First of all, my name is Alley and I am happy to have discovered this forum. I own a lot of video editing software, including Premiere Elements 3 and Photoshop 5 bundle. I am starting to get the hang of Photoshop, and I would really like to learn more about Premiere Elements - my sister is quite proficient and has just upgraded to the Pro. We have a business together, but I have taken a stronger interest in animation lately. 
Anyway....enough about me..
I have been part of a group project for about 1-1/2 years. We are an independent committee of 5 who do this for a hobby. This is our third world project and it is a little different. It is called "Mystery Manor". You can learn all about it at Mystery Manor. All our projects feature a character called Pinhead. Don't be put off by the name, he is a very lovable character created by my husband actually.
Initially we were a group on the Pinnacle forum, but we have broken away. We were never sanctioned by them, but we met on that web board. Anyway, we would love to invite you all to participate. We don't launch til January and the project runs til May. We will be airing a 30 minute movie/intro with a mysterious story, and the object of the project is to finish the story and tell what you think really happened. It doesn't really require any videography, however, you can be as creative as you like. Perhaps flashbacks - but I can't say too much at this point. The focus is on story telling. There are 12 characters in the story and all will be provided for download, as will jpegs of all the rooms/sets. We provide tif sequence files for the characters. These can be animated through programs like Bluff Titler, Heroglyph or you can simply alternate them on the overlay track using a green screen to create avi's of the characters to overlay the sets and use chromakey. All of the entries will be posted on our website, and there will be an online vote at the end.
We have lots of prizes. Our grand prize is the "Editor's choice" package from Heroglyph. We also have prizes from Corel, Smartsound, and Reallusion. Reallusion are the makers of Iclone, and they have provided us with several copies of Iclone Studio - this is a really cool program if you haven't heard of it. Also PInnacle. Maybe someone here knows how I could get Adobe to toss us a prize.
There are no restrictions on what software you can use. We are independent of any particular software company.
So I hope some of you will join. It really is a lot of fun, and it allow you to try some different video editing skills. If you have any questions, ask away.
I the meantime, I shall explore more here. Maybe this will get me off my butt and learn Premiere Elements.
