Classical Movie Contest

The Classical Movie Contest was a brickfilming contest hosted by Jason Rowoldt in 2001. It was the first successful contest ever hosted on Brickfilms.com and is the earliest known example of a brickfilming contest with no involvement from The LEGO Group. The aim of the contest was to produce a brickfilm set to a piece of classical music.

The Classical Movie Contest was followed by the Historical Fiction Contest later in the same year.

History
Jason Rowoldt first mentioned planning a contest on Brickfilms.com in January 2001, referring to it only as a "Shorts" film contest. On March 4, 2001, Rowoldt announced what was supposed to be the first official Brickfilms.com, named "Based on a True Story". This was a contest for films based on historical events, either told accurately or fictionalised. Rowoldt later edited the announcement to say that this contest had been postponed, and by May, he said it had been cancelled due to a lack of directors wishing to participate. This contest idea would later be used for the second successful Brickfilms.com contest, the Historical Fiction Contest, in December 2001.

Talk of a contest resurfaced in July, with Jason urging filmers to begin thinking about classical music pieces they might like to use in a film. On July 30th, in celebration of the hundredth brickfilm posted to the site's directory, Jason launched The Brickfilms.com Classical Movie Contest. The theme of this contest was to create a film that primarily featured a piece of classical music as its soundtrack and did not include spoken dialogue, in over 2 and under 5 minutes. The original deadline for the contest was the 15th of September but this was later extended to September 30th.

The Classical Movie Contest received 10 accepted entries, and at least 2 more which were disqualified for not meeting the minimum length requirement. A winning entry from each of the three categories Best Film, Best Cinematography and Best Animation would be chosen from judging by the Brickfilms.com staff combined with results from a public user poll. The winner of Best Film would receive a LEGO Legends series re-issue of the 1986 set Guarded Inn while the winner of Best Cinematography would have a choice between LEGO sets 5920 Island Racer and 6711 Ogel Command Striker, with the winner of Best Animation receiving the remaining prize.

Winners
Listed here are the winning films in each category along with the other nominees.

Another notable film originally intended for entry to this contest is The Gauntlet by Jay Silver, which ultimately was not finished in time for the deadline.