Call for Entries: Free the Frame Festival. No entry fee, ever. 11 awards, $2,500 Best Picture. Submissions July 4 through August 25.

Full disclosure up front: I'm the founder, a working filmmaker (my film The Red Canvas was the first feature shot and completed on the Red One), and this is our first year.

The Free the Frame Festival™ is the launch festival of Indie Frame Network, a new artist-first streaming co-op that went live on July 4th. Festival facts:

No entry fee for any category, ever. Every category is $0.

11 awards: Best Picture Overall carries a $2,500 cash prize. Best Picture in each origin category (OI, HI, and AI), Best Short, Best Feature, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Production Quality, Best Actor, and Best Actress are honors of recognition and visibility.

Winners are chosen by the viewing community, not a jury. To vote on a film, you have to have actually watched it. No jury politics, no gatekeepers, no vote-stuffing by people who never pressed play.

Eligibility: films of 3 minutes or longer (3 to 60 minutes compete as Shorts, 60+ as Features). All origins compete, each with its own Best Picture category:

OI (Organic Intelligence™): made entirely the traditional way, no AI in the pipeline.

HI (Hybrid Intelligence™): human-led filmmaking that uses AI somewhere in the process, whether in previz, VFX, sound, or elsewhere.

AI (AI-native): work where generative AI is the primary production method.

You tell us which category fits your film when you submit. No category is favored; each has its own Best Picture award, because a great film is a great film regardless of how it was made.

What's the catch? Fair question, so here's the honest answer. The festival is how we launch the platform. Films submitted to the festival stream on Indie Frame Network, where the model is 65% of subscription revenue paid to filmmakers based on real watch time. Films accepted during this first window become Founding Films, a permanent badge and searchable collection. You keep your rights. If the platform isn't for you after the festival, you can walk. We're betting most filmmakers will stay once they see how the money works, and the math is public on the site.

Submitting: create a free account at https://www.indieframenetwork.com, register your film, and upload. Submissions close August 25. Winners announced in September.

Happy to answer anything in the comments, including the hard questions about how the money works. Those are the ones I most want to answer.