Audi and AFI Tap Filmmakers for Contest

Audi of America, Inc. and the American Film Institute's AFI FEST have challenged three rising directors to capture emerging trends across the nation in the form of a 15-minute short film shot while completing in a cross-country drive.

The three-week competition, Step Ahead with Audi A3: Personal Journeys with AFI FEST Filmmakers, officially kicks off as the contestants and their crews hit the road in a fleet of Audi's newest vehicle, the A3, in Los Angeles on May 4.

A group of Los Angeles filmmakers, whose films were screened in competition at the AFI FEST 2004 film festivals, were invited to participate in the project. They are Shawn Ku, Jonathan Levine and Kristina Robbins-Higgins.

During the adventure, teams will depart from Los Angeles and likely visit San Francisco, Austin, TX, Miami, FL, Boston, and Washington, D.C. before reaching their final destination of New York. While traveling, the teams will each create the short film detailing their personal experiences with the Audi A3 and documenting their vision of what's hot, be it people, places or things.

Behind-the-scenes crews will travel with each filmmaker to document their journeys. These crews will also keep an online community actively involved with the filmmaking process through regular updates of footage that can be viewed on Audiusa.com/A3.

During their trip, the filmmakers will keep blogs to record their personal experiences, which will be posted to the site as well. Once their cross-country journeys are complete, the filmmakers will have three weeks to edit their films and submit them to a panel of judges, which includes actors Joshua Jackson and Emily Mortimer, as well as representatives from Audi and AFI FEST.

In July, the films will be posted online so the public can vote for its choice. The competition concludes when the winning film is announced in August at a fete in Los Angeles. The winner will receive $10,000 and a 2006 Audi A3. All three filmmakers will get to keep the equipment they use during editing.

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