The Crazy8 Film Society has announces the six winners of its annual short film competition, following a record-breaking number of submissions.

The winning films, which recieve $1000 and production assistance as prizes, include: Bedbugs: A Musical Love Story (director Matthew Kowalchuk, writer Shauna Johannesen), Dial Y for Yesterday (writer/director Greg Crompton, producer Darren Borrowman), Earthlickers (director Tony Mirza, writers/producers Justine Warrington & Alison Araya, producer Jim McKeown), Mattress (writer/director Michelle Kee, writer Quinn Spicker, producers David Kelso & Emma Peterson) and Sacrifice (director Ryan Atimoyoo, writer Ryan Bright, producer Peggy Thompson.

A total of 154 teams applied for the 15^th annual Crazy8s competition, a 50% increase over last year – a jump that Crazy8 executive director and producer Paul Armstrong attributes to a social media marketing push. The increase was welcome, said Armstrong, but meant the jury had its work cut out for it.

“The video pitch jury had to watch about 15 hours of video pitches,” he told Playback.

After that, 12 filmmakers were chosen to move onto the next stage of the contest, which involved story editing sessions with a group of script doctors.

The winning teams will start shooting their films on Feb. 14. As part of the filmmaking challenge, they will have eight days to shoot, edit and post their films. Finished films will be screened at a gala event in Vancouver.

Film strip image courtesy of Shutterstock