<begin rant>

I doubt this happened to anyone else, because I doubt that anyone but me would be so last minute with this sort of thing.

Anyway, I spent about two weeks, and $400 on my entry for the Amazon/Tribeca Short Film Festival. The deadline for online submission was April 13 at 11:59 PM EST and I finished my final edit and compression at 10:30 PM. When I went to upload it the SITE WAS DOWN due to server overload

I frantically emailed them, and received a response at 12:03 AM

quote:

From "Petersen, Heather" <hpeters@amazon.com>
The registration site is back up. We're sorry for any inconvenience. Given the delay, you will have the opportunity to upload your film for the next 2 hours.

Great! But - it wasn't back up. And it didn't come back up by 2 either. I kept checking. The next morning (April 14th) the site WAS back, but it clearly says We are no longer accepting filmmaker registrations as one would expect. I emailed again, and it wasn't until 6:10 PM that I got a response.

quote:

From "Petersen, Heather" <hpeters@amazon.com>
Dear Filmmaker,

Thank you for your interest in our Short Film Competition.

As you know, the submission period for the competition has ended. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you.

Due to the overwhelming response we have gotten from the filmmaker community, it is possible that we will hold another film competition in the near future. We understand that you have put a lot of hard work into the production of your film, and we encourage you to keep your film ready, if you can.

WHAT THE HECK?!?! First they acknowledged the issue and TRIED to fix it - then it's suddenly all over with. It was totally their fault! I'm pretty sure this is illegal... but I don't think I could ever make much of it.

I'm going to write to the sponsers, and the Tribeca Festival. I tried calling Amazon, but both the Corporate Office and the Customer Service Department essentially said the film festival management is in a secret location and they are not allowed to know how to contact tham

</end rant>

Anyone else try it so late, like I did?

That's what festivals ar like, they just wanna get rid of a problem as easily as possible, if they **** up and their site is down, by extending the date it means more work for them, which they don't want. So they will lie to you to save time, because you and your film aren't that important to them as long as they have other submissions. Same goes for festivals that want your film exclusively. For them it's not about putting the best films possible into their competition, but its the fear that if someone else has gotten to it first, even if it's the next "Citizen Kane," they don't wanna be taking seconds, it makes them look bad to each other, and certain festivals know that people will send their films to them instead of smaller festivals that really need good competition. That's why i hate festivals, it's not about the films anymore (proof is Shrek 2 being in competition at Cannes and Britney Spears/Paris Hilton going to Sundance).

You're right, of course. I called Tribeca on the phone (even though both their website and phone greeting strictly admonished me to go to amazon's website for anything related to the short-film contest) and before I could even finish my explanation they said that EIGHTY people have called about this so far, and they took down my name and number and said as soon as they figure out who is supposed to take care of us they will give that person the list.... so.... now i wait

wow, that's bull****. I would have never thought that amazon could be such irresponsible jackasses. You need to keep fighting this.

No offense, but it's nothing that they intentionally did to exclude you. The server was down for the last 2 hours prior to the absolute deadline. You should have expected the remote possibility that there could have been some last-minute technical problems, and planned to submit yours at least a day or two early. That's the way it goes with festivals. Last minute entries are rarely winners, anyway. Next time be a little bit more careful about the deadline.

I would have entered this except my project was 8:33 and there was no way I could have made it below 7 minutes without seriously damaging it.

Yes, of course, I am aware I should have been slightly more on time. sigh.

I had an inkling that it might be sort of difficult getting through in the last few hours. But I didn't think an Amazon site, hosted by Macromedia would actually GO DOWN. There are at least eighty (probably many more, who have not thought to call Tribeca) of us. So I think they'll have to do something. When I entered the Smithsonian Photography Contest on the last day (you'd think I'd learn, eh? ) the site was really slow, and I didn't get confirmation for my uploads. I emailed, and they set up a special web page for me and everyone else who had a problem. We had an extra two days. The Smithsonian Institute obviously knows a thing or two about customer service.

I don't know the legalities... but I'm fairly certain that the server going down is not their fault, what IS their fault is not fixing the issue and letting us submit. That seems to break some sort of consumer protection/truth in advertising/unfair competition sort of legal something or other to me

Oh, yeah, I had no idea they could be so irresponsible either... but I began to worry after being unable to find their phone number anywhere on the site, googling it, and finding the Amazon Phone Number page... not a good sign when there's a very popular, nationally recognized website which lists a company's phone number because they don't! lol

Honestly, if the site is down because of overload, it's not their fault. And they did put it up for two hours, if it wasn't back on, well that's the breaks sometimes. It is the internet.

Just think that if they hold another one, you will have a film already done. Plus now you can enter it into other festivals.

Look, your computer crashing and losing your footage is one thing. It's on your end and you're pretty much SOL. But if they screw up on their end, a company that gets more hits per hour probably than everyone who entered the festival, I'm sorry but that seems pretty ****ty to me. It sounded like TD did everything he was supposed to (hell, a minute before deadline is on time regardless) and Amazon screwed the pooch. Maybe it's just me wanting to disagree with you RFranco and Evan, but you're never agreeing with the little man. And this time, damnit, he's right.

elliott.

I hear both views on this. The site going down is indirectly their fault for not anticipating and preparing for the bandwidth. It wasn't actually a bandwidth error, it was something about being unable to connect to JRun Server... but whatever. So, from a legal standpoint there's not much that could be held against them for the site crashing. It would be called a malfunction beyond their control or something like that.

What IS wrong is not compensating for the problem. There are eighty people (at least) who didn't get their films in because of that. As far as I know contests are governed by some very strict laws. I believe that publishing rules, and accidentally failing to allow submissions up to the deadline and NOT working out a reasonable solution for those affected is probably illegal.

Of course, I could never take this to court and win. And I don't want to. I'd hate to be "that guy whining on TV cause Amazon's site died and they wouldn't let him submit his movie." It's probably bad for future filmmaking connections. ugh.... This is a pretty pickle.

Oh, and, yeah, I COULD keep it for the next one. But what if the rules are different? And I can't enter it in other festivals because Amazon requires that it be a "World Premiere" and have never been seen, even online.

Anyway, thanks for reading guys.

That's tough luck, Titanium. I feel for you. I see both sides too. You waited until the last minute, but if the deadline stated a time/date and you were unable to meet that time because of "their" error, then it seems the MORAL (not legal) thing to do would be to extend the deadline for 24 hours.

By doing that, I doubt anyone is going to make a film in 24 hours to submit and then the unlucky eighty could get theirs in.

However you are correct in your assessment that if you "whined" and got in, it wouldn't be positive. They could accept your money, your film, then throw it in the trash! I'd wait for the next contest, but send them a "nice" letter stating the circumstances but want to also enter this piece in other Festivals and would they allow that because of the special situation.

They will either say yes or no and you won't be labeled by that Festival as poison!

It sucks, but what can you do? Good luck!

Considering there is no entry fee, they are really under no obligation to make the entry times exactly correspond with the stated times. There's no such thing as customer service when you didn't buy anything.

"It sounded like TD did everything he was supposed to (hell, a minute before deadline is on time regardless) and Amazon screwed the pooch. Maybe it's just me wanting to disagree with you RFranco and Evan, but you're never agreeing with the little man. And this time, damnit, he's right."

Yeah, but in the real world things break and a few minutes can make a difference. There's no moral or ethical issue here, just the fact that their servers were down immediately before the deadline.

But where's the cutoff? If it went down twelve hours before the deadline hundreds more would be effected... would that be ok? How about two days? A week? This is a grey area, and the decent thing to do is to let us in. I'm going to look into the legalities, not cause I'm going to sue them, but just out of curiosity.

UPDATE

Its been a while with this update! Anyway, eventually Tribeca called me back, and a very friendly, and very apologetic, woman explained that Amazon/Tribeca take FULL responsibility for the issue, and that it is totally their fault, and I was well within what was expected to be uploading at 90 minutes to go. She hinted at there being several hundred of us, and said that unfortunately due to the nature of the contest, and the fact that it has already gone "live" and is being voted on right now there is nothing they can do.

Instead, they've decided to hold another contest in July, and they offered me a free "film career consultation" where a rep would sit down and watch my movie, and give me advice, I guess (lol - not sure what that would ential) next time I'm in NYC.

So - I'm looking at this as an extended deadline. By July my movie is going to be awesome.

Oh, yeah, I'm also going to submit it within the first 3 minutes of the contest

That sounds like good news. Any exposure or advice has to be positive - even if it is "blowing smoke"!

Good luck in July.