Awards ceremonies are something present in every faction of life. Skiing has plenty of them, but we felt that since NS represents the voice of a lot of you guys out there we should make our foray into the real world of awards.  We had the JEA awards last year, and they turned out to be a glaring success, albeit lacking the luster of the Oscars. (or even some down trodden local television awards) However with both pro and am categories, in its first year I thought it was a great success. We had a blast, you guys seemed stoked and we chose the winners together. We got introduced to wonderful film makers like Montage, Inc. (AM best film of the year) Though it was fun, we were presented with one of the most daunting judging tasks we had ever faced. After announcing the Am category of the JEA awards, we received almost forty submissions! After countless hours of deliberation, beer, pizza and movie watching we finally broke it down to the winning videos. That partnered with the pro awards that were decided by you guys, we ended up having a pretty good little awards ceremony announced on NSRadio! With the success of the JEA’s last year we decided that it was probably time to take things up a notch, and as well satiate our desire to have really rad parties.(and ditch the name JEA because I feel really stupid saying it)  After talking with Felix and JF DuRocher about this crazy film festival they are organizing, IF3 (International Freeski Film Festival), we thought it might be pretty cool to have a live awards ceremony after the event.  They had the vision to have every major pro and am video coming out this year premier under one roof, and use that opportunity to host a film festival like no other. We liked it, and decided to get together with our new friends at Studio411 and get involved.  Just wait for the release about the festival... it might blow your mind more than the awards!   (Oh yeah, book the 14th off too, and probably try to arrive on the 13th as if you're going to do it, do it big.  Check out http://www.if3.ca for full details of the festival!So anyways all over dramatization and hype aside, mark down September 14/15, 2007 as a date that you’re coming to visit Montreal, Quebec. The festival happens from Thursday night until Sunday morning, and the Saturday party is going down bigtime styles.  Its the NS awards, it at Club Soda, we’ve got Kid Koala from Ninjatunes throwing down as the musical guest,  DJ's who will take you through the rest of the evening, and enough redbull to kill a donkey. Don’t give me this “I’m busy” crap, ‘cause come on when else has the community done something like this together? Plus seriously drinking age is 18, (the venue is all ages if you’re under) and basically every single movie producer and pro who means anything is going to be here. This set of nights is something that you’ll be regretting that you missed until your 76th birthday! Or maybe only until you come next year, but hey the coolest people are there the first time. The winners of the Am category will be going up on stage with some of the best film makers in the world, and this is your chance to meet all the guys that do this stuff professionally. Those film makers out there are probably wondering now how do I enter? Well, we’ve got a couple of different ways to enter the contest... There's Pro and there's Am. For the Pro division, the winners will be selected by our panel of judges during the festival. Since we've got almost every major movie premiering, our judging team will just staple their eyes open and pick winners over the two days of movie madness. For the Am category its a bit different, as there's so many of you out there. First off, you can submit your film for inclusion in the festival, and you will automatically be entered into the contest. Second, you can send your video to the Newschoolers.com office C/O the NS Awards, and make sure to give us detailed contact information!!! Third, in light of the fact that we don’t want every award to be just decided by our panel of judges, we have developed a video contest system that entries will be allowed for various categories. There will be ratings available, and it will spit us out a winner based on what all of you say. The winner will then receive fantastic prizing courtesy of our gracious sponsors live at the show, and get all the power and glory of winning a coveted prize like this. Who knows we might even have some fun trophies for you to take home and put on your wall! In very exciting news, there will be one of the most badass prizes we’ve ever had for the AM film makers. The winner of best amateur movie will receive an all expenses paid trip to Studio411 for the day! Here’s a quote from the wonderful people at Studio411 (Thanks Christy!) about it. “The NS Awards best amateur film 2007 Grand Prize winner will head to Studio411 in Los Angeles for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to learn more about the business side of action sports filmmaking and a chance to pitch their upcoming project for global distribution. Studio411 is the top action sports studio working with the best ski producers such as Poorboyz Productions, Matchstick Productions, Trainjump Entertainment / Tanner Hall Productions and Plehouse. Former Grand Prize contest winners currently making films to be distributed by Studio411 include Constantine Papanicolaou, (Tanner Hall's films Show & Prove '06 and Believe '07) and newcomer Sam Giffin (Return of Nina)” So come on if that isn’t a reason to come check it out or bust your ass to get your movie ready what is? Come down to Montreal and see why it is the best city in the world to party. This event is going to go down in history, so don't regret being too lazy to make your way out here. AND just incase you’re going to be that guy and come up with a lame excuse for why you can’t attend, we’re going to be broadcasting the whole thing live on the internet! That is right, with all this fancy new technology and resources available to us, we’re going to have our first crack at live broadcasting of an event. So we can all make this a truly global awards ceremony, and I expect that if you’re not here in person you’ll go over to your buddies house, set up your computer on one of the TV’s and party with us. There’s no excuse… pencil in the 14/15th and lets do this thing together!

(Oh, and if your company is interested in sponsoring the event, there's still room! Just shoot me an email at Mr.Bishop@newschoolers.com)