Upcoming movie contest from Apple

Hey guys, just saw this and wanted to put out an FYI.

http://www.apple.com/education/insomnia/

Sounds like a pretty nice prize package, Macbook Pros for each of your team and some high-priced software.

From Apple's website:
"

The Insomnia Film Festival is back—and while the world sleeps, you could be making film history.

Calling all high school and college filmmakers.

On Saturday, October 13 at 9:00 a.m. (Eastern time), we’ll post a top-secret list of elements — special props, dialogue, settings — you get the idea. Choose any three to include in your movie. Then all you and your team have to do is write, cast, shoot, edit, score, and upload your 3-minute masterpiece within 24 hours. No problem, right?

Once the films are in, your friends, family, and adoring fans will be able to watch them online and rate their favorites. The 25 entries with the highest rating on November 9 at 12:00 a.m. EST will be screened by industry professionals, including Barry Sonnenfeld, James Mangold, and Nora Ephron.

If your film is the biggest hit with either the public or the pros, each member of your team will receive a MacBook Pro, Final Cut Studio 2, Logic Studio, and Shake so you can get started on that first sequel. How’s that for a Hollywood ending?"

Darn.... 'Calling all high school and college filmmakers.' guess I missed the entry threshold by some 30 years LOL...

just enroll for a senior's cooking class next week. Plenty of time to be a student again.

great another popularity contest.. I swear to god I hate these.. they dont reward talent or creativity.. they reward who has the largest email spaming ablity. It really sickens me that this is how they do contest on alot of machinima's .. its not like its Youtube where your having 10,000,000 people watching your stuff and rating you.. its a very small.. nm im just ranting.. continue on.

Hey mars.. want to team up for this? me an you could prolly put out somthing really sick between the two of us.

For whats its worth... I dare say the vast majority of machinima creators in SL already have some spectacular movies ready to drop right into the upload page anyways.

When I see these type of competitions, I truly wonder is SL is really what people who have never been here, want to see. Many other combat games seem to raise the jucies and the mid-teens that go voting on those things. SL is more a Jack of All, Master of little, it has a lot of everything, but little real strengths. Maybe as a social or business platform, given the commerce levels available.

We make movies of the environment in which we 'play', we come here because it is not linear (the daily grind is perhaps more appealing) and because 'we' can create and not be spoon fed.

To pickup on the point of what Flix said, I'm not sure any single machinima artist in SL would do it justice, but.. what would do the trick, is a joint effort, amalgamating 6x30 second clips into a 3 minute movie would perhaps do SL some credit? That would at least show 6 facets from the kalidescope of genures available.

What do you think of that potential?

Afteral, if we have such a tapestry of topics, I'm sure enough existing footage can be spliced together in 24 hours? Between now and the competition opening date/time, form a group, see whats available with regards topics, so we can at a moments notice transfer the right elements to a central source and splice them and upload the master peice. Getting a common resolution maybe a bit tricky.

Oh BTW, having a college student front the thing shouldn't be an issue, I've got two in mind to be going on with, plus I'm sure others are available. I'm sure seeing them recieve a Mac Notebook to use would be an awesome acheivement. Give them a group and a name, its done.

I agree. The SL graphics engine is abysmal in comparison to recent games. The anims are basic and although they offer a broader range of activities than many other games engine anims they're not as good at what they do. Unfortunately, util LL update those elements, even our best machinima looks poor in comparison.