film, web design and video game industries. He currently works as the lead composer-sound designer for NetDevil. Some of his recent credits include work done for Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, Witchblade, Lego Universe and Jumpgate Evolution. He has worked on Sony PSP, Nintendo DS and PC titles. He is also a published author and has spent time teaching video game audio at the college level. http://www.madsenstudios.com/ The Prize: Currently we have several game audio (or just general audio) books that GD.net has graciously offered to purchase for the winner. Once a winner is selected and announced, I will contact them with the list of possible books they can choose from. In the event the winner has read all of those books, we will choose a book he or she has not read. The winner's music will also be used in the Luftwaffles short and credit will be given. This is a great way for a young composer to get their work heard in a completed film and add another notch on their resume. A great bonus is having your chance to have your music heard by some of the top composers in the industry! The Rules: The rules are pretty basic: 1) All music in the score must be written by you and only you. 2) Only one submission per person. Any one can take part in the contest! 3) All submissions must be received by 10 PM Central Standard Time on June 21, 2008. 4) All submissions must include both the film and the score embedded together. This is to avoid any syncing problems later on. Please Note: The preferred method of delivery is posting the movie file on an FTP site and then giving me the link and password info. Once I get all of the submissions, I'll relay them to each of the judges and the judging process will begin. If you cannot upload to an FTP site, then contact me privately so we can attempt to make other arrangements. Another method for sending the file is http:// www.yousendit.com which is free for files under 100MB. It costs money for files larger than that (up to 2GB) but also has a two week free trial. If you use this method, you must have my email address which I can give out privately. Fair warning: Do not contact me the night submissions are due in a late attempt to work something out. You have a full month to prepare, I suggest you use your time wisely. The last thing I want to do is have several people spamming me last minute while they try to figure out how to get this file to me. Make arrangements now and save yourself the headache! How You'll Be Judged: Judging will be based on how creative and supportive the music is to the film. Instrumentation, orchestration, style, pace is all up to you! You have complete freedom, just make sure whatever you write supports and enhances the film. That about does it for now. I'll be looking over this post and polishing it up more as time allows. If you have any questions, concerns or suggestions please feel free to contact me! Start writing!!!

Thanks, Nate [Edited by - nsmadsen on August 5, 2008 12:20:34 PM]

That would be something we'd decide once the panel (and group of interested composers) is put together. I have some ideas of requirements, but don't want to have this all based on my thoughts and opinions. Much more interested in the large group consensus.

Count me in.

I can tentatively participate.

Nice idea Nathan. Would love to help out where I can.

Sure, sounds good, Nathan.

- Piotr

I'd like to help out with this, and maybe help with setting up some sort of prize.

hey now this sounds fun! im in!

Cool! Looks like this is getting some decent interest! I'm going to sit on this for just a few more days or so to see if anyone else is interested. One question I had for everyone involved so far is:

What kind(s) of limitations should be involved with this contest? For example, we had a music writing contest a good while back that forced everyone to take one piece of music and embellish it. This wasn't so much composition as it was arranging. We had some very creative entries and it was a good bit of fun. The only problems I see potentially are: copyright and it is arranging rather than composition. One pro to that is it made everyone work with the same source material so we could better compare piece to piece. If we do straight composition, perhaps we could use an open source film clip and allow people to score to that?

I'm going a little long winded here- but my main focus right now is figuring out how to make this objective and level grounded for all involved. JBadams, if we could arrange a prize (or prizes) that would ROCK! Also a side note: if I'm in charge of this contest (which I'm happy to do) then I'll also take part but will not allow myself to be eligible for any prizes. I don't want it to come off as unfair, so I'll simply be organizing the contest, and participating for the sheer fun of it. Our panel (which I have some ideas of good judges) will be asked to do the same thing, to keep it fair. (This is, of course, only valid if we have prizes.)

Thanks for the support guys!

Nathan