Shortsighted.

There's A Music Video Category at This Year's 24-Hour Video Race.

Movies are way too long these days.

Since the 1930s, the average run-time of the top-grossing films has increased from 96 minutes to more than 129 minutes these days. One of last year's worst offenders — Peter Jackson's extremely average treatment of The Hobbit — comes in at a whopping 169 minutes.

And as we read more and more blog posts posing questions to readers about whether Vine's six-second model is the future of cinema, we've begun to wonder ourselves if bloated epics like Jackson's are possibly on their way out.

Hey, it's a less far-fetch idea than it sounds. Next week's Tribeca International Film Festival will feature a Vine-based film contest.

Then again, this is a concept the Video Association of Dallas has been pondering itself for over a decade now with their 24-Hour Video Race competition. Now entering its 12th year, the race will see teams of independent filmmakers writing, filming and editing five-minute short films all within a 24-hour window starting on Friday, May 10, at 11:59 pm.

As in previous years, this year's entrants will be given a theme, a location, a prop and a line of dialogue to work into their mini-masterpieces. And, once again, winning videos will be screened on KERA's Frame of Mind program and at the Angelika Film Center.

New to the contest this year, though, are a trio of new categories. In “Rock Around the Clock,” five teams will be assigned a local band and given 24-hours of access to a local music venue to create a video for the song. Similarly, in “Doc Around the Clock” teams will be given 24-hours of access to interview an assigned subject over a three-day span, plus another 24-hour period to turn it into a documentary. A third, new mobile category has rules similar to the standard 24-hour race categories — with the added caveat that the entire film is required to be shot and edited on a mobile phone or tablet.

According to VAD's managing director Raquel Chapa, the bands and venues for the rock around the clock division are still to be determined at the moment, but she says the venues being used will be in Fort Worth and Denton as well as in Dallas.