The popular camera brand Canon and Hollywood producer Ron Howard released a short film entitled ‘When You Find Me,’ inspired by eight crowdsourced photos. In summer, the brand and the filmmaker encouraged photo enthusiasts and professional from all around the globe to submit their stills that would represent one of the upcoming story’s facets. The competition dubbed Project Imagin8ion finished in summer, but it wasn’t the end for the project itself—on December 16, the production team unveiled a result of result work, which can be viewed on the dedicated page (the film will be available to watch until December 19, 9 am EST, so it’s the last day you can view it).
“Canon tasked me with a true creative experiment and the end result is a beautiful film directed by Bryce [Bryce Dallas Howard] that captures the images and inspiration of the eight photographers. After the New York premiere at the American Museum of Natural History last month, it was really gratifying to see people get emotional about the film and I’m thrilled that the online community will now have the opportunity to see it,” says Ron Howard.
During the photo competition, nearly 1000,000 photos were submitted, so it was not that easy for Ron Howard to select the eight ultimate stills, which had to represent major elements from the upcoming film piece including its settings, time, character, goal, obstacle, mood and more. The winning photos were inspiring Ron Howard and his daughter, actress Bryce Dallas Howard, who directed the movie shot using Canon cameras, to create a great emotional story about two sisters, who lost their mother in the childhood.
The 29-minute short film will be also screened at select film festivals in 2012. This is the first user-generated Hollywood film eligible to get an Academy Award nomination, but it’s not the first movie project which required user involvement—earlier this year, YouTube premiered the ‘Life in One Day’ film, which was creating from users’ content, and WWF in collaboration with UN and Vimeo also kicked off a similar project, encouraging public to record their routine and send the footage in to create a coherent, compelling movie.