Best of the West Film Competition

From the Best of the West Film Competition site:

The Shea Family Foundation, along with REELcomp, our Double Black Diamond sponsor, is pleased to announce the First Annual Best of the West Snow Sports Film Competition. Designed to spotlight up and coming snowboard, ski and snow mobile athletes, the competition will be held on April 12, 2008, in Park City, Utah.

Jimmy Shea, on the hot seat with Ori at Park City TV:

Best of the West Snow Sports Film Competition


Full disclosure: I held a film festival in Park City just like this a few years back called The White Room, Wasatch Winter Film Festival. Clearly focused on skiing and snowboarding, we would have accepted snowmobile films if any submitted. It was pretty suprising the turnout and industry support for a grass roots film festival. We were actually TOO successful with the sponsorships. We asked for swag instead of cash, and the industry was more than happy to oblige. In hindside, I think this became sort of a "relief valve" for all the advertising trades that I turned down with FreeRide Magazine. As in, "Only want to trade? Sponsor this film festival instead!" We wound up with $10,000 worth of gear to give away, and six pairs of skis or boards alone. The smart ones in the crowd bought extra raffle tix.

A little older and a little wiser, I like how Jimmy and the Shea Foundation are handling the sponsorships. Limit the sponsorships, ask for money but accept "in kind donation of goods or services." Pretty easy to make the connection here, though. REELComp is hosting the video in exchange for the marque Double Black Diamond sponsorship. But coming from nossaTV, that's probably worth $12,000. A lot of work goes into coordinating such an online festival, more than you'd expect.

Unfortunately Jimmy says there's "nothing here in Park City" for kids to learn about filming. Maybe he doesn't know about the high school program that has like 50 kids every semester. One of those kids won the Shorts category at the White Room and went on to have it open the X-Dance Action Sports Film Festival that year. On Main Street in Park City. During Sundance. Oh well, another film festival won't hurt, Park City seems to be a good place for that.