San Diego's Smartphone Film Festival Categories
We have some unique categories paired with traditional genres, find out who inspired them and get the details.
There are many opportunities to capture moments and turn them into stories with the most popular popular camera in the world. The summer season is the season for adventures. Music videos, cosplay, narrative films of all genres, or the “ultimate mobile” film while you’re on vacation without a laptop or notebook!
Our film festival has some unique categories paired with traditional ones.
Narrative – Documentary – Ultimate Mobile – Cosplay – Screendance – Geography, Wildlife and Travel – Experimental – Music Video
Get all the criteria in detail.
But you may not be aware of our Smartphone Photo contest and The Rookie Award contest. So we want to share them with you, in case you are not confident about your filmmaking skills, or a smartphone photography storyteller.
The Rookie Award is a separate contest for less experienced, and new mobile filmmakers to showcase their films in a separate session during our film festival.
The length of the short films in this category/competition is 1-5 minutes. All genres and categories listed above qualify. Only one of a handful of selected films will receive special recognition during the awards ceremony with The Rookie Award.
This contest allows all the categories listed above. Narrative to Music Videos.
Frame A Story (One story in one frame) is storytelling with a photo. Your photo should inspire the imagination of the viewer and tell a story. Photos may be incorporated into a video montage sharing your photo and name on the large screen during the festival. The number of photos per submission you can enter depend on the limit allowed by FilmFreeway.
Let’s talk a little about aerial drone footage for your films in all contests except the photo contest.
We made the decision to allow aerial drone shot footage in your films for all categories, not just the feature film competition. But you’ll have to be careful not to add more than 10% of the total duration of your film’s total running time, which includes credits.
You must do your own math. For example, a Short film of five minutes: 10% of (5 minutes) = 30 seconds. 10% of (10 minutes) = 60 seconds, etc.
In order to qualify, the entire rest of your film must be shot with only mobile phone cameras. Not One Second More than 10% of the film may include aerial footage recorded with a drone camera. This is the only exception to another camera or device allowed. To be clear, any camera on a drone is allowed. This does not include crane shots, should you be so lucky to have a crane available for your smartphone film production. But if you do, yes—you can have crane shots in your films as long as you use a smartphone camera.
A bit about the Community Stories program. When we first launched our film festival, back in 2009, we wanted to extend the opportunity to community members to share stories from within their own communities, including cultures.
You must be a part of the community whose story you are telling as a filmmaker to meet the Community Stories program criteria.
We started this program in the summer of 2009. However, we did not have defined categories in our film festival. So we would feature films which met the criteria for this category and the film festival’s other requirements, such as using a mobile phone camera and time limits. Later on, we added Community Stories as the first official category for the IMFF.
Finally, a few years ago, we removed Community Stories as a stand-alone category. We, instead, decided it was best to choose a film that meets the program’s criteria to give it special attention during the festival.
But if you submit a short film to The Rookie Awards or Short Film Competition, your film may qualify to be featured as a Community Story during our live in-person film festival. Let us know if you’d like us to review your film after you’ve submitted your short film.
We would like to extend some notable humans for inspiring some of our unique categories.
Cosplay category was inspired by Chris Canole also known as Dude Vader and Tracy Doering. We are thankful to them for organizing participating each year since 2017 in our Red Carpet Extravaganza. Bringing a stimulating and celebratory experience to all contestants at the film festival each year and connecting us with the Science Fiction Coalition as sponsors for our San Diego style red carpet “show” starring YOU!
Ryan McDonald won the Cosplay Category IMFF 2024 with his short film, “Luke Skywalker – A “Peaches” Parody,” shot with iPhone 11.
Screendance category was inspired with the collaboration of choreographer and soloist filmmaker Jamiel Laurence in, we created this unique category June 2020 for our film festival beginning with our 2021 edition.
Screendance is for dancers using smartphones to choreograph performances for the camera. Using camera movement and style, this category hopes to inspire dancers who perform in front of the camera to team up with a camera person, or more than one, to shoot a story driven performance precisely for the screen.
“The universal language of dance has always held a special place when being performed in the realm of cinematic capture. Fred Astaire once said ‘Either the Camera will Dance, or I will’ and this really captures the essence of the synergy between dance, choreography and filmmaking. With the rise in popularity and easy access to mobile filmmaking technologies, choreographers are naturally finding new and exciting ways to evolve dance alongside developing mobile form factor stabilisation and affordable lenses & filters. The International Mobile Film Festival is a welcoming group of like minded creatives, and the ideal place to have your Screendance work seen by new audiences and industry professionals alike.” Jamiel Laurence: Dancer. Choreographer. Filmmaker.
We want to share a gift with everyone who submits a film to the International Mobile Film Festival in San Diego thanks to a partnership with Videomaker, a magazine based in Chico, California.
Since our 2024 edition, with compliments of International Mobile Film Festival, you can receive a free one-year digital subscription to Videomaker magazine when you submit your project to IMFF 2025. Each subscription features tips and tricks, buyer’s guides for filmmaking equipment, and various editorial content regarding the industry of video.
Submit your films to IMFF 2025 and mark the dates to be here in person for the full experience in San Diego.
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