Snapchat showcasing Tribeca short snap festival winners in new Discover channel

The Tribeca Film Festival in New York City teamed up with Snapchat this year on a competition to find “the best Snapchat Stories across the U.S.” Ten winners were chosen, and the work from those creators will be featured in a special Discovery channel within Snapchat, starting today.

In an effort to discover the “next generation of mobile storytellers,” the film festival asked those interested to submit a short film composed using Snapchat (among other requirements). This first-of-its-kind competition casts a spotlight on the imagination and creativity of Snapchat users, while also touting the ephemeral messaging app as more than just something young people use to chat with one another. Snapchat wants to expand the way people approach it, similar to what happened with YouTube.

To view all of the winning short snaps, just look for the call-out in the Discover section of the app.

Snapchat declined to say how many entries it received or to provide any additional information beyond revealing that the winners will appear on the app starting today.

Here are the winners of the short snap competition:

• Brother Broadway, Luke Versaw (Brooklyn) – Two native Ohio brothers move to NYC in hopes of making their father proud by realizing their dream of becoming Broadway stars, but they soon discover making it to Broadway won’t be so easy.
• Girl Meets Toy, Luke Ramsay (Austin) – After facing romantic rejection, a young woman finds escapist romance in an unusual place.
• Hot Dogs Forever, Tessa Greenberg (Brooklyn) – Best pals Jarrod and Tessa celebrate their friendship over the course of 60 years.
• Lost It: A Snap Story, Colin Garland (Brooklyn) – On his first day in New York, a vlogger loses his mobile device. He desperately tries to get it back and save his story.
• The Magic Pot, John Crilo (Brooklyn) – A lonely boy looking for answers finds a magical pot at the end of the rainbow and his luck starts to change.
• MemE! True Hollywood Story, Andrew Morreale (Los Angeles) – One man’s fleeting experience with achieving Internet fame as a meme.
• Past Perfect, Esha Gupta (Oakland) – A woman’s Snaps from the future begin to alter her past… unleashing a series of unforeseen events.
• Pencils, Kat Vlasova (Reston) – You know that time when you’re trying your best to study but you just keep getting distracted? And then you get so preoccupied with doing a random simple thing just to procrastinate on your homework? And then before you know it, you’ve chased a man out into space but your calculus is still unresolved and it’s already 10 p.m.? Yeah, me too.
• The Secret Stash, Mariann Isola (Sacramento) – A story about two brothers who embark on a journey to find their grandfather’s hidden fortune.
• SO FLY! The journey of RICO STAR, Robert (Tito) Rogers (North Hollywood) – This story is about the rise and fall of Rico Star, an American one hit wonder.

It was only a matter of time before people started taking more advantage of Snapchat’s creative capabilities. In March, someone made an 8-bit stop motion video using fruits and the drawing tools within the app. People are consuming video on Snapchat at an astounding rate — in February, it was reported that users watch 8 billion videos daily, up from the 6 billion daily video views reported in November.

Perhaps the success of the Tribeca Film Festival-sponsored competition will usher in a new focus for Snapchat, leading to the release of more professional tools for creators.