Following on from last year’s successful “Project Spark”, Nanlite are running a competition for aspiring film makers with the continuing aim of supporting the next generation of filmmakers, not just with money, but also advice and assistance in origination, shooting and post-production.
With each successful project receiving mentorship and a massive USD $20,000 worth of funding, creators have an unparalleled opportunity to turn their short film pitch into a reality.
This year the theme is ‘Shining through’, which can be interpreted however you wish. Submissions based on this theme can be either narrative or experimental. In the Global section (outside China) four pitches will be selected for funding: two narrative shorts and two experimental shorts.
The contests in the Global section and Chinese section will run in parallel. Each of the four finalist teams in the Global section will receive a production budget of USD $15,000 and additional equipment rental support of up to USD $5,000 courtesy of NANLITE and NANLUX.
What have you got to loose? For the full details go to the Nanlux competition website.
Sony’s Future Film Maker awards is a film making competition with 3 categories for film makers, student film makers plus a future format category. There are some really great prizes for the winners and those shortlisted. Prizes include up to $5000 USD as well as FX9 cameras and other film making equipment. 
With the FX9 recently gaining the ability to shoot Anamorphic the timing of this couldn’t be better. My good friends over at CineD are giving away a Sirui 50mm 1.3x Anamorphic lens in a Christmas raffle. I have the 35mm and the 75mm versions of this lens and the are nice little lenses that will of course work perfectly with the FX9 in it’s S35 4K scan mode with the anamorphic monitoring set to 1.3x. The lenses can also be used with the 5K Crop scan mode. On an FX6 you would need to use about 1.2x clear image zoom to remove the vignette, but I feel these are useable with the FX6 for 4K. I was looking to add the 50mm to my own set so maybe I need to enter the raffle too!