The first ever Insomnia Film Festival challenges students to write, shoot, and edit a short film in just one day.

On Friday, November 10 at 5 p.m. Eastern (2 p.m. Pacific), Apple will post a list of three elements that you will need to incorporate into your story. From that time, you will have 24 hours to finish and submit your completed short film.

After the entries are posted to Apple’s web gallery, they will make them available for the public to view and rate. The top 25 highest rated films through December 3 will then be judged by our panel of experts.

Winners will be designated in two categories: the audience choice and the judges’ choice. Winning team members will each receive a copy of Final Cut Studio, a copy of Shake, and an 80GB video iPod for their portable portfolio.*

Brightcove has launched a new free service, the Brightcove Network, that lets content owners of all sizes launch their own commercial Internet video channels at no cost and generate revenue through advertising and video download sales.

Brightcove has launched a new video advertising network and the ability to offer high-quality video downloads for purchase or rental. To help online video programmers reach new audiences, the company introduced the beta of a new consumer destination for discovering and interacting with Internet TV channels. In addition, Brightcove has partnered with AOL to give content owners the option to easily sell their pay-media downloads through the AOL Video portal using Brightcove.

“In the last six months we’ve seen explosive growth in the online video market, especially in consumer sharing, but this is only the beginning of the Internet TV era,” said Jeremy Allaire, chairman and chief executive officer of Brightcove. “Now content producers, from serious amateurs to major studios, are looking for an approach to Internet video that gives them commercial opportunities with their content as well as control over their distribution, and that’s exactly what we’re delivering with the launch of the Brightcove Network.”

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Unsubstantiated rumor: The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Google is in talks to buy popular video-sharing site YouTube for roughly $1.6 billion. According to their source, “The discussions are still at a sensitive stage and could well break off.”

Neither Google or YouTube would substantiate the rumor.

While YouTube has its share of legal issues to deal with, Google has struggled to generate interest in its own video offering, and needs viewers to be able to expand its video ad insertion services.

YouTube commanded 46% of visits to U.S. online video sites in August, according to market research firm Hitwise, nearly five times the traffic generated by Google Video.

Worried about ripping those DVD’s yourself so that you can play them on your iPod or other media player?

No worry - Circuit City will do it for you for $10. We’re not sure if this is a corporate practice or limited to one store, but it’s clearly in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which made it a crime to circumvent copy protection built into DVDs and other media.

The fact that Circuit City is charging $10, about half the cost of many new DVDs, for the service, seems sure to put the company in the MPAA’s sites.
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iStockphoto, a community-powered marketplace for stock photography and illustrations, today announced it is now accepting user-generated video. The site is expanding its image collection to offer royalty-free (RF) stock video, film, and animation clips for as little as $5.

Anyone can apply to become a video contributor at the site. iStock videographers will collect downloads, earn royalties and receive “video reels” like photographer canisters to show their sales levels.

According to the site, “iStock has received thousands of requests to offer high-quality, low-cost video over the years. This is the right time to answer that demand because of the explosion in consumer appetite for video combined with the relative affordability of HD video cameras.”

Collection to Launch in September

Beginning in September, iStock will sell broadcast-quality footage, with a focus on digital formats, including HD video. Thirty-second clips will start at $5. The new video clips will be accessible at both http://video.istockphoto.com and www.istockvideo.com.

“There is a huge demand for video; people want up-to-the-minute, top-quality footage, but current prices are keeping most potential clients out,” said Bruce Livingstone, founder and CEO. “iStock is excited to provide videographers that same immediate connection between artists and global customers, just as we did with stills.”