Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Steve Jobs, Apple
Apple's Insomnia Film Festival cancelled
Excited for Apple's Insomnia Film Festival? Don't hold your breath -- Apple has contacted participants via email to say that the event has been canceled. The "festival" was supposed to be Apple giving participants a list of elements and 24 hours to make a three-minute film about them, but after some unexpected server problems, the festival was postponed until after the holidays last year. The website is gone, and they are now saying that they are "unable to reschedule the festival as hoped," which means it's off indefinitely. The email also says that Apple teams "constantly seek new and better ways to showcase your artistic expression," and that there will be other "opportunities to participate in Apple creative festivals."
Unfortunately, they're no more specific than that -- it's unknown whether the problems last year are still going on, or if Apple has something else going down that can't conflict with Insomnia.
It's too bad -- it would have been great to see what kinds of films came out of the competition. But of course given what's going on with the economy and what's happening at AAPL, this was probably just the first corner cut.

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
joebarone said 10:17AM on 1-30-2009
That's a shame. My friends and I had a lot of fun with it two years ago, and we were looking forward to working on it again.
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John T said 1:54AM on 1-30-2009
So sad about this. I had an awesome time with this last year. Here is the link to my ridiculous video that got cut last year because we used copyrighted music! HAHA!
http://www.johnthrasher.net
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxTFkBfJtSo
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Jash Sayani said 2:55AM on 1-30-2009
I thought this would happen, after they postponed it !!
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Jon said 4:06AM on 1-30-2009
I have to say, Apple's handling of this festival has been abysmal.
See this thread:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=8437774&
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Jon H said 7:36AM on 1-30-2009
I wouldn't be surprised if last year someone said "Why are we doing this when a new version of iMovie is about to ship, instead of waiting so this festival could drive some iLife sales?"
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brian said 9:15AM on 1-30-2009
this thing only works well on paper.. i participated in the first one 2 years ago, and it seemed like all the top videos were produced ahead of time. then they just threw in b-roll shots of the elements required. not fair. also, there was a lot of use of copyrighted music. this was all discouraging to someone who actually stayed up for 24 hours to produce an entire project as well as compose the soundtrack myself.
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Jo Jo the Dancer said 12:28PM on 1-30-2009
lame
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kath said 4:32PM on 1-30-2009
24h time for a film? here's the original: www.durchgedreht24.de (existing since 2003)
we're inviting famous german authors, directors and producers to jugde your films!
try to make a film within 24 hours, lenght: 5 minutes.... and 0 cuts!!
our next filmfestival? july 10th - 12th :o)
hope to see some new faces there....
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