MEGA

MEGA International Creative Media Festival Overview

The MEGA International Creative Media Festival is an annual international event organized by the Academy of Film and Creative Technology at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, which has been successfully conducted for four consecutive years so far. MEGA is an integrated Media, Exhibition, Graphics, and Art concept.

MEGA International Creative Media Festival aims to promote film, television and creative media communication and provide a platform for sharing between academia and industry. The MEGA International Creative Media Festival focuses on the diverse forms of creative media communication. It carries out activities combining different arrangements and exhibitions of digital media arts, including the “International Creative Media Competition”, “Film, New Media and Creative Technology Summit”, and guests’ sharing, inviting scholars, experts, and students to join together to explore the trends in film, television, and new media arts, and enhance communications between students and relevant industry professionals.

The opening ceremony and awards of the 4^th MEGA, held on May 10, 2024, at the Suzhou Culture and Arts Centre, with 1.94 million hits; and the Film, New Media and Creative Technology Summit, hosted on May 11, 2024, at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, attracted 1.73 million hits.

The 4^th MEGA received 829 outstanding submissions from 175 universities and 14 professional media organizations across 20 countries. The entries covered a wide range of categories, including narrative short films, documentaries, experimental short films, installations, animations, VR, and games. This growth in participation highlights MEGA’s increasing global recognition and the thriving innovation in the creative media industry.

The 5^th MEGA International Creative Media Festival will focus on the theme “Immersion” providing creators with an imaginative space to create a target situation, where engage the senses and enrich cognitive experiences. The competition section of 5^th MEGA International Creative Media Festival will open on December 1, 2024, adding two new categories: Artificial Intelligence Generated Content (AIGC) and Short Videos：

AIGC , represents a frontier domains in the media, film and art creative fields within the booming era of generative AI. The new AIGC category of this competition aims to inspire participants to unleash their creativity and imagination through AI technologies, and to explore and demonstrate the potential of AIGC in the field of art and design creativity.

Additionally, to adapt to the characteristics of content dissemination in the new media era, the competition includes a new category for short videos, which aims to foster more engaging content creation and innovative production methods. Diversified media formats can breathe new life into works, offering broader opportunities for creative ideas and providing fresh aesthetic possibilities for short videos, which often grapple with the challenges of “fragmented” media consumption.