Short Film Invitational: The “Imagine Cup”

Attention: all you short filmmakers. No, not you Marty, you may be short but your films are long. I’m talking about films of 8 minutes or less. This is for you:

The Imagine Cup is a worldwide tournament challenging the globe’s best and brightest students to use technology to enhance people’s lives. Student teams representing over 70 countries will first compete regionally, with finalists in four categories being flown to Sao Paulo, Brazil, for a gala awards ceremony. Winning teams in the four events will receive over $85,000 in prizes.

The Short Film Invitational, one of the four Image Cup events, challenges students to make us laugh, cry, or dream in 8 minutes. We are calling on students to share their perspectives on the “culture of innovation.” Film submissions will be accepted from March 15 to May 1, 2004. All short film submissions will be reviewed by judges from the film industry and the top 30 will be voted online by your peers. The finalists will be flown to Sao Paulo, Brazil for the last round.

Technological advancements don’t happen in a vacuum. Example: airplanes and e-mail have made us all more global citizens, but increased mobility and connectivity also spread once nuclear families across continents.

However you chose to value these changes, and whether you want to look bigger or smaller, the culture of innovation profoundly impacts our everyday life.

We want to hear your perspective on the culture of innovation. Because film-making really comes down to one thing: telling a great story. Working in digital video, choose your preferred genre of expression: comedy, drama, documentary, narrative, abstract. Then pick anything from a 30-second commercial up to an 8-minute short and start storyboarding.

Work in teams of up to four in this online invitational to create a short film on the culture of innovation. Entries will be submitted and (partially) judged online. Use whatever editing suite you like, just make sure it is shot in digital video and the final product runs on Windows Media Player. The maximum project size, including all assets and documentation, is 30 MB.

The other three categories of the competition are software design, algorithm, and rendering. Um, I would fail miserably at these three, although I could handle a short film.

Imagine Cup 2004 rules are here. Have fun, bone up on your Portuguese.