straight 8 at 25: Challenging Filmmakers to Do More with Less

Ed Sayers, filmmaker and founder of the straight 8 shootout competition, is beaming just after the premiere of the latest crop of films at the Cannes Lions festival this year. The winners, decided by the audience present at the screening and in real time, have been awarded their trophies and invited to start thinking about next year’s submissions. 

This year, 15 companies had taken straight 8’s challenge. The line-up of companies big and small was: Affect Sound, Humant Life, Kaus, Imagine This, Iris, Mad Cow Films, Mr+Positive, Newd, Not Just Any, Odelay Films, Outsider, Presence, RSA, The & Partnership, and VCCP. 

Above: still from 'AI Cheese', Imagine This

Imagine This won the Gold trophy for 'AI Cheese'; VCCP took home the Silver for 'Deirdre's New Pet'; and The & Partnership was awarded a Bronze for 'Non-Playable Connection'. The audience award, given to the film that got the biggest applause but no trophy, went to Presence for 'Over-Stimulated'.

Speaking with Ed after about the competition's momentous 25th anniversary, he casts his mind back to 1999 when it all began. “It was purely an experiment,” he says of the idea behind straight 8. “Could anyone make a compelling three minute film, without retakes? Without an edit? Is it possible? It proved to be a very entertaining evening. 25 years later, there’s been over 3000 films made. Some pretty well known filmmakers have participated and it's been one of their rites of passage,” Ed says. 

Above: still from 'Deirdre's New Pet', VCCP

The competition is open to everyone, filmmakers and creative companies, and the rules are the same for all and involves make a three minute short film created entirely in-camera on

one cartridge of super 8mm film. Every shot is taken in story order, with no opportunity for retakes or editing. Any visual effects, colouring, and titling must be done the old-fashioned way - as part of the shoot, with the camera. And since Super 8 doesn’t record sound, the soundtracks are made ‘blind’ and must be original. The film is then sent off to straight 8’s partners, Cinelab Film & Digital, who process and scan the films.

Above: still from 'Non-Playable Connection', The & Partnership

The restriction of the format necessarily pushes filmmakers to be more creative, according to Ed. “I think we need restrictions to do anything. And we need restrictions to have more fun, actually. By creating a set of rules where it's nigh on impossible to make a perfect film, it's a bit more relaxing than making a short film any other way. Because although it's really stressful, it really can't be perfect so you actually enjoy it more.”

Did he think that straight 8 was going to become what it is today, and make it to 25? Ed says that he can’t take all the credit for it, “because a lot of people have nudged me along the way.” In 2001, Ed hadn’t yet followed up on the first event when Dave Waters, then creative director at DFGW (Duckworth Finn Grubb Waters) asked Ed to organise a straight 8 competition for his company as he loved the concept. “He told me that he wanted everyone from the receptionist to him and the partners to make films, for them all to really have fun, and really understand what it takes to make a film. We did a bespoke one for them. We did a screening at 20th Century Fox and at that point I remembered what fun it was. I thought, okay, we have got to keep doing this more often. We started opening it up as a public competition and it grew and grew and grew. Then we got asked by Channel Four to be on there, we got asked by Kodak to come to the Cannes Film Festival. All these chance things happened and they added fuel into the tank,” he explains. 

Above: still from 'Over-Stimulated', Presence

Ed is still as excited today to see the films for the first time as he was all those years ago; it never gets old to see what’s on those super 8 cartridges. “I deliberately don’t watch them before the premiere. I love seeing them unveiled. There's so much pent up energy in them because everyone's waiting to see them. We really feel that: we've asked you to do it, you're taking the challenge, you put loads of effort in, and you have to wait weeks and months to see your result. It's a really nice feeling to be able to release them. It's especially good when they're really good and I thought today's films as a collection were really strong, says Ed of 2024’s entries. 

As for the future, Ed sees three possible options. “Make it to 25 years, draw a line, shut it down. That was a thing. People can talk fondly of it if they want to, but it's not going anymore. That's one option. We're not going to do that. Second option is that we've hit a nice point. Now we know exactly what we're doing. Let's just keep doing the same thing. Don't reinvent anything because then it's just hard work. That's not really an option either. So now we're planning the third option, which is how do we set out the future of straight 8 to say, right, this is what it is now and I don't know if we’ll be able to do all the things we have in our heads, but we're going to try some stuff. I can't talk about them yet because I don't know if they're going to work out. I do know that we can’t just sit back and let it happen because it will run out of energy and everyone needs freshness,” Ed explains. 

This year, that freshness came in the form of a screening in IMAX, the biggest cinema screen in the UK. But first the team had to test whether it was even possible to show the smallest film format on such a large scale. The event was a huge success, showcasing the best 25 films to a sold out audience. 

Commenting on straight 8’s presence at Cannes Lions, Ed notes that fewer production companies are in attendance while tech companies have a bigger presence than ever before. That in itself is a reason to keep going. “The more tech-y it gets, the more I want to keep doing this. It’s something truly analogue. It's about celebrating the craft and intention of upcoming talent and that's what we're doing.”

Everyone in London on the 27th of June can catch a rerun of the event at the Prince Charles Cinema in Leicester Square at 6pm, followed by an afterparty nearby. Tickets can be purchased here.