The Rules

Entries must have been produced within the past two years. Label discs and tapes with your name and telephone number. Submissions in other than English must be subtitled or include an English transcript. Multiple entries are allowed and may be entered in multiple categories. The entry fee is $50 per entry per category. A brief clip of winning entries may be streamed on the Accolade website. Written comments describing entries are invited. Entries will not be returned.

Judging

Quality and creativity are celebrated in three levels of awards: Best of Show, Award of Excellence and Honorable Mention. Best of Show honors are granted only if worthy productions are discovered. No more than 15% of entries are granted Awards of Excellence. Notable artistic and technical productions are recognized at the Honorable Mention award level. Like most award competitions the judging is conducted in-house. Staff is selective. Entries judged to be potential Best of Show winners may be sent to outside judges for additional review. The Competition Coordinator's role is to assure consistency across judging and maintain high standards.

The Accolade

Winners are eligible to receive an Accolade statuette. The Accolade statuette is a constellation of 24K gold-plated stars mounted on a piano finished base of rosewood. It has been called the most beautiful award in the industry. The Accolade is manufactured by the company that makes the worlds most prestigious and celebrated awards, the Oscar, Emmy, Clio and MTV Video Music Awards. The Accolade is truly a work of art.

Meet some of the Accolade Judges

About Judge Patrick Roddy Patrick Roddy’s latest feature, Mercy, is now on the festival circuit. Mercy is a 2006 Accolade Award of Excellence winner.  Patrick began his filmmaking career working on Robert Redford’s A River Runs Through It. Since then he has written, produced, and edited his first feature “Parasite”, line-produced the Japanese film, Junkfood Generation; co-produced the Indie horror-western The Legend of the Phantom Rider; produced festival winner Angry Young Man, the sequel to filmmaker Robert Loomis’s Dog Years and associate produced the Independent Spirit Award nominated Robbing Peter. In 1998 Patrick started his own foreign sales and production company, Archimage Studio in Los Angeles. Under the Archimage Studio banner, he brokered foreign sales for his own film Parasite and helped other independent filmmakers find distribution as well. Archimage Studio also produced the music video for Tabito’s Song that was broadcast in Japan, and co produced the feature film Angry Young Man. He has also worked for independent mogul Roger Corman’s distribution company, Concorde-New Horizons, and with the producer Debra Hill on a development project titled Meet John Doe, which Mr. Patrick sold as a pitch to Warner Brothers Studio.  From 1999 to 2003 he worked for IFP/Los Angeles, now named Film Independent, a nonprofit member based organization that supports independent filmmaking and filmmakers, as Filmmaker Advisor, using his production and distribution experience to provide practical advice and information to IFP/LA members. Patrick received his M.F.A. in Film and Television Producing from the University of California at Los Angeles (2000) and his B.A. in Media and Theatre Arts from Montana State University (1992). Patrick has taught video production at McNeese State University and currently teaches producing at the University of Arizona.

Interview with one of the Accolade Judges: Mitchel J. Matovich By Yayoi Lena Winfrey Although he was once a research and development aerospace engineer, Mitchel J. Matovich, Jr. made the switch to film writer, director and producer with relative ease. The CEO of Matovich Productions and Movietown Pictures, Matovich is a seventh-generation Californian whose former employers include Lockheed, FMC Corporation, Morton Company, Concept Development Company, and the Stanford Research Institute. Besides founding the Santa Clarita Valley International Film Festival, Matovich is also a member of the Directors Guild of America, the Producers Guild of America, the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, ASCAP, and the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. Happily, for Accolade readers, Matovich agreed to answer questions of particular significance to filmmakers. Q: What’s the difference between being an inventor and a filmmaker? A: “Running large R&D contracts in the aerospace business is quite similar to producing a motion picture. You have to develop the cost, put together a budget, and you have a series of events that have to occur on a specific schedule. The only difference in R&D or in aerospace is that a lot of things have never been done before. It’s less difficult to maintain the budget and cost of a motion picture because almost everything you do has already been done.”   READ MORE >>