Freshmen Tackle iLife Challenge, Learn Career-Building Multimedia Skills
Columbia, Mo. (Dec. 6, 2006) — Hundreds of University of Missouri students, faculty and staff members recently filled Bush Auditorium in Cornell Hall for the awards presentation of the third annual Freshman iLife Challenge, a multimedia contest designed by the Missouri School of Journalism.
The Challenge, sponsored by the School of Journalism, the Colleges of Business, Engineeringand Arts and Science and Apple Computer, requires teams of freshmen to use Apple’s iLife suite of multimedia software or similar programs to produce a five-minute video.
Video topics ranged from documentaries of local non-profit organizations to faux reality-television programs in one of six categories: advertising, arts and culture, freshman experience, MU life, news and sports.
Missouri Journalism faculty developed the challenge in 2004 to reinforce the multimedia skills journalism students will need throughout their careers.
“No matter what emphasis our journalism students choose, they are going to learn the importance of multimedia convergence in their profession,” said Brian Brooks, associate dean of journalism for undergraduate studies. “We want to emphasize that early in their college experience so they can bring those multimedia skills into future internships and jobs.”
Brooks helped emcee the event and praised the quality of the entries.
“I’m told by the people who put the show together that this is the best set of videos we’ve had in three years,” Brooks said.
The grand prize, announced by ESPNU anchor Mike Hall, BJ ’04, via a live video chat at the conclusion of the awards ceremony, went to “The Ill-Mannered Underwater Trampoline Squad Formerly Known as Chuck Norris and the Roundhouse Kick.” Team members Matt Davis, a theater and history major from College Station, Texas; Patrick Inlow, a journalism and theater major from Kansas City, Mo.; and Steve Robertson, a radio-television journalism major from St. Louis, Mo., all received an iPod for their winning entry. The trio also claimed first place in the arts and culture category for their entry, “Life Is a Musical.”
Running on little sleep and struggling to bring multiple visions into one final – and brief – video were the biggest challenges the team faced.
“The time span we had to work in was small, and we had big dreams to fit into five minutes,” Inlow said. “It was heartbreaking to decide what to cut.”
Challenge winners were not the only individuals to walk out of the awards ceremony with prizes, however. Entertainers from Comedy Wars, a campus improv group, served as emcees for the event and presented numerous door prizes, including theater tickets and an iPod Shuffle.
Updated: April 15, 2020