Stray Cinema has finished up production for their upcoming film and have made available online all of their raw footage for others to edit. Under a Creative Commons license, anyone can make their own edit and Stray Cinema will choose the top 5 to screen in London with the directors cut. Wouldn't it be cool if they did this for every movie?

(via CinemaTech)

Apple has just announced the first annual Insomnia Film Festival, taking a cue from other 24 hour competitions and challenging student filmmakers to write, shoot, and edit a short film in just a single day. On Friday, November 10th at 5 P.M. EST, Apple will post a list of three elements that filmmakers will need to incorporate into their final three minute film. Twenty-four hours later, completed entries can be posted to the official web gallery, where they can be publicly viewed and rated. The top 25 highest rated films will then be judged by a panel of experts, with winners in two separate categories taking home a a copy of Final Cut Studio and Shake, and an 80GB iPod. Be sure to check out all the rules and regulations on the website before registering.

(via HDforIndies)

Withoutabox, the standard online film festival submission service, has just announced DVDelivery, a system for automated DVD screener mailing. As a result of their new partnership with CustomFlix, you can now choose to design a master DVD screener, including jacket and disc artwork, that will be automatically mailed out to festivals when you choose to submit. At $7.95 per DVD (including shipping with tracking), it's pretty expensive, but if you're concerned about getting top notch screeners out there without having to do the work yourself, this might help you along your way.

Comedy Central has announced the grand prize winner in its Test Pilots project. Contest hopefuls submitted videos in the hopes of winning a web-series deal on ComedyCentral.com. Entries were judged based on the following criteria:

• Humor quotient- Is it funny?
• Brand sensibility- Does this belong on Comedy Central?
• Originality
• Budget Parameters
• Standards and Practices- Does it fall within internet programming guidelines?

And the winner is, Awesome Friends. Judge for yourself, the creator got a six episode deal.

The 48 hour film project has spawned many similar competitions including Project Twenty1. 21 teams will have 21 days to create a film or animation using a secret common "element." Registration is $125 and you have until October 30th to get your team together and signed up. Once they get 21 teams, that's it. One of the draw backs of this competition is someone in the Philadelphia area has to pick up the "element" and deliver the paper work (check out their MySpace page for a list of Philadelphia volunteers). Best of all everyone who enters will have their film screened twice and a panel of judges and the audience will pick their favorite films. So if you have the time and the people, give this thing a shot.

Epic Records, Universal Music Group, and EMI are teaming with startup media web site Music Nation to find the next big music star. Starting in November, unsigned artists in the rock, pop and urban genres will be able to upload videos to Music Nation. The contest starts in January with weekly voting by judges and the audience. At the end of the 15 week contest, one lucky singer will win a record deal with Epic. So all you struggling singers out there, get ready. Here's your chance to be seen by millions (potentially). It will be interesting to see just how popular the contest becomes.

Here is a new term to add to your online video vocabulary -- democracast (di-'ma-kr&-kast). Josh Cuppett, founder of the Vintage Tooncast, has come up with the idea to take 100 filmmakers directing 10 second episodes and string them together to create one short film to be submitted to the Sundance Film Festival. To tie all of the clips together, each 10 second episode must pickup where the previous episode left off. The idea is to create one super long zoom with a visual illusion similar to Dali or Escher. Josh did the first two to give you an example and submissions for Episode 3 are due at midnight (L.A. time) On Sunday October 22nd. Five of the best submissions will be voted on by the public and the cycle will repeat. All winners included in the final short film will have their name in the credits and if you donate money you will get a producer credit. Mad props to anyone who sneaks in the DV Guru logo.

Revver has recently launched an ongoing video contest, Revver Film School. Assignments will be posted to create short videos with a specific theme, the first of which is "Halloween". For the first challenge, the only requirement is that you tag your upload with "halloween2006", and starting on October 23, the top five submissions with the most views will be featured in the 'Head of the Class' collection through Halloween. No prizes, though. Bummer.

Remember the Stephen Colbert challenge? Well Mr. George Lucas likes challenges and decided to submit his own entry. As you can imagine it was done only in a way that the creator of Star Wars could do it complete with droids and spaceships. Give 'er a looksie as it will certainly be worth the time it takes to download from the sluggish server. Here is the direct link...

YouAre.Tv (I am?) announced a call for filmmakers to enter their Film2Music contest today. Participants pick a song of their choosing from the CD Cinematic featuring instrumental music by composer Kubilay Uner. The visuals come from you, the filmmaker, and can be anything you like -- live action or animation, realistic or abstract. The grand prize is worth $10,000 with two second prizes of $1,000 each. In addition, viewers to the YouAre.Tv site will have a chance to vote for their favorite video inorder to determine the Online Audience Award and the winner lands a cool $5,000. There is a small registration fee of $9 and the deadline to submit your finished short film is November 1, 2006. And remember YouAre.TV
Contest intro video after the break...

While not as big as the World Cup, the Ryder Cup, or Lil' John's Crunk Cup, the Imagine Cup 2006 brought students from 180 countries to India in order to compete in six categories. It is basically like the Olympics for technology and creative types.

Filmmaking is one of the six categories and Laura Foy from On10.net followed the Canadian team as they scripted, planned, produced, and edited their short film in 36 hours. All teams get a Canon XL2 (they say XL1 but they're wrong), a computer with Premiere Pro and a boom mic with the backdrop of India to create their vision along the theme of "technology that lives us to live healthier lives." Talk about an awesome resume builder.

Check out this 11 minute minidoc about the team and their journey while providing good insight into the up and coming filmmakers sure to wow us tomorrow. Best of all, their entry features a cardboard-box character, how cool is that? You can check out the final product at PaperHeartFilm.com in various resolutions and formats for your downloading/viewing pleasure.

Whenever I think about the components that make a camera what it is; words like fragile, or delicate come to mind. I mean, a light-sensitive computer chip (CCD) should probably be handled somewhat gingerly. Well, Micron Technology believes their video products are tough, and the company is out to prove it.

The memory manufacturer, and leading supplier of CMOS imaging sensors will test its mettle in the SCORE Baja 1000. In an attempt to record the entire race, Micron will equip 4 vehicles with image sensors and NAND flash recorders. Cameras will capture both point of view, and driver reaction to the course. Micron plans to record their video onto a series of Lexar CompactFlash cards.

Race fans will tell you it's a grueling dust-covered trek over some of the roughest roads known to man. Drivers begin in Ensenada, and race over 1000 miles down the tip of the Baja Peninsula and back again. The route is so difficult on both drivers and their vehicles, many don't make it to the finish.

It's hardly an Ideal environment for camera equipment. Any number of things could go wrong. But if Micron can pull it off, they will have some serious bragging rights, and some killer footage too.

While I no longer frequent the halls of Engadget HQ, I'm constantly checking in over there to see what they've got on tap. Looks great lately, what with the new re-design, the giveaways (too bad Weblogs, Inc. bloggers aren't eligible) and as of late the Engadget commercial contest. Looks like they had a ton of killer entries, and film students, mo-graph artists and the like sure gave it their all to try to win a Blu-ray equipped laptop. Follow the link for some creamy Engadget commercial goodness.

The Daily Reel is a website devoted to bringing viewers new and worthwhile web videos from all across the internet each day. Users can submit their work for possible inclusion on the site with the available online submission form, and a team of contributors from news and film publications will review the videos and post their favorites with their own personal comments. The daily Top 10 videos can be rated and commented on by users. Be sure to check out their current competition, Reelfest, a ``festival of user-generated videos that will be judged by entertainment industry professionals". Finalists will be flown into New York City, where their work will be screened to film and media insiders. Interesting.

ABC is tapping into the online video craze in hopes of getting a November sweeps bump by teaming with YouTube and Cingular to bring you the The YouTube Underground Contest. This contest will look for the most talented musicians as voted on by the YouTube community. ABC's Good Morning America will reveal the 4 winning bands on November 29th, the last day of sweeps. Submissions will be accepted Oct. 2 - 18, so call up the gang, dust off that guitar and get out the video camera 'cause this could be your shot at stardom!