Every January, the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) holds a lab-wide olympics. During this time, the normally friendly lab divides into four factions, each seeking to best their competitors in games of skill, wit, strength, and above all participation. One popular event is the movie making competition, where each team competes to produce a short video starring their team.

The videos are judged according to a mostly arbitrary point system. Teams are strongly encouraged to get as many of their team members into the video as possible—and, often, as many professors as possible—however, to make things more interesting, the teams are given various constraints, such as bizarre objects or spoken lines, that must appear in their movie. The rules for each year's competition are linked in the headers.