After Dark Short Film Pitching Competition – finalists

To celebrate After Dark 05, Stella Artois Screen are giving aspiring filmmakers the chance to win £2000 to spend on film equipment, editing software, courses or anything else film related you can think of. Each month, we picked the best short from your hundreds of entries to be one of our six finalists - winning an iPod Shuffle, a DVD player, DVDs.

But which one is the overall winner? Find out below.

Winner month 1 – Theme, The Dark

IT'S MY GLANDS – by William Bridges

John McGreedy is an obese man, but it’s not his fault. It’s his 'Glands'. His Glands are two Impish demons that are keeping him captive in his own flat intent on force-feeding John to death. They have taken over his computer and are ordering fast food and groceries from the internet to stuff into his expanding stomach, as he sits strapped to a chair in his front room. But he has a plan. Eat enough to get so big he can break the straps holding him to the chair and escape to freedom. Can it be done? Will his Glands get the better of him? Will he fit through the front door?

Winner month 2 – Theme, Light

INVENTIONS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD #17 – by Simon Knight

Dr. Phillips has invented the most efficient lightbulb in the world. It uses hardly any energy and, best of all, it will never need replacing. Andy has bought a set. So has Susie. And Ryan. And pretty much everyone else in the country. It's saved them quite a sum on their electric bills. There's only one problem, it won't turn off. It can't even be broken not by chairs golf clubs or semi-automatics. No-one has slept properly for weeks. They're all getting grouchy. They're all going mad. And hidden in his underground lair Dr. Phillips is laughing.

Winner month 3 – Theme, Sacrifice

THE TROUBLE WITH GORDON COBB #17 – by Dominic Smith

Ever loved something so much it brings you to tears? So much that you can't sleep, breathe or even move? Gordon Cobb did. Trouble was; it was his orange trousers. Gordon has been wearing the same orange trousers for the last 8 years; and no one knows why! Not even his exasperated pregnant wife. But one day, in a fit of depression she lays it down for him; either he gets some new trousers or he'll be kicked out onto the streets! Why does Gordon love his trousers so much? And will the love of his wife and new child be strong enough to tear him away from them?

Winner month 4 – Theme, Revelation

FINAL CUT – by Nathan Crouch

Frustrated screenwriter Syd Goldman always wanted to write a script that would touch people's lives. Unfortunately, now he has. After a drunken late night writing session he found that what he wrote actually happened. It was great at first, he could control what his neighbours did and he got laid more than at any time in his life. But the script won't stop and the cast of characters is expanding. From just one or two people in his street he's now writing the lives of half the town, and he knows he can't give up. If he stops typing they die. Syd's already lost one family, after falling asleep at the keyboard, and he can't let anything happen to anyone else. But the multiple story threads are getting too much for him, trying to juggle the complex lives of hundreds of people. Stranded at his PC, unable to break long enough for food or the toilet Syd tired and hungry hatches what may be the perfect ending. Now if only he can type fast enough.

Winner month 5 – Theme, Worth

THE DONOR – by Paul Abraham

At the age of 30, Alex Goodall is told he has 6 months to live. Determined to have as much fun as he can during the limited time he has Alex devises an ingenious way to make a lot of cash very quickly. He sets up an internet site and auctions non-essential parts of his body to private patients in dire need of transplants. After all, it would all go to other people after his death - so why not get some benefit from it before the end? Over the next few months he sells a lung, a kidney, part of his liver, his left eye and a testicle. He even sells his left hand and the bottom part of his leg to a man injured in a horrific industrial accident. Overall, he raises over 100 000 pounds Despite his increasingly mutilated and weakened state, Alex has a rip-roaring few months travelling the world, blowing all his cash on a mind-bending spree of decadence and debauchery. Upon returning home penniless and ready to die, Alex is horrified to discover that a cure has been found for his terminal illness - which will cost 100 000 pounds...

Winner month 6 – Theme, Intrigue

**Winner** DREAMFLIGHT by Karen Cripps

Everyone wants to get onto the new Saturday night television game show. Who wouldn't with a chance to win a ticket for the first civilian space flight of Mettcom's billion-dollar rocket ship as the first prize? The criteria to enter? You have to be smart and you have to be fit. Mettcom fund the show and devise a series of endurance tests for the competitors. Screened in several countries, it quickly became the world's must see show of the week. Finally the winners are chosen. Fifty of the world's finest men and women. With the doors of the gigantic spacecraft closed and the excited winners strapped securely in their seats the director of Mettcom breathed a sigh of relief. After four years of deception during the building of the mighty craft he could at last dispense with his human guise and return to his dying planet. He'd even found 50 surrogate bodies for the last of his symbiotic race to inhabit.