It’s 20 seconds, actually, but it goes by fast as my new pal, Charlie Parr, plays his National while sitting along the mighty Mississippi River:

The crowd at the 10 Second Film Festival

“Lars can eat carrots really fast” was a crowd pleaser, too, and when i didn’t hear the call to claim the award for ‘sticks’ evidently they chose this as the next winner, which i didn’t go up for either because i STILL couldn’t hear anything! : P

Some think content will keep getting longer and longer until movies are 3 and 4 hours long. That’s fine. OK with us. We also like the idea of not spending 3 or 4 hours to get something out of it.

Like music, there is a time and place for a long song and a short one. We like them both. We do listen to waaay more short songs than long ones, though. This is the reason we love still images more than films. If our house was on fire and we had to save still images or films, we would have to save the stills. We know. Sounds surprising! We work in motion but, like most of our favorite filmmakers, we think in stills. Moments. In a moment, a still image can change our lives. Films take a little longer.

Which is one reason we created and curate 10secondfilms.org. In 10 moments, a film can pack quite a wallop. Some maybe not so much, but are still worthy as friendly exercises in media literacy.

Howard Rheingold called this site “genius, funny, and yes, friendly expression of participation media literacy” via his Twitter account.

Gever Tulley also commented on it using the most appropriate phrase ever: “oddly compelling” – also via Twitter.

Compliments coming from fellas like these make us feel pretty darn swell, to say the least. Thank you, Gever and Howard. You both have our most humble admiration and deepest respect.

This is all just to say that we believe the experience of producing media should be a friendly one for all ages, especially as technology can still be an obstacle to the creative process for many of us. As an exercise in media and visual literacies, the 10-second format is vital. It minimizes the need for complex tools. These moments as movies are gratifying and occasionally inspire larger, more ambitious projects.

Make a 10 second film with any device that captures motion pictures.

No editing — One take — 10 seconds maximum length — Sound is optional.

Have a 10 second film you like?

We’d love to hear about it and perhaps even feature it on the site – click here to tell us more.

Meanwhile, thanks for reading and — keep playing.