We're not ashamed to admit we're biased when it comes to the Video Association of Dallas' 24 Hour Video Race. With the advent of the Mixmaster, the Dallas Observer arts and culture blog, we finally got up the guts to enter the annual contest. Regardless of the award outcome (third in our division, high five!), we persevered from midnight to midnight, staying awake (sorta), eating (an obscene amount of) packaged snack food, achieving levels of insanity in which creating meat helmets seemed totally logical and, ultimately, accomplishing the task of writing, shooting, editing and scoring a five-minute film in 24 hours (naturally) based on a theme, prop, location and line of dialogue given to us as the challenge began. The VAD staff was funny, patient and supportive with an "emergency" hotline (for those techy questions easily solved had sleep been possible). If building bonds through sleep deprivation and/or seeing your work in a real video festival is a goal, well the former is a definite and the Dallas Video Fest this year features a screening of winners. Your first 24 Hour Video Race is certainly "a day to remember."