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The 2012 Vimeo Festival+Awards was early last month. Wish you had been there? Well, guess what, I WAS! And if you give me about 4 or 5 minutes, I can fill you in on all the haps! 

First off, some background: the Vimeo Festival+Awards is a hybrid award show and festival that last went down in 2010. The event is representative of the entire Vimeo spectrum of content (narrative, animation, etc.), so as music videos have a strong presence on Vimeo, they also had a strong presence at the Festival+Awards, with a music video award category, director profiles, and workshops featureing some of our favorite music video pros and dudes.

Hosted by Reggie Watts, the awards were super fancy and I was very underdressed. I saw Dave Green before the awards started, and had him take a picture of me. Dave’s short film Ham Sandwich was a finalist in the narrative category, and his Miles Fisher – “New Romance” music video was shortlisted in the music video category. You can get to know Dave a bit better by listening to this podcast. 

Later, I took some pictures of DANIELS winning their multiple awards. One for their Manchester Orchestra – “Simple Math” music video, and one honorary award for New Creator. It was exciting for everyone directly involved, but also exciting for me and everyone else there because award shows are exciting and DANIELS are super nice guys.

For more super cool music video fun from the awards, be sure to check out the videos that were shortlisted and the finalists in the music video category.



The next two days were the festival at the awesome IAC building, and there were somewhere in the neighborhood of a billion things to do there. Vimeo.com has a great community behind it, made up of creators from all different levels, and Vimeo staff is a big part of this community. While at the festival, I had the chance to sit down with Blake Whitman, the VP of Creative Development at Vimeo, to talk about the festival, the community, and how music videos fit into the mix. Check out that conversation here.

After my chat with Blake, the two of us high fived and then I went outside to the beer garden and drank a beer (several beers). Then it was on to DANIEL’s director profile, hosted by Blake. During this chat, both Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheiner were very open about the way they work, they way they write treatments, and even the places where they second guess themselves. At one point, they even pulled up a screen shot from their Foster the People - “Hudini” video and pointed out all the imperfections in the effects, it was awesome. After their profile, I forced them to sit down with me and answer some of my questions. That conversation can be found in this podcast.

Next was the director profile of Saman Keshavarz, the event that my friend Steve who came with me on the trip was most excited about. It seems he wasn’t the only one. Most of the audience crowded near the front of the room and really seemed interested in what Saman had to say and were very familiar with his work. This talk was also hosted by Blake, and they got into some really great stuff about Saman’s videos… As did FilmedInsert, a few weeks ago, in this podcast.



The next day featured the action packed DANIELS workshop, which was in front of a huge group of peeps and included a lot of jokes and slow-motion fighting. In this workshop, DANIELS gave the audience tons of tips on brainstorming, and also tons of candy. And throughout all of DANIELS jokes and running around, some really great concepts were conveyed.

The whole event ended with a sweet, sweet party that night. I drank heavily and gave lots more high fives. And through my drunkenness I realized, not only is the Vimeo community great for supporting artists in the video world, they also throw an awesome dance party!

To see more photos from the Vimeo Awards+Festival, check out this photo album.