Hollywood Popular Artists

Aug 31st 2012, 12:58

For those of you who follow the comings and goings of film festivals, there's a lot of buzz coming out of Venice and Toronto these days, thanks to the high profile competitions in those cities. But for those of you film enthusiasts who can't make the trek to Italy or Canada, you can satisfy your festival thirst via The Wrap's online event "The ShortList," a brand new festival that features 12 award-winning short films in competition for a prize of $60,000 in camera equipment for future projects.

The films featured in the "ShortList" competition come from some of the world's most renowned film festivals, like the Sundance Film Festival, SXSW, Venice Film Festival and the LA Film Festival. MTV News was lucky enough to get some inside scoop on the new event via a chat with one of the festival's jury members, actor/producer Zachary Quinto.

"I just finished producing and starring in a short film of my own ["Dog Eat Dog"] and for me the short film medium is a really great place to be able to get to know someone's voice as a filmmaker and also to get behind your voice as a filmmaker," Quinto said. "So I'm always interested in what I see. You never know what you're going to get and it's really interesting to me. For example when you go to a short film program at a film festival it's a really diversified experience. You're getting different kinds of genres and storytelling techniques, different technical executions; I just love short films for that reason."

When asked what he's looking for in a prize-winning short, the "Star Trek" actor said that he likes to be challenged a bit as an audience member, by either complex characters or creative storytelling.

"I love to be made to participate at least a little bit in trying to bring my own perspective to a story," he said. "I tend to lean toward stories where the beginning of the story you're picking up from the middle, maybe the audience doesn't have all the information required to figure things out, I tend to like stories like that but again it's about authenticity in a lot of ways and finding and expressing that voice in a way that is engaging and dynamic. That's the baseline for me."

You can check out and vote for all of the "ShortList" finalists on TheWrap.com, through the site's mobile platform, or on one of our sister sites, Film.com and NextMovie.com. Voting is open until September 4.

Media files:
Zachary-Quinto.jpg (image/jpeg)
Zachary-Quinto-70x53.jpg (image/jpeg)