I'm reaching out from Vimeo where we are currently working on the Vimeo Festival + Awards, which is happening in June in New York. The festival is a series of workshops, panels, conversations, screenings and parties to celebrate the dynamic and exciting work that is being created by filmmakers, and also to educate and inspire beginners to get out and make incredible films. Categories include Motion Graphics, Captured, Lyrical, Narrative and many more.

We are under a week away from closing our submissions (deadline is 20th Feb) so shouting out to ensure filmmakers are aware of the awards. All the information we've released so far is up at at www.vimeo.com/awards and you can follow our news via Twitter @Vimeo and @VimeoFestAwards.

We recently announced new judges which include James Franco, Nick Knight and Colin Greenwood (Radiohead bassist) with more to come, so it's worth keeping an eye on that too!

There's a $25,000 grand prize, and $5,000 category prizes.

Brandon sez, "Earlier this year a friend and I produced a self-financed music video for a song we loved, with permission from the band. After several months work, we posted the video online, where it drew viewers for a week before we unexpectedly received a takedown notice from the band, who were reconsidering the rights usage for that song. Not wanting all of our work to vanish, we decided to turn this setback into a creative opportunity, and created They Call Us /Animals/. We've made the edited visuals of the film, without music, available for download, under Creative Commons license, for musicians, sound designers, and remixers to re-cut, use and share, in the hopes that these collaborations could produce even better works than our original video. I've also made an explanatory video for the project, with music courtesy of NIN's Creative Commons album Ghosts I-IV."

THEY CALL US ANIMALS . COM (Thanks, Brandon!)