Two competitions

There are always many filmmaking competitions around. Here are two that caught my eye in the last two days: Apple’s Insomnia Film Festival 24-hour film challenge for students in the USA and The Guardian’s YouTube competition for adults in the UK.

The Apple competition seems to be about two things: associating themselves with cool film and the young, and getting people to register with Apple. High-school and college students are encouraged to register film making teams with Apple. On 9am on November 15th, Apple will post a list of ten required elements for a 3 minute movie. Registered teams will have 24 hours to make and upload their film using at least three of the ten elements (such as a specific location, prop, costume or character name).

The more important part of the competition is the second stage, where teams need to encourage people to watch and rate their film online. You can only vote if you have an Apple ID – the kind of ID you need if you are an Apple developer, or want to talk on Apple support forums, or have an account at the iTunes Store. This condition is to stop fake voting, but will also benefit Apple in getting email and registration details from a whole lot more people.

The UK competition seems to be more specifically about the way videos on sharing sites might inspire people to create new videos in response to what they have seen.

They have posted an odd short story, and would like entrants to come up with some sort of response to it:

Mum had become deflated again. He couldn’t find the pump so he blew her up himself, red and giddy until she was full. “I need you,” she said. “The air leaves me quicker every day.”

“I know,” he said, but that night he dreamed of a sharp needle in his hand and pressing hard into mum until she burst. Her screaming woke him up. She’d found another puncture. He plastered the wound and slept until lunch.

He was invited to a party that night at Donna’s. Donna was a scatter cushion and nothing special. But her parents were a suite. He wanted to be with them. He looked at the trainers and the sports bags and the lap tops, all moving to the electro clash, and he wanted to be there; but he felt too sofa tonight.

I’ve come up with a response, now all I need to do is make it and post it to the YouTube channel set up for the competition…