Nintendo Announces Filmmaking Contest

The Short Cuts Showcase contest gives film-savvy Nintendo fans a chance to strut their stuff.

Perhaps borrowing a page from Microsoft’s Xbox Live Originals contest, Nintendo is offering aspiring filmmakers exposure and prizes with their Short Cuts Showcase contest, announced Tuesday. The company is soliciting short films from Nintendo fans, the best of which will be shown at the annual Rockefeller Center summer film showcase, which runs June 19-22.

The winner will also receive a $10,000 cash prize,  a meeting with a co-founder of the Tribeca Film Festival, Craig Hatkoff, and a paid trip to New York for the showing. The top three participants will all receive Nintendo hardware and games.

Unlike Microsoft’s contest, the limits on content for Nintendo’s contest are quite stringent: all of the short films will have to be Nintendo themed. Not much explanation is given for what exactly this entails, but we have a hunch that films that glorifying the company’s products wouldn’t hurt. The films will also need to be less than five minutes long, and in a surprising move for a supposedly kid-friendly company, participants will need to be over 18 years old.

“Opening the Nintendo Short Cuts Showcase to the broader filmmaking public reflects our message that video games are fun for everyone," said George Harrison, Nintendo of America’s senior vice president of marketing and corporate communications, in a statement. "We expect to get high quality entries from film students, indie filmmakers and creative talents of all kinds that spark the imagination the same way our games do.”

Potential entrants can check out nintendoshortcuts.com for a more detailed explanation of contest regulations, accepted video formats, and official entry forms.