Lights. Camera. Action. No, wait. Less action. Or longer zooms? How about sound? We're under deadline here! Where is that coffee?

The College of Education took on a definite Warner Brothers Studio feel on Tuesday, May 20, 2003, as a couple of dozen filmmakers took over the building. Armed with digital cameras, polished scripts and experienced cinematographers, film crews wandered the hall, faced with the challenge of delivering a final movie to a panel of judges in about three hours.

Well, they weren't really all that experienced and the scripts weren't really polished. And, the film crews were actually College faculty, staff and students participating in the first College of Education iFair -- a daylong training session on digital film-making and editing sponsored by Apple Computer and the College's Office of Educational Technology.

About 20 would-be Spielbergs and Scorceses spent the day in a hands-on video production boot-camp, learning to use Apple's suite of "i"-themed software to capture, edit and distribute digital video projects. Following a quick morning of classroom/lab instruction and practice using the hardware and software, the class divided into four teams and set off to create, from the ground up, a finished short video. In a sort of mini-Cannes, the four final entries were all debuted and judged at the end of the day, with prizes awarded to the top entry. And, while it might have been a good time, the movie competition was actually a fairly intensive teaching experience.

The iFair participants found themselves immersed in the language, hardware and software of digital video from the moment they started the day to the late afternoon closing credits. From the several novices (at least a quarter of the class had never used a digital video camera) to the head of the College's IT staff, sitting in the iFair meant getting used to the technology, fast.

"The point of the iFair is to acquaint our faculty, staff and students with the power of digital video for educational use," says Cathy Thurston. "There are literally thousands of potential applications for teaching and learning that can easily incorporate digital video. But, before we can hope for our people to start exploring these, they have to be really comfortable with the technology themselves. The iFair format packs what would probably be several weeks of "learn it on my own" into one day."

iMovie is widely acknowledged to be the industry leading digital editing utility for entry-level Apple customers working with digital video. According to iFair trainer and Apple Higher Education Account Executive, Ed Cranston, iMovie, along with the rest of the "itools" from Apple, combine an easy learning curve with some really powerful features.

"It allows the home user, or the nonprofessional videographer to create, edit and distribute extremely high-quality video products without a great deal of time or money invested."

Using the College's Faculty Development Center as the home studio and editing bay, four teams, each with a technical consultant from OET or from Apple, were turned loose at about 10:30 with their cameras and a 2:30pm deadline for a finished film between two and three minutes in length. The final films would be burned to DVD and delivered to a panel of independent judges in a different part of the building to choose the best of the entries.

What sounded like a pretty easy thing, looked to many like an impossibility just a few hours later. With the 2:30 deadline looming, all four teams were scrambling, adding final edits and choosing sound tracks and just generally, still figuring out how to turn a bunch of raw video into a coherent story.

However, by four o'clock, the crowd was watching the first of four finished movies projected on the big screen. From an inside look at the carillon bells in Altgeld Hall to a comic tour of Green Street restaurants to a series of close-up encounters with some of the Urbana campus' most famous architecture to a Krannert Art Museum walk guided by the new curator, the projects came in on time and under budget.

The judges, Robert Baird a film instructor in Cinema Studies, Mitch Kazel, a professor in Communications who teaches courses on broadcast journalism, and Molly Tracy, an associate dean in the College, viewed all four entries in a private screening room in the College. Films were evaluated for everything from thematic continuity to special effects to titles to audio elements. And, while they were impressed with all entries, as with most contests, someone still has to be chosen the winner.

In a close contest, "Curator's Choice," the tour of Krannert Art Museum, came out on top. The other three entries finished in a surprise tie for second place. You can read about the experiences of one team from start to finish in the related "iFair on the inside."

And, while the filmmakers may have found themselves a bit caught up in the competition and in the rush to meet deadlines, at the end of the day, it was clear that the main purpose of the iFair, to introduce and to engage College faculty, staff and students in using digital resources for learning and instruction, was a resounding success.

You can see the four movies in streaming Quicktime format here.