Apple's "Up All Night" student short film festival begins enrollment

Apple recently announced that the 2008 "Insomnia" student short film festival has started to accept entries. Both college and high school students in the U.S. can participate by filming their own short films for exhibition.

The rules of this competition are quite interesting, as can be inferred from its name - "Insomnia", which literally means "sleepless". Its slogan is "Start shooting now, sleep tomorrow."

Students enter as teams of five. On November 15th, Apple will announce a series of elements such as character names or specific lines of dialogue.

Participants must, within the following 24 hours, use at least three of these elements to create a short film no longer than three minutes and upload it to Apple's server.

Afterwards, all submitted short films will be shortlisted based on the top 25 public view counts, before finally selecting the two champions: one chosen by the audience and one selected by professional judges in the film industry.

Each member of the two winning teams will receive a MacBook Pro, a set of Final Cut Studio 2, Shake, Logic Studio software, as well as a one-year, one-on-one training course in film production provided by Apple.