3 days enough for a cinematic?
Yes you can.
You’ll have to keep in simple, maybe motion comic style or limited animation.
You can also use premade models and mod them a bit. Or use some pretty crude models you make yourself.
You could also use mocap to speed things up.
Maybe do rendering in cel shade.
You could use premade models. Daz 3d or Poser.
http://mysteriousdollfilm.blogspot.com/
Look up BadAssery on his site. Some of them he did it 2-3 days.
Also you could use something like Terrence wyswig style.
www.studioartfx.com
That is basically how NMA does it. I love their work.
So yes you can do it but it will be limited and you’ll have to be creative to get a half way good looking product.
Yes it can be done!
Can you do it? I don’t know but if you have to ask you might already be behind the 8ball
Ok, here’s how to do a CG cinematic in 3 days 
Come up with a basic idea/Script. Try not to be too fancy.
Do concept developing and collecting assets on day one, arranging assets and animation on day two, comping and finessing on day three.
So to begin with; there’s tonnes of content that can be downloaded from various free model websites, of course always check user licenses So begin by looking around and find what you need. Collect your props and set pieces to create the environments, set these up in say; Blender, 3ds Max etc … thats your set done.
Next step, characters. For the average user without a large VFX house available to create and animate characters on the fly, i’d recommend Daz studio. There’s a lot of snobbery around using Daz, but you’d be surprised what can be achieved with the latest version, the quality of the characters is are extremely good, and the ability to change them considerably via the Zbrush plugin GOZ can create surprisingly good results. Use Daz to set up the characters you need, use GOZ to take them into Zbrush, do a little editing, make a cool creature maybe shoot it back to Daz, do the animation using pre made animation blocks with Animate 2, which is very intuitive btw. Use the Lip sync tools in Daz to record your voice and add dialogue, this automatically animates the character speaking. Export all of this to FBX with morphs and animation over to Max, maya etc, which i might add, finally works without freaky errors! set up lights, render with Vray; well my personal choice
Output an image sequence and comp together with quicktime, or something more fancy if you like.
Job done.
The key to all this is this; A) you sacrifice on quality over speed. But that said, sometimes people, me included, can appreciate a short film that looks semi professional if it tells a fun or interesting story. B) use premade content. Again, some people feels its wrong to use premade content, which is complete balls! Every sector of the CG industry uses premade content from websites such as Turbosquid etc
Don’t forget, always check licenses of use and credit where needed
Dave.
You forgot audio… although I guess if it’s school work he can get away with re-purposing sound from an existing show.
It’s a common exercise to take an existing audio clip and arrange new animation to it.
Yeah, my bad, brain no say right thing good. I remember them talking about the company and etc. a bit more when they did a custom animation for Conan as well. Maybe the word “korea” appearing 10 times a day in the news for a month got to me.
On-topic though, keep in mind they are still a TEAM of people, and 3 days isn’t really reasonable on almost any level.
As others laid out, maybe you CAN do this kind of thing in 3 days, with lots of "if"s and "sort of"s and massive compromises.
The better question is, should you?
I gotta wonder…would you guys be interested in a challenge? Friday, Saturday, Sunday, upload Monday. We decide on a topic…something generic. Robot Wars. Aliens. Castle Defence. And we have to create an ‘effective’ cinematic sequence. You can use any assets already in your libraries…
I’d be up for it if some other people wanted to go head to head.
I gotta wonder…would you guys be interested in a challenge? Friday, Saturday, Sunday, upload Monday. We decide on a topic…something generic. Robot Wars. Aliens. Castle Defence. And we have to create an ‘effective’ cinematic sequence. You can use any assets already in your libraries…
You took the words right out of my mouth 
I think it would be interesting to have set limits; for example, the cinematic cannot exceed a set time, say two minutes. It must contain say three random elements; for example; a pair of rabbit ears, a guitar and a light bulb, it would be interesting how people would incorporate these elements in different ways. Or maybe just one object.
Needs a little ironing out, but I agree, it would be a fun challenge
Dave.
+1
btw don’t know who said rendering a frame would take 5 minutes with a main light and a fill light? with a simple scene modeled in 1 day…and with no rendering expertise at all? (so forget about MR, VR, etc.). I’d say more like 10 seconds.
I say we keep the first challenge simple. 2 minute limit is a good guideline…
So, rules…
You have 3 days (and one day for uploading) to create a 1 - 2 minute cinematic sequence.
You can use any software you have.
You can use any assets you already have.
It must be awesome.
Topics?
Alien invasion…
They live!
Artificial Intelligence.
Kings and Castles.
imho the only thing achievable in 3 days time would be motion graphics, where music drives the animation. if a character is involved, a week wouldn’t be enough. you end up sacrificing detail instead of adding more.
Amazing!!! I couldn’t resist entering such an awesome challenge. I vote for Alien invasion or Kings and Castles. I also like Dave’s idea with 3 random elements that we have to include.
Count me in.
Nah, three days is good. This would be similar to the London 24 hour film challenge. The point is more to have fun and see what can be done in a very limited time. Yes, it’s not going to look professional, but it CAN be done
I’d like to open up more ideas for themes, not everyone appreciates scifi and fantasy 
but id like something that’s more universal in theme
If there’s any mods watching i’d like to hear what they think of a mini challenge, it’s not good to hijack this one anymore, sorry to the OP by the way, did you complete the project?
It might be interesting to do something like the Philips’ “Tell it your way” contest, the only rules were that each entry had to include the same 6 lines of dialog, but the rest was up for grabs. Had some great wildly divergent entries.
That might end up in the “8 second club” territory a bit, but it would be interesting to have some kind of starting parameters that were loose but tight enough to make it a challenge to build something on.
Won’t there be a problem with people using libraries and re-using assets to get a lead on the 3 days?
I dunno…I think the point of the exercise is to ‘do what you can with what you have’.
I actually don’t think I’ve worked on any project where I don’t use some sort of prebuilt asset. That’s why I have prerigged characters, mocap files, a texture library, etc.
Are we talking teams or individuals? Because the difference in quality is massive in the long run. I participated in a midwestern 48 hour 3D short contest a few months ago (with 4 others) and some of the results I saw were phenomenal. The short from Volition by 5 people was absurd professional and so was the piece from the Ball State Univ. New Media art group. Of course, I almost died after no sleep and non stop 3D arting for 2 straight days, but still…I learned more in 2 days than I had in 3 years. It’s amazing what you can do when forced with a deadline like that. Just sayin…