Recently, the Insomniac challenge has become a staple among many film students at Tahoma. However, to those students, staff, and parents who have never heard of such a thing, it is time for a quick history lesson on one of Tahoma’s most underappreciated events.

Back in 2003, the Insomniac challenge, formerly known as the Crash and Burn challenge, was a 48 hour film contest for Tahoma students to show off their passion for film while testing their time management and teamwork skills.  The challenge is a 60 hour, overnight film contest that involves a group of students needing to write, film, and edit a four minute long short-film

The challenge was in collaboration between the Tahoma School District and the Maple Valley Arts Council. The Crash and Burn Film Festival lasted for around 3 years before a number of major players attached to the film festival moved out of their roles, and the Maple Valley Film Festival slowly faded away.

Luckily, Mr. Haag, Tahoma’s current Video Productions teacher, saved the film challenge but had to change the name due to rights issues. Thus, the Insomniacs Challenge was born and has been around fifteen years or so. Senior Caroline Lathrop,is  a filmmaker who has won a number of film awards as well as a $32,000 scholarship for video production related activities. She says that this will be her second year participating in the challenge but “regrets” not doing it her sophomore year. Josh Hren, another senior film maker, says his favorite part about the film challenge is the “creativity overload”. In regards to what he would say to those thinking about signing up for the film challenge Josh replied with “just go for it.”

If you would like to come watch the films created by our own Tahoma talent there will be a viewing on June 3rd at 6pm in the PAC. You will get to see every film created in the 60 hour period as well as vote on your favorite.