Cereal sales are on the downturn. Faced with subprime mortgages and slowing capital, the cereal makers of the world have decided to recruit computer science graduate students to re-engineer their advertising campaigns. Victor Zue, sensing an opportunity for CSAIL to show off its creativity and top-rate talent, jumped at the chance. "If we can re-engineer database systems and network layers, certainly we can re-engineer a marketing campaign!," Zue announced Monday in a press release. He added, "The logic is infallible."

In a positively-worded yet firm message to csail-announce@csail.mit.edu, Zue charged the CSAIL Olympics teams to produce debut commercials for the new CSAIL Cereal Marketing Initiative (Gold Funders: Kellogg, General Mills; Silver Funders: Post Cereals, Quaker Oats; Bronze Funder: The Ron Paul Presidential Campaign). Zue offered an Amazon.com gift certificate to the winning team*, over Richard Stallman's protests.

Each team is to produce a commercial for a cereal of its choosing. The more entertaining, the better! The cereal can be the source of the team's mascot, but doesn't have to be — you are allowed to use other cereals or make up new cereals if desired.

Commercial Requirements:

• Maximum length 2min 30sec, recommended minimum 1min 30sec.
• Your team's namesake cereal killer must show up (but doesn't need to be the main character).
• Videos must be submitted DRM-free in a suitable file format, either posted online or burned onto CD/DVD and delivered to Michael Bernstein (msbernst (preposition) mit.edu, 32-350), Jenny Yuen (jyuen (preposition) mit.edu, 32-D528) or Alvin Raj (araj (preposition) mit.edu, he lives in BCS) by NOON on MONDAY January 21. The viewing of the films will be later that day at the closing ceremony.

Audience-selected Winners:

• Best Film, voted overall winner: [25 pts]
• Best Scene, voted the favorite "moment" in any video that does not win Best Film: [15 pts] Each group will nominate a best scene candidate from their commercial when they submit.
• Best Actor [5 pts]
• Best Editing and Special Effects [5 pts]

Opportunities for Bonus Points:

• Referencing other cereals or cereal mascots: [1 pt each, up to 3 references]
• Creating a (new) tagline for your cereal (e.g., "They're grrrrrrrreat!" and "Silly Rabbit, Trix are for kids!"), and delivering it in a suitably saccharine manner: [3 pts]
• Getting team members to participate in your video, seen eating a handful of cereal: [2 pts per team member eating cereal; 4 pts per person if there are three or more team members in the shot at once]
• Getting a CSAIL professor to participate in the video: [3 pts per professor, up to 2 professors]
• Humorously referencing CSAIL current events: [3 pts each, up to 2 references]. Some ideas: fire alarm message discussions, suing Frank Gehry, the dancing CG puppets on the Stata video screens...
• Composing and performing a jingle for your cereal [10 pts]