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Apple to announce its ‘Insomnia’ film contest winners

Fifteen UH teams will be waiting at 6 p.m. today to see if they are among the top 25 finalists in Apple’s 2007 Insomnia Fest.

The contest, which started its preliminary stages on Oct. 13, first started a year ago and is intended to test college and high school students’ filmmaking skills.

Craig Crowe, instructional professor for the School of Communication, said he encouraged students of all majors to participate.

"One group had never touched a camera before they got involved in this," he said. "We had a lot of fun though. It was really a great opportunity for students to create works of art, and let people see."

The challenge is for students to put together a three-minute short film to fit certain criteria, including "special props, dialogue (and) settings," according to the Apple Web site.

The contestants found out the criteria on Oct. 13 and had 24 hours to "write, cast, shoot, edit, score" to submit their video, according to the site.

In total, 15 UH teams entered – seven of which were from the School of Communication, three from the Art Department and the remaining came from various departments.

This was media production senior Stephanie Christieans’ first year to participate in the contest.

Christieans said it was produced in two hours and took her team, An Apple a Day, five hours to edit and compress the video.

"We did it all in the middle of the night," she said. "I knew a lot of people who did it last year, and they were successful, so I decided to do it this year."

An Apple a Day created the short film Hurry Up and Wait, which catalogs a man’s life who does not understand or appreciate the sense of time and suffers near-fatal consequences.

"He gets hit by a car because he’s rushing across the street," Christieans said. "At the end, he’s waiting in the hospital room."

Media production senior Hannah Yang said this was a chance to shoot and edit film under time constraints.

Yang’s group, H.I.N., created the film Disconnected, which explores how people live disconnected from each other in modern society.

"It’s about a world that’s connected and doesn’t realize that it is," said Yang.

Finalists up to this point have been determined by ratings, and on Nov. 9, the 25 highest rated films were featured on Apple’s iTunes’ podcast page.

To view UH entries, visit www.edcommunity.apple.com/insomnia_fall07/contest and search the word "Houston."

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