It has been AVHA’s strong belief that virtual production and other emerging new technologies, AI included, are to assist with better story telling. We are extremely honored to have the assistance from 2 prominent novelists from China and Japan to provide their newly written stories for the 2025 contestants to develop the stories further, making the stories into a 2-5 mins video within 48H by virtual production. In other words, such stories are the topics for 2025 contest.
Please be reminded that the stories provided will be limited to 2 pages. You are encouraged to exercise your boundless imagination, and then narrow down to a script which is practical to be made into a video production in extremely limited time frame.
Further rule for using such stories will be stipulated in License grant.
Ideation for Contest Topics
Contest Introduction & Deliverables
AVHA values creativity over perfection in the 48-hour challenge, focusing on the innovative use of virtual production. Stories created under tight time and resource constraints can serve as a foundation for further development. These videos can also function effectively as pitch-vis, aiding in securing funding for story incubation.
• Participating members no more than three students. Teachers or instructors are NOT ALLOWED to perform the production tasks including but not limited to hardware handling and software operation.
• A 2-5 min video which contains real or virtual human acting in self-designated virtual scenes. At least 1/3 of the video should be real-time composited by using green/blue screen, LED volume, filming camera, game engine and some kind of camera tracking device.
• Assets can be premade or acquired from market place like Epic store as long as they are legally obtained with legitimate copyright. Additional modelling, video editing or music libraries should be participating teams’ own responsibility.
• The participants are required to submit a one-page tech explanatory paper in English. A maximum 15% extra bonus point can be awarded on your total score .
•Actual bonus point added will also be decided by intl. judge teams.
Chen Qiufan (a.k.a. Stanley Chan)
Chen Qiufan (a.k.a. Stanley Chan) is an award-winning Chinese speculative fiction author, translator, creative producer, and curator. He is Vice president of Chinese Writers Association Science Fiction Committee, Berggruen Institute Fellow, Visiting Scholar at Yale University, Asia21 Next Gen Fellow, Culture Leader of World Economic Forum and has a seat on the Xprize Foundation Science Fiction Advisory Council. His works include the novel Waste Tide and, co-authored with Dr. Kai-Fu Lee, the book AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future.
Taiyo Fujii
Taiyo Fujii was born in Amami Oshima Island—that is, between Kyushu and Okinawa. He worked in stage design, desktop publishing, exhibition graphic design, and software development. In 2012, Fujii self-published Gene Mapper serially in a digital format of his own design, and became Amazon.co.jp's number one Kindle bestseller of that year. The novel was revised and republished by Hayakawa Publishing in 2013 and was nominated for the Nihon SF Taisho Award and the Seiun Award. Fujii describes AR/VR communication, GMO plants, and terrorism for infrastructure in this work. The second novel Orbital Cloud, won the 2014 Nihon SF Taisho Award and the Japanese Seiun Award Long Form. In 2019, his second novelette collection, Hello, World! won a mainstream literature award: Yoshikawa Eiji Literature Awards for Young Writers. Hello, World! Based on Fujii’s personal experience as a computer technology professional. In 2021, Fujii won his second Seiun Award Long Form with military SF Man-Kind. Fujii attended the eighteenth president of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Japan (SFWJ), which is the traditional science fiction writer’s association. Fujii made SFWJ a company and founded the board gavanization. Fujii developed connections with Science Fiction communities worldwide. Fujii has continued to contribute short stories for the Chinese New Year issue of an online magazine for four years and got read well there.
Attention:
Submitting the application form does not mean you have been accepted for the contest. After review, a formal notification of successful registration & a serial number will be sent to the mailbox you filled in when you applied.
The serial number will be a must when you submit your work.
COLLEGES & UNIVERSITIES
APPLICANTS
For colleges and universities participation.
Please download and make sure you understand and accept the contest rules before you apply.
Regarding 15% Bonus point
Tech Explanatory Paper Instructions
40%Story originality:
40% Production technique
20% Visual performance
15% Extra bonus points
(Tech Explanatory Paper)
The virtual production industry has undergone major waves of various technological improvements in 2023 and 2024. Globally we have seen outstanding technology being used to improve the production process, faster speed or better visual quality, in various stages for virtual production. To mention just a few: innovation initiation, AI or non-AI, on making scene generation, motion generation, partial or full character replacing/creation, lighting distribution control, post production VFX etc.
During such a hyper evolving period we are also very pleased to notice that the innovative improvements are not limited to people who have been in film making industries for decades, but rather from people with boundless imagination to use tools, old or new, in brand new ways to fulfill film director’s imaginative requirements.
In particular we did see young participants in 2024 Virtual Production Filming Contest generate multiple scripts for their story build up consideration after receiving the official topic. No doubt this team has enjoyed the time saved for developing their story. Another team used face shifting technology to generate 6 characters while the number of real actors/actresses are limited to just 3. The improvement shown in their work is simply self-evident.
As a result for the 2025 Virtual Production Filming Contest, we are to add a bonus point, on top of what the judges grade the works by the typical 3 standards (story creation, visual effects and production techniques) used in our contest, at 15% to encourage creative ways of improving production processes; such improvements include using AI, virtual human but not limited to these 2 kinds.
The participants are required to submit a one-page tech explanatory paper in English to describe:
1. Role and work done by each team member.
2. How/what they have innovated in the work they created during the 48 hours
3. The explanation also needs to outline how the improvement is done, in contrast with the conventional way of production.
AVHA is not in a position to stipulate which technology should be used or should not be used. Our international judging panel will evaluate bonus points based on the final results and the clarity and reasonableness of the explained process.
48HR VIRTUAL PRODUCTION CONTEST