ACEFEST 2010: Judge Muir!

The New York Press made the announcement recently, so now I can share the news here too: I've accepted the invitation to serve as a judge at the upcoming ACEFEST 2010 Film Festival in NYC.

This is the film festival's fifth year, and the event will be held from August 20th through 28th, 2010. Tickets go on sale, Monday July 12th at 11:00 am.

Here's a snippet from the New York Press article involving the festival and, in particular, the selection of the judges:

The judging panel consists of 14 film experts including Emmy-award winning visual effects guru Ben Grossmann and Splinterheads director Brant Sersen. The panel’s talent pool is deep and diversified and they have all been called upon for their specific expertise because this year ACEFEST is trying something new with their judging process.

“For the past few years, we’ve pretty much taken anyone who’s interested in the judging within reason,” O’Malley said. “If they had any sort of notable resume, they were in. This year we tried something different. We very specifically made categories which we wanted to fill with judges. Categories such as performance, directing, special effects, cinematography and writing. Then we set out to fill those particular categories with judges. They’re all looking with an open eye at everything they see of course, but they’re all accomplished experts in their fields. They’ve seen it all. They’ve done it all. It’s going to be very interesting what they bring to the table this year because - I guess for lack of a better term -we got more organized. It was less of a free-for-all with our judging panel.”

And O’Malley expects the judges to have their work cut out for them if the caliber of submissions, which start being accepted Jan. 11, are on par with prior years.

I must say, I'm really looking forward to this gig with tremendous excitement. I can't wait to see all the films; and I hope that all you independent filmmakers out there get signed up for the competition. To learn more about ACEFEST (and the film submission process), click here.