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The winners of the My Rode Reel 2021 short film competition have been announced

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My Rode Reel 2021 is over and the winners have been announced, with the overall Judge’s Prize winner being the video above; Two Halves by Chen Wei Choon, based in Malaysia, who walks away with a cool $250,000 in cash as well as a bunch of gear from the competition’s sponsors;  Zhuyin, Insta360, Nanlite, Adobe, Arri, DZOFilm, Pelican, MZed, Musicbed and Rode themselves.

It’s interesting to see an animated film winning this year, but it’s extremely well shot and edited with a great story. And there’s a hell of a lot of work been put into it as you can see in the behind the scenes below (which has also had a lot of work put into it).

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My Rode Reel 2021’s is offering $250,000 plus gear for its top prize winner

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My Rode Reel is one of the short film highlights of the year. It’s the biggest short film competition of the year. This year, they’re offering a whole bunch of gear prizes from Zhuyin, Insta360, Nanlite, Adobe, Arri, DZOFilm, Pelican, MZed, Musicbed and Rode themselves along with $365,000 in cash and the Major Prize winner getting a whopping $250,000.

As well as the main grand prize, there are a number of genre and special categories with winners receiving cash and/or gear. To enter, all you need to do is create an up-to-3-minute short film on any topic you like, along with a behind-the-scenes video also 3 minutes or less, showing off how you made your short film and what Rode products you used during production.

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How to shoot a no-budget horror short film

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Shooting short films is one of the greatest creative outlets for many video shooters, especially those that might otherwise be trapped in the corporate world, always shooting to a brief. But shooting a film, even a short one, can be quite expensive, depending on what that story is, and how you think you need to tell it.

This short film above, Whispers, shot by filmmaker Joris Hermans, however, was shot on no budget at all. Of course, there are some prerequisites. You need to have a camera (Joris used the Canon EOS M50) and other basic gear, but they’re things that almost all those interested in shooting with video will have already.

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The My Rode Reel short film competition is back for 2020 with $1,000,000 in cash prizes

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The My Rode Reel short film competition is one of the highlights of the film world and every year it gets bigger and better. For 2020, they’ve outdone themselves, and have a massive $1 million in cash prizes for the winners. This is the largest cash prize of any short film competition, ever. But they’re also giving away a whole boatload of gear, too!

My Rode Reel has been running since 2014, and since that time it’s seen more than 16,000 films submitted and given out over $3.5 million in prizes to new and established filmmakers.

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You can win over $500,000 in gear if you make a really good short

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RØDE Microphones film competition, My RØDE Reel, is now in its fourth year. Established in 2014, it’s rapidly grown to become the world’s largest short film competition. With close to 8,000 entries from 89 countries, it’s become a staple amongst the global filmmaking community.

This year, the competition is back with a massively increased prize pool of more than $500,000 worth of equipment up for grabs. These prizes include one completely new one, membership to the RØDE Directors Club. This could net you every new broadcast and filmmaking category microphone that RØDE release for the next three years, and you get them before they’re even launched.

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High School Student Gets Famous Peruvian Actor to Star In His Film

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Kids these days often leave me scratching my head.  However, in what I would describe as making my entire scholastic career look like an extended daycare session, 17-year-old Alex Fischman created La Vieja Quinta.

Fischman, a student at Colegio Franklin Delano Roosevelt in Lima, Peru, created the short film for a high school project. It is an impressive film for someone of any age, let alone a high schooler, and is unlike any other I’ve seen produced from students in a similar age bracket. With elements of humor and a look at human connection, it carries with it a deep sense of emotion.

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See What ‘Grand Theft Auto’ Would Look Like in Real Life

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I have to admit, there are times I have been hard-pressed to NOT turn my driving experience into a real-life Grand Theft Auto trailer. I mean, have you met these idiots on the road? Geez…

But, the very generous (and creative) guys at Corridor Digital (we’ll call them Sam and Niko) were nice enough to eliminate some of that guesswork with a new “real-life” GTA video around the streets of Los Angeles.

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Google Teams Up to Release 360-Degree Virtual Reality Film ‘HELP’

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If we look at the progression of motion pictures over the last 100 years, it’s almost like night and day. (Then again, the same could be said for the last century of computer technology as well.)

As we previously reported, Google is staying its course for diabolical virtual reality domination. Now, taking it one step further, the tech giant that owns more of your dirty secrets than the NSA has teamed up with visual effects studio The Mill to release a 360-degree virtual reality film called, ironically, “HELP.”

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All Your Favorite Shows Cuts 160 Movies Together With A Centralized Storyline

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Here is where dedication and rain-man-like memory of movies will get you.

The team at Ornana Films created this wonderful animation where a kid is faced with a reality where the shows that he likes becoming a reality. (at least that’s what we think is happening). The crazy twist – some of the animations are replaced with short cuts from 160 movies. (With no list available though, the movies just screams for a guess the movies game).

The movie brilliantly, and seamlessly shifts from Danny Madden’s animation to short film clips that are almost too fast to comprehend.

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Create epic rain effects with this $15 rain machine

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While we at DIYP are no strangers to covering such things as creative (and cheap) rain machines, we always find it in our hearts to share with you just one more.

Director and cinematographer Tom Antos recently released a video about how he built a rain machine on a budget of only $15. Starting out with a cheap garden soaker hose, attached it to some wood between two stands, and made movie magic. His video shares the details, but we’ve taken the liberty to spell them out (after the jump).

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