The Quizbowl Resource Center

This is the announcement for Untitled Film Set, a film side event set to (hopefully) be played sometime in 2022 be played in 2024.

Format

At the moment, I am planning for it to be a hybrid visual/written set of 20 tossups in each packet, with 15 visual questions and 5 written questions. The target is 8 packets. Visual tossups are 6-8 slides, with 1 superpower slide, 2-3 power slides, and 2-3 "10" slides before the giveaway. Any feedback on the format is welcome.

There are 10 packets, each consisting of 10 visual questions and 10 written questions. Each visual question consists of 8 slides, with at least 1 20-point superpower slide, at least 3 15-point power slides, and at least 1 additional 10-point slide before the 10-point giveaway. Each written question is roughly 8-8.5 lines in standard formatting (10 pt TNR) before powermarking.

Content

The questions will be a good blend between both art film and culturally/historically/technically "important" popular films. The vast majority of the questions will be on films that could be clued/tossed up in the "other arts" distribution at general academic tournaments.

I am aiming for a difficulty just a bit below The Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes / Reel Knowledge / FILMRIEL, since there will not be as much art film as in those sets.
The difficulty is now approximately the same as On Cinema on the Buzzer, The Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes, Reel Knowledge, and FILMRIEL. I think anyone who liked the aforementioned tournaments, and any avid movie watchers in general, will enjoy this one too!

Generally, my theme was "important films that haven't come up much in quizbowl" - though that's not to say that there won't be a substantial amount of "classic"/canonical knowledge tested. I don't have a rigid distribution, but here's a rough overview of the set:

* ~50% strictly English-language film, ~50% non-English film or mixed English/non-English
* Variety of genres/time periods/countries
* Questions will generally skew more modern (late 20th century or later)
* Some non-feature film visual works like music videos are clued
* Some important filmmakers are mentioned more than once, sparingly
* Some visual questions will not just include frames from the film but will rather include promotional images, posters, on-set stills, etc.

Logistics

Please email me (zubenine[at]gmail) or DM me on Discord (zn#7484) if you would be interested in mirroring the set. There'll be a mirror fee to reflect the time put into writing it. I anticipate that the online mirror will cost $20 per player.

Just wanted to give an update on the status of this tournament.

I'm about 75% done with the tournament, which will now be 10 packets long. I've changed the format from 15 visual / 5 written tossups to 10 visual / 10 written per round.

There is still no set distribution in terms of country, time period, or genre, but there will still be ~50% non-English-language film or mixed English/non-English film as originally intended.
Also, I ended up writing more questions on "art" film than I first thought, so the difficulty is now a bit more similar to the three film sets I mentioned as inspiration.

I was originally aiming to finish by this summer so that it could be mirrored then, but given the announcement of Will Nediger's On Cinema at the Buzzer set for this summer, I wouldn't mind aiming for fall 2023 and this tournament being played either during the 2023-24 academic year or in summer 2024 instead.

yeah viv talk nah wrote: ↑Tue Apr 25, 2023 4:53 pm I was originally aiming to finish by this summer so that it could be mirrored then, but given the announcement of Will Nediger's On Cinema at the Buzzer set for this summer, I wouldn't mind aiming for fall 2023 and this tournament being played either during the 2023-24 academic year or in summer 2024 instead.

Obviously I can only really speak for myself, but I imagine many people would be happy to play two film summer events this summer (though I could see you missing the demographic of people who can only attend one summer event weekend). But I am very excited for this whenever you decide to play it!

As I mentioned here, I have finished the written portion and am almost done with the visual portion, and have spun off the extra written questions into another set. Meanwhile, I am also looking into augmenting MODAQ to accommodate visual packets.

I'm excited to announce that this side event is now complete and ready for mirrors. I've updated the original post to reflect the current status of the set.

It would be great to have this played a few times in person (perhaps at spring/summer opens) before I organize an online mirror, so please get in touch via email or Discord if you'd be interested in mirroring the set.

A list of mirrors:

• July 21: Illinois Side Event Weekend - Stats
• August 03: Columbia University
• August 04: University of Waterloo - Stats
• August 10: Maryland Side Event Weekend
• September 01: Online - Stats

This is an excellently fun and challenging set! Felt very rewarded for the types of film I know, and learned a lot about what to check out in the future.

With all mirrors concluded, I will read the set publicly in the main Discord next week on Monday and Tuesday (Sep. 09 and Sep. 10) before publishing the set to the archive.

I'll read the first 5 packets on Monday night at 8 pm Eastern and the second 5 packets on Tuesday night at 8 pm Eastern. Each session should take about 2 hours.

I have uploaded the packets for the set to the archive and they can now be downloaded here. Thanks to all the players and moderators!

The buzzpoints for the set across the 6 mirrors are available publicly here: https://film-sets.vercel.app/

Please reach out to me via email or Discord if you would like access to the set discussion Discord server.

I plan to publish a post soon about the tools I developed to expedite production of visual sets, which will hopefully be useful to future writers.

I've made two Letterboxd lists of the films mentioned in the written and visual parts of the set.