Friendships and Rivalries Contest

The Friendships and Rivalries Contest was a brickfilming contest hosted on Brickfilms.com in 2008. It was the ninth major official contest held on the site, following the Inventions, Discoveries and Extraordinary Achievements Contest. It was the final major contest run by the site in its original era, but was followed by a handful of minor challenge contests in 2008 and early 2009. Occurring during a turbulent time for the community, control of the contest passed between several individuals over its lifetime. The next major summer brickfilming contest was the Space, Time, and Reality Contest, hosted on Bricks in Motion; the site the community that had been active on Brickfilms.com had moved to over the course of 2008.

History
The system of publicly sourcing the theme which was introduced with the Inventions, Discoveries and Extraordinary Achievements Contest returned for the Friendships and Rivalries Contest. On January 11 2008, Minister of Film Contests Saul Goode posted a thread requesting ideas for a theme for the 2008 official Brickfilms.com contest. The chosen theme of Friendships and Rivalries was suggested by Colin Boyle.

The contest was announced (and the selected theme revealed) on the 1st of February 2008 by Saul Goode. The deadline was June 8, 2008. Entries were to be screened at the BrickWorld convention. Unlike preceding contests, no limit was placed on the running time of entries. Entries were permitted to be submitted in any common video format at no more than 5MB per minute and contain no copyrighted content. Prizes had not been finalized at the time of announcement.

In March 2008, amid the Brickfilms.com community beginning to migrate to ilovebrickfilming.com (which would become Bricks in Motion), Saul Goode stepped down from his position as Minister of Film Contests. Steve Collins was the only person to put himself forward as a candidate to take over the position, and so became the new minister and assumed control of the FAR contest. On May 2, 2008, Collins publicly requested a logo for the contest while preparing to update the events page on the site. The logo chosen was designed by David White. This logo did not see prominent use, however, as the events page was never updated.

Later in the year, Collins too stepped down from his ministerial position. The deadline of the contest was extended. With the original deadline passed, the future of the contest appeared uncertain. Control of the contest was assumed by Community Admin Arend Hintze, with some updates being presented by Philip Heinrich.

The contest eventually concluded around June 29, 2008, receiving nine entries. On July 4, the judging arrangements were announced. Films would be judged by ballot in the categories of Story, Theme and General Presentation. Originally, the judging was open to members of the review panel and patrons, but a low number of ballots received resulted in judging being opened up to anybody. The results of the contest were announced by Arend Hintze on July 19. The prize pool consisted of, and a Brickfilms.com t-shirt.

Top three
The overall placement in the contest was only announced for the top three, although full placements in each of the judging categories were given as well.


 * 1) Unrenewable by Philip Heinrich
 * 2) Pirates! by Doug Vandegrift
 * 3) Pierre & Luigi by Jonathan Vaughan

Story full rankings

Theme full rankings

Presentation full rankings

Trailer competition
As with some earlier Brickfilms.com contests, a trailer contest was run during the main FAR contest. The FAR Trailer Competition (humourously referred to as the FART Competition) was run by Andrew Munzer with a deadline of June 22. It did not receive any entries.

Poster competition
In addition to the trailer contest, an unofficial FAR poster contest was also run (with support from Steve Collins), headed by Philip Heinrich. The winner was Jonathan Vaughan.