By ELIZABETH ARROWSMITH
Arrowsmith@newsroom.byu.edu
The 7 x 7 contest -- seven winners, seven weeks -- is on. Upstage.com is now accepting entries for its debut talent competition.
The site, which officially kicks off in mid-April, targets Generation Y (18 to 24-year-old) artists and performers who are looking for a forum to post online portfolios, showcase work, participate in a collaborative environment and promote themselves to talent scouts and agents.
The inefficiencies of current methods of find talent for films, music and other creative disciplines spurred the idea, said Lucas Beddows, co-CEO and founder of Upstage.
The site focuses on seven mediums -- digital, visual, music, filmmaking, performing, modeling and writing.
Its current target audience, 18 to 24-year-olds, is people that are likely to be up-and-coming talent and are ready to do something about it, Beddows said.
'Even if you can't make it as a star, you can do something on an amateur level,' he said.
The site will award a grand prize winner in each category of the 7 x 7 contest with an all expense-paid seven-week trip to Europe, a laptop computer, a video camcorder, luggage, a digital camera and an MP3 player, among other prizes.
The group will travel together to Dublin, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Prague, Munich and Vienna to collectively produce an original film while a professional camera crew follows them around -- road-rules meets real-world style, Beddows said.
The professional footage will be webcast on Upstage.com throughout the seven weeks of filming, allowing site visitors to follow the group around from country to country.
The film will likely be submitted to the Sundance Film Festival, Beddows said.
Seven x 7 contest submissions will be accepted until midnight on March 31.
Voting to determine the winners will be exclusively peer-review, said Jennifer Williamson, a public relations spokesperson for the site.
People who register on Upstage.com and post portfolios are encouraged to vote and make other people aware of the contest, she said.
'We're not trying to be an online star search; we just want to create a cool online community. We're out there for the community and we want them to build (the site) as well,' Beddows said.