In post 5, VashtaNeurotic wrote:1 question really, what counts as a film and why is the cutoff 40 minutes vs the 80 minutes for a tv show? I assume video essays count for nothing.
Yeah, the question of "what is a film?" is an interesting one because technology is certainly changing the definition. It can no longer be defined as "must have been released in a theater" anymore. So that opens it up to tv movies, straight to video/DVD, and streaming options. Then there are anthology series which can be a series of self-contained movies (Masterpiece Theater, Twilight Zone, Black Mirror). And there are tv series that can be considered an extended cinematic experience (an episode of 2010's Sherlock is basically an entire Sherlock Holmes movie). I can't limit it to having a narrative story, because plenty of avant-garde movies, documentaries, and yes, video essays might be discounted. So mostly everything counts as long as it has a moving image.
However... making it as open as "anything with moving images" does create a slight problem as it allows stuff like Zoom conferences, video games, or self-made videos to be allowed. So let me restrict it a little by saying it must be non-interactive and published in a format available to the public. Which might still have some grey areas, but I guess we can deal with those issues if they arise.
As far as the time limit goes, I do want to encourage movie-watching over anything else. So you can still watch episodes of TV, but you'd have to watch 3 episodes of a 30 min tv show to equal to 1 point.
I guess I should also add in the rules that you must watch it in full (bailing at the ending credits is ok), at single-speed, and only one movie at a time.