Ithaca College has opened entries to high school and college students in the U.S. for the second annual CellFlix Festival. The contest challenges filmmakers with camera phones to create a 30-second film shot on a cell phone.

The 2007 CellFlix competition offers two $5,000 prizes. Judges consisting of Ithaca College alumni in media professions will blind judge the entries and determine the winner of one $5,000 Judges Prize; the second $5,000 prize sponsored by Texas Instruments Incorporated will go to the “Fan Favorite” CellFlix.

“Last year we were delighted that 178 students figured out how to shoot a cell-phone film; this time around, we expect thousands of fledgling directors from around the U.S. to pick up their camera phones and get creative,” said creator of the CellFlix Festival Dianne Lynch, dean of the Roy H. Park School of Communications at Ithaca College.

For inspiration, you can check out last years’ top ten.

“CellFlix was the first student film festival in the world for movies shot on cell phones. A year ago, that was revolutionary. Today, it’s just how things work,” said Lynch.

Entry deadline is April 1, 2007.

Truth Wins Out, an organization that “counters right wing propaganda” and promotes understanding of gay issues, has announced that it would file a complaint with Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood against the Tupelo, Mississippi-based American Family Association for selling a misleading video on its web-site titled, It’s Not Gay. Truth Wins Out urged Hood to expeditiously pull this fraudulent video from the marketplace, require a written apology from the AFA and that refunds be offered to dissatisfied consumers.

“Nowhere does the American Family Association inform potential viewers that Johnston’s ‘cure’ did not endure,” wrote Truth Wins Out’s Executive Director Wayne Besen in the letter to Hood. “This organization is undeniably peddling false hope to vulnerable and desperate people and bilking them out of their hard earned money. In doing so, the American Family Association is unscrupulously capitalizing on the sincere and heartfelt religious convictions of its followers and exploiting them for the organization’s financial gain.”

Despite publicly admitting that Johnston had failed in his efforts at heterosexuality, AFA is now selling the specious It’s Not Gay video and portraying Johnston to unsuspecting viewers as a “former homosexual.” (more…)

YouTube is now being used to distrubute from a Mexican drug gang war, continuing the trends of Internet death videos and the use of video sites for progagand purposes. In the gang videos, rivals taunt each other with blood-soaked slideshows and film of their victims.

According to a report in PC Magazine:

One popular video on the site shows a man being shot in the head. A stomach-churning series of photos shows another execution victim, his missing face a mangled mess of flesh.

One chilling video on YouTube called The Hit Men shows a handcuffed man, apparently a Gulf Cartel henchman caught and beaten by police. He is curled on the ground and pleading with his captors. “They’re going to kill me,” he says.

In another YouTube post, a user offers $4,500 to anyone who can show proof of having killed members of a rival gang, “via photo, video or presenting the body.”

Cyprus police have refused to comment on whether they planned to launch an investigation into who was behind the circulation of a graphic pornographic mobile phone video clip aired on state television this week.

The force’s evasiveness contrasts with comments made by Justice Minister Sophocleous Sophocleous, who told the Cyprus Mail yesterday such an investigation was under way, and even went so far as to stress that any person found responsible would face the full brunt of the law.

“It was an unethical, wrongful, impermissible and unacceptable action [to circulate the video clip], which hurts the police force, hurts society and hurts each and every one of us,” said Sophocleous.

The incident highlights the growing ethical issues that are raised by the ease of creating and distributing video over the Internet. (more…)

Color Kinetics, a supplier of LED lighting systems and technologies, today announced its largest networked lighting system to date: an 11,700 square foot video screen that wraps around Aspire Tower, the tallest building in Doha, Qatar. The building was completed in December as the focal point for broadcast coverage of the 2006 Asian Games in Doha.

The installation marks the latest in a growing number of large-scale, lower-resolution video displays that are being erected as an alternative to conventional high-resolution LED screens. Color Kinetics’ flexible, durable systems can enable such displays on almost any interior or exterior surface, including facades, ceilings, floors, and even rooftops and sculptures - placing video where it was previously cost prohibitive or impractical.

The 1,000 foot tower’s facade is covered in wire mesh. Approximately 156,500 nodes of iColor Flex SL were woven through the material to form a massive cylindrical video screen that’s divided into three low-resolution and three higher-resolution segments. Each node acts as an individually programmable pixel. Live coverage of the Asian Games was fed directly to the nodes via Video System Manager.

“We’ve proven that LEDs are an ideal source for many illumination applications, and now we’re increasingly targeting low-resolution video as well, based largely on the strength of our intelligent control technology. We can produce video grids in virtually any form, including the transparent grid as installed on Aspire Tower - which wouldn’t have been possible just a few years ago,” said Bill Sims, President and CEO, Color Kinetics. “On top of the digital intelligence, we can create very durable displays that are able to withstand harsh climates and vibration without the bulk and weight of typical high- resolution LED screens.”

Although its exterior is complete, the tower’s interior space is set to open in August 2007, comprising a luxury hotel, rotating restaurant and sports museum, among other amenities.