You can pitch ANY KIND OF DOCUMENTARY FILM, any style, any subject matter, set in any country. It must somehow be connected to the theme of ‘Beautifully Engineered’ though. Remember, you can creatively connect nearly any story in the world to this theme. If not through the topic, perhaps through the way you might structure the film?

It doesn’t matter if you have started filming already, or if it’s a gem of an idea that you know you could do justice to. The point is to express your intentions within a film format, rather than on a piece of paper, or a chat over tea. Make a clip, upload it and email over the link to fourdocs@channel4.com with ‘Beautifully Engineered’ in the title line. Entries need to be in by 6pm on 28th of November 2008. The winner will get £5000 to spend on a camera of their choice. I’d be choosing the Sony Z7 I think, how about you?

As we’re drawing a close to our 3MW My Home Town competition, I’m sure you’re wondering what we’ve got up next for you. Well, we’ve teamed up with Passat, who sponsor documentaries across Channel 4, and sorted out a pretty amazing prize, and a new type of competition.

Instead of submitting a finished 3 minute film, we want you to pitch an idea for a longer documentary that you want to make, loosely based on the theme ‘beautifully engineered’. However, you need to make your pitch online! What we looking for is people who think filmically, so this is not the place to just talk us through your idea.

We want to see your style and flair, or meet your character, or understand a little of what the film might feel like. Rather than a taster tape, what we’ll be looking for is a visual mood board that will convince us that you’re a creative director with vision and a story, who needs to be let loose. Then, in November we’ll pick the best pitch, and give them £5 000 to spend on equipment to get the film made. How does that sound?

It’s about his memories and dreams and experiences growing up in a small boring town. How did where you come from help shape who you are today? You don’t need to physically put yourself in front of the camera, but you must stamp your own personality firmly onto your film. And in homage to Guy’s experimental nature, we want to ask you to really push the boundaries of what documentaries can and should be like.

One way to create something for this is to write commentary to lay down with moving images of your home town, perhaps reflecting on how it’s changed, or why you love/hate/am so totally indifferent to it.

Perhaps you could use archive in an interesting way, or like Guy use your siblings to reenact key moments from your childhood. Is there something strange happening in your hometown that outsiders would never guess goes on? Or an interesting character to investigate, someone who everyone recognise, but few know much about? Perhaps this could be a chance to try out basic animation techniques or a new self interviewing technique. We want to build up a collection of intimate insights into places around the UK, and the people who live there, that visually look completely different.

As well as 4 films being played on Channel 4 (and receiving £1500 each) Guy is going to pick one film to go the DVD of My Winnipeg as an extra feature. And that person will also win a holiday to Canada! The distribution company Soda Pictures have a built a site for you upload your films to directly, and read more about the competition. You need to get films up on-line and send us the link by the end of August, so get thinking and creating now. And feel free to post any questions about style and techniques here, and I’ll do my best to answer them.