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And the winners are…

HERE

Huge congratulations to the winners; we’ll be in touch with the teams very soon (next week! Promise!) to work out how to send you trophies.

Commiserations to all the other nominees, but our thanks and congratulations to you for reaching the final stage, and setting such a magnificently high standard. It’s been a terrific year.

(We’ve just realised that we can’t change the graphic on the front page until next week. D’oh!)

We’re proud to announce the Nominations for the SciCast Awards 2011!

Congratulations to the worthy nominees, but also to the hundreds of people who’ve submitted films to SciCast this year and over the last five years. You’ve set a tremendous standard — every film we’ve received has helped ensure that our nominees are truly worthy.

We’ll be announcing 2011 winners in a little over a week’s time; keep checking!

The next post to appear on this blog will announce the Nominees for the SciCast Awards 2011. Before that, I want to say a few words about this year’s Awards Ceremony:

There won’t be one.

Previously, we’ve held events at the IET and the Royal Institution, big glossy red-carpet parties that have been huge fun, and have given us a fitting opportunity to celebrate the makers of the best SciCast films.

If you’ve been following along with SciCast’s own story, however, you’ll know that our principle funding concluded last year, and since then we’ve been running on the last dregs of cash (plus a welcome injection from our stalwart friends at the Institute of Physics) whilst we try to secure funding for 2012 and beyond. Most of you had already guessed there wouldn’t be an event this year, and indeed we’ve said as much in previous blog posts. However, there’s always been just that little bit of hope, so it was time for us to be unequivocal.

We’ve had some extremely gratifying interest in SciCast and all is not lost… but we don’t have funding for an awards ceremony this year. It’s not going to happen.

For our worthy nominees: we’re sorry. We wish we could treat you to the same fantastic experience your predecessors have had, tell you how awesome you are face-to-face, and show your films on the big screen to let you see the effect they have on other people.

For everyone else: please help us make the nominees feel special. Watch their films, leave comments, tell your friends about them, cheer the teams on.

Thank you all for your understanding.

Looks like we have some problems with our video hosting this morning. As in: it doesn’t work.

Turns out the whole hosting company has dropped off the web, which usually means alarms are going off and dozens of engineers are battling to solve whatever the problem is. Let’s give them some time before we panic.

[update: oops, forgot to mention this was fixed. You worked that out for yourselves, right?]

Here’s where we’re at:

• Physics judging is underway, with results from the IOP’s panel starting to trickle their way to SciCast Orbiting World Headquarters. Woohoo!
• We’re chasing the last few details for the last few films, then we’ll put together shortlists for all the other categories.
• We’re hoping to announce the category nominations on Friday 3^rd June.

If you started submitting a film but haven’t actually, you know, sent it in yet, you still stand a very slim chance of making it into this year’s competition if you upload it right now. If you’re having problems with the upload system, email us. Immediately!

You’ll noticed that we’ve not yet published any 2011 films, thanks to our last-minute and entirely unplanned switch to a completely different film archive. We’ve still a little work to do making sure all the previous films are there — at last count we had 50 films still to post. Many of these are films that broke, didn’t display, fell off, were mysteriously deleted from, or plain didn’t work in our old archive, so you’ll be seeing them for the first time.

So: enjoy the new old films, and we’ll get the new new films on the site just as soon as we’ve caught up.

It’s here. We’ve taken a deep breath, and put our new film archive live. The old one’s still linked in the sidebar just in case, but over the next few days and weeks we’ll:

• Finish moving the archive over from the old site to the new one.
• (Finally!) publish all the films that fell through the cracks in the old system.
• Publish this year’s competition entries.

We’ve added a page of notes about the new archive; you’re very welcome to leave comments here, or there.

We hope you like the new look, the new features, and the new… everything.

What with all the bank holidays and such, we’re not taking our own deadline too seriously. So please, if you think you’ve missed out — enter anyway. There’s even time to sort out the paperwork we need. Just.

Meanwhile, we’re putting the finishing touches to the new film archive, and we’ll start publishing films new and old just as soon as it’s ready. Woohoo!

Thursday morning (too early!) — a quick heads-up:

A couple of minor issues cropped up yesterday with the film submission system, which might make it difficult to upload your films. We’re aware, and fixing the problems, but you might want to leave it a little while before trying to send us your film. Fingers crossed, we should have things working again by this afternoon.

Thanks for your patience, and particular thanks to the people who emailed us with details yesterday.

The deadline for submissions to SciCast 2011 is Wednesday 27^th April. That’s not changing. But…

Since we set that deadline there’s been a royal wedding announced, some weird things have happened to the Easter holidays, and more recently this website has had its problems. Some schools have shifted their break so they’re not back by the time the deadline happens, which is unfortunate. So:

• The official deadline is still Wednesday 27^th April. If you want to be sure your film is eligible for this year’s competition, you’ll need to get it to us by then.
• That said, we’re not going to take our own deadline too seriously. if you’re a few days late you’ll probably be OK.

To be honest it’s always been a little bit like this in practice, what with post delays and the like. We’re just confessing to everyone rather than only to those who ask/plead/beg for a little more time.

As guidance, you’ll probably be OK if your film reaches us by, say, 4^th May, you might be lucky if you’re as late as the 6^th. After that is getting distinctly hazy. No promises, but we’ll do everything we can to include as many films as we can — if you do what you can to get your films in as soon as you can.

Fair?

We’re back up and running. Big thanks to James at EngineeringUK for kicking the server and sorting everything out.

We’re pressing on with the new archive system, however, so expect some changes in the coming days and weeks. Which probably translates as ‘Jonathan’s going to break it good and proper next time’, just so you know.