The VMware video contest might seem kind of obscure but because of the big prizes that they were giving away it would catch my eye whenever I would the contest listings at onlinevideocontests.com.
What is VMware? Dammed if I know. What does it do? I have no idea. And that’s why I didn’t enter the contest. In fact, I’m guessing that’s why almost no one entered the contest even though there was a lot of cash at stake. VMware picked 5 winners last week. the grand prize winner got $5,000 and four runners up each got $1,000. Then they held a viewer’s choice contest at a VMware convention(?) in San Francisco and the winner of that round got a $1,000 bonus. Here are the grand prize winner and the “VMworld favorite” winner:
Grand Prize winner. Prize: $5,000
VMworld Favorite. Prize: $2,000
So both videos are pretty decent. I enjoyed them and I don’t even get what VMware does. So if you DO know what VMware does then you’ll probably really get a kick out of those. My only criticism is that the grand prize winner seemed to use a very familiar piece of music in his video and I’m guessing that was against the rules. Actually, he also used a phone sound effect straight out of 24. This might seem insane but technically that’s copyright infringement. Even sound effects and phone rings(!) were created and composed by someone. This guy managed to slip them through but you should remember that when doing your own videos; all noises that other people create are copyrighted unless noted otherwise. Oh wait, I do have another criticism; that one blue puppet was kind of creepy. His head reminded me of a skull. The red boss puppet though was pretty funny. His confused reactions mirrored my own as I watched these videos.
You can watch the other 3 finalist videos here but the 2 big winners are the best of the bunch. If you watch the other videos you’ll see that pretty much any decent entry would have earned a spot in the top five. So it was a very poach-able contest. The catch though is that not only did you have to know how to shoot and edit a video, you had to understand enough about the product to make something that made sense to other techies.
Once in a while here at the Video Contest News we’ll be profiling contests that are just begging to be entered and won by anyone with an ounce of talent. I’ve been trying to come up with a good name for this category of video contests and the most fitting phrase I can think of is “ripe for the plucking.” Yeah, it’s kind of corny but hey, there are a lot of open contests that are seriously ripe and ready for you to come along and win them.
“The winning videos will be used to educate people with psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis about valuable resources they can access to connect with other psoriasis patients. Your mission is to show psoriasis patients the value of these resources.”
There are lots more details on the website. Long story short, Psoriasis sucks and the goal of the contest is to educate people about how they can fight it. Psoriasis Cure Now is awarding TWO $5,000 prizes and EIGHT $500 prizes! Holy crap, that’s a lot of money. The deadline to enter is October 20th BUT…if you get your entry in by next Monday, September 14th you will qualify for “EarlyBird” Prizes. There are two categories to enter “Walk” and “Web” (again, check the website for the full story) and one Earlybird entry from each will get $1,000.
You hear that you lazy bastards!? If you enter by Monday you will have a shot at winning one of two $1,000 earlybird prizes. And guess how many entries there are right now….EIGHT!! Eight entries and $2,000 is up for grabs! You can see the “Walk” entries here and the “Web” entries here. Can you top those? Do you have some free time this weekend? If so, bust out that camera and bitch slap psoriasis with your talent and win that EarlyBird prize!
When I was a kid, Old Spice meant one thing; an easy Christmas present idea for Grandpa. Old Spice After Shave had become such a cliche’ “old man’s” product that 5 years ago the company seemed bound for extinction. But old man Old Spice or whoever was running things over there must have retired because recently, Old Spice has gone balls out to re-brand themselves as a cool and even SUBVERSIVE line. And guess what? It’s working! Old Spice isn’t just an after shave any more, it’s a BRAND….a brand that promotes itself with hilarious and faux-serious ads featuring cocky centaurs and Bruce Campbell crooning Hungry Like the Wolf. Suddenly we find ourselves living in a crazy, topsy turvery world where Old Spice the brand seems to be totally in tune with what gets the attention of young males.
A few months back, Old Spice took another step in what they must think of as their “let’s get relevant campaign” by announcing they would be teaming up with Poptent in a search for user-generated video content. If you don’t know what Poptent is it’s like a video contest website….except that it isn’t. I’ve been noticing more and more third party websites running other companies’ video contests and I usually try and stay away from those. My thinking is that if a company cared enough they would just run the contest themselves. More importantly though, who needs a middleman getting in between filmmakers and the money companies have to spend?
But Poptent is different. They seem to be on to something there. They’re focused on building and keeping a community of talented filmmakers. And talented people seem to like Poptent. The quality level of submitted videos is very, very high. In the Old Spice competitions, serious productions actually outnumbered videos that were shot on cheapo cameras by bored teenagers!
The best thing about Poptent though is that they don’t run video contests. They hold open calls for video content. If a sponsor likes your work they don’t give you a prize, they BUY your video. So if a Poptent client like Bounce or Harley Davidson buys a video you submit then you can list those big name companies as clients. That is huge.
Anyhoo…today it was announced that Old Spice bought two videos made by Poptent creators for $5,000 each. One was a commercial for Old Spice Deck Scrubber and the other was for Old Spice Everclear. The chosen videos are pretty decent. Observe:
They’re not as good as the Bruce Campbell commercial where he walks in front of the giant painting but hey, what is?
Well, summer is officially over. So does that mean video contest “season” is over too? A ton of huge contests opened and closed during the last few months and it doesn’t seem like there are too many notable ones on the horizon. I guess we’ll all have to wait and see what, if any, cool new contests are being planned for the fall and winter.
For now let’s look back on the summer that was and check out the winners of SanDisk’s 60-Second Summer Mobile Phone contest. Youtubers were supposed to upload videos that featured fun summer-timey stuff and the videos had to be recorded with a cell phone’s camera…ideally on a SanDisk memory card.
There were 5 weekly winners that each one a thousand bucks and one of those went on to win the rand Prize of $5,000. I really like their choice for the Grand Prize video….
Grand Prize winner. Prize: $5,000.
Is that perfect or what? It’s so fricking simple and yet it totally nails the point of the contest…and summer. Very nice. The runners up videos ok. This one seems like it might have been staged:
And the quality of this one is suspiciously high. Either they filmed that with the world’s most awesome cell phone or they actually used something like a Flip video recorder:
Earlier this summer, Converse and Target teamed up to hold the “Challenge, Create, Change” video contest. Participants were supposed to “Demonstrate how they are challenging, creating or changing something in their worlds.” Filmmakers could submit comedies, documentaries, short films, animations or “anything in between.”
The prizes were pretty big: Grand Prize would get you Ten Grand, a trip for two to the Wanderlust Festival in Lake Tahoe and a thousand dollar Target gift card. 1st place was good for five grand and a trip to Wanderlust and 2nd place got two grand and the trip.
In all, Converse and Target got more than 450 entries! That is a TON! This should be a lesson to all those video contest organizers who wind up frustrated and disappointed that they only get 6 crappy entries. If you offer some great prizes, people will come out of the woodwork to make videos for you.
So Converse/Target were smart about how to lure in filmmakers but then they blew it when it came time to picking the winner. All top three videos were selected by YOUTUBE VOTES. Uck. When they say “Winners will be selected by the youtube audience” that really means “Whoever wants to waste the most time creating fake youtube accounts so you can vote over and over gets 10 grand.”
The videos that went on to win are….OK. They aren’t obscenely bad but they aren’t insanely awesome either. They are just….ok. The third one at least has some cool special effects but basically all three of the winning videos are pretty darn boring. They are long as hell too. Anyway, here’s another lesson to video contest organizers; if you let “people” on youtube alone pick the winners in your contest, here’s the type of results you can expect:
Grand prize. $10,000:
1st Place. $5,000:
2nd Place. $2,000:
To be fair, it seems like converse/target first selected a group of finalists that youtubers could vote on but any time you leave the final decision up to “voters” the winners will always be the people who either have a huge social network to rely on or who are the best at stuffing the ballot box without getting caught.
Companies love holding video contests for lots of reasons. But probably the biggest benefit for them is that for just a few grand they get dozens or sometimes hundreds of free commercials for their products posted to the web. They may only feature the winning video on their website but what about all the non-winning videos? Those are still on the web promoting the featured company for FREE.
So it always confuses me when a contest won’t let you see the other videos that have been submitted. Maybe they think that people will be discouraged from entering if they see that lots of greats entries have already been posted. They do sort of have a point there. If you’re thinking about shooting an entry for a contest the smart thing to do is size up the competition first. In a bigger competition like the Jim Beam Remake contest there might be an entire website dedicated to showcasing submitted entries. But usually, contest rules just say you should upload your video to youtube and send them a link. In that scenario, all you have to do is go to youtube, search for the name of the contest and you’ll see all the other entries.
But sometimes video contest organizers just want to keep the videos as a surprise I guess. For instance, a few months back I entered the Careerbuilder.com “Hire My TV Ad” superbowl commercial contest. You had to upload your entry to Carrerbuilder’s youtube account and then the videos were all set to private until the submission period was over.
So what do you do when you want to scope out the competition when the submitted videos aren’t available for public viewing? Or what if the rules state that you can upload your video to ANY video hosting site. What can you do then?
Truveo is an ingeniously simple idea for a website and it’s a perfect tool for video contest addicts. It’s a video search engine that scours the web for videos that are relevant to your search term. Whether your competition uploads their videos to youtube, vimeo, myspace etc etc etc, you’ll be able to find them. Filter the results by “most recent” and you’ll almost certainly see nothing but entries for the contest you’re in or thinking of entering.
But what about the careerbuilder scenario? When the contest organizers keep all the entries private Truveo won’t be able to find them. Well creative types have a need for their work to be seen. I know I do. So when a contest keeps the entries private, I always upload my video to my own youtube account. Turns out, a lot of people do the same thing. In my own experience, whenever I shoot a video contest entry everyone who was in it or who helped with it want to know when they can see the finished product. Are filmmakers supposed to tell their collaborators to wait a few weeks until the contest organizers unveil all the entries? Of course not. We just throw our videos up on the web somewhere and send links just to our friends and allies.
So even if a contest’s entries aren’t up for public viewing yet you should still be able to find a lot of them thanks to truveo. And as a bonus, filmmakers who are especially proud of their work seem to be the most likely to post their videos to their own channels and video accounts. So not only will truveo help you find your competition, it will help you find the BEST of the submitted videos.
Starting this blog has inspired me to dig up the results for contests that I thought about entering once upon a time but then forgot about. One big one I remember was ForRent.com’s “Ready2Move” video contest. The prize for first place was $10,000 and the idea was to show someone who was, you know…ready to move. Today I looked up that contest and I was freaking flabbergasted by their choice of winner! Here’s the winning video:
Grand Prize Winner. Prize: $10,000:
So do you get why I’m shocked? To me it looks like FORRENT.COM’S FIRST PLACE WINNING VIDEO IS A CLEAR AND COMPLETE RIP-OFF OF THIS VIDEO BY FREQUENT CONTEST WINNER JARED CICON:
That video right there won Jared $25,000 in the 2008 Taxslayer.com video contest and aired on national television! I suspect that the ForRent.com winner, Justin Spence of Dallas, TX didn’t just steal the idea from Jared….it looks like he even copied the Taxslayer video’s pacing, tone, locations and style! I’m going to have to break out some 25 cent words here….this looks like one of the most egregious act of plagiarism I think I’ve ever seen. The first half of this ad looks like a shot for shot remake of the taxslayer entry. If you were to read the two scripts for these two videos they would be nearly identical.
It’s one thing to rip off the style of a Nike commercial or something but to straight up steal the idea and style of a fellow struggling, independent filmmaker? That’s just as low as you can go. What really blows my mind is that this video won even though the other contestants called this Justin Spence guy out on his possible theft. Check out some of the comments left under this video. Not only does the guy who made this video try and defend himself he viciously attacks those who accuse him of ripping off the Taxslayer guy’s video:
Rocky Collins:
Are you kidding? You plagiarized the 2008 Taxslayer.com winner!? This is for your safety that I’m telling you,you might get sued. But cool vid anyway, but it’s not really yours :-p
Justin Spence:
Come on, Rocky. Don’t be bitter just because your video for this contest completely sucks. I’ve seen your other work on Vimeo, and it’s far better than this cave man trash that you plagiarized from so many other thoughtless contestants before you who threw together something at the very last minute due to time and not being able come up with anything more than the way over done grainy silent film look. I mean, really, do you know how many times that dumb concept has been overdone for video contests? You all should be sued for not coming up with something a tad more original. But, I digress. Obviously, you’ve never seen the movie Swingers where the guys point out how filmmakers “steal” film ideas from each other all the time in their movies. Steven Spielberg from David Lean. John Singleton from Spike Lee. Countless filmmakers from Martin Scorsese. If no filmmaker ever borrowed an idea from another, then we’d all be out of business. Take your silent cave man video for this contest, for example. But, I’ll tell you what. I’m going to email this video to Jared, the winner of the 2008 Taxslayer.com video contest. If he thinks I have blatantly stole from him, I will eat my words, take this video down immediately and apologize to everyone – including you. However, if he is flattered for using his winning concept and formula for another commercial, I’m going to challenge you to muster up an apology and consider taking your silent video down. Good luck in the future, Rocky!
Lynkoya Marcell:
Well i like this video but it reminds me of a commercial…
Justin Spence
I’d like to apologize for my brash comments to Rocky. We put a lot of work into writing, shooting and editing these projects, and to be torn down by each other is not very conducive to a productive environment for us or the companies who provide these opportunities. I wish I could delete the comments and start over; however, the system doesn’t allow this. So, I will offer my sincere apology to Rocky and the other contestants and supporters of this competition. Good luck and God bless.
Thomas Scott
It’s funny how often the people who always talk about God are the same people who lie and cheat..
Matthew Brown:
What does it feel like to win when your video layout was stolen from another writer?
rob kennedy
Hmm, this looks/sounds exactly like the guys who won the 2008 Taxslayer video. I guess the idea was decent, so you “borrowed” it.
Jack Farnsworth
CHEATER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Paul Jones
God knows what Justin did and will judge him accordingly.
Justin Spence
Thank you, ForRent.com, for the great opportunity you provided. I’m thrilled the video will help your advertising efforts, and honored with the award among some great competing videos.
Despite all those comments, For Rent still gave that guy the top prize. What is really, really, really weird about this is that the video isn’t very good! There were a few, clearly better entries and as other commenters point out, this one doesn’t even show a wacky reason for someone to move and that was the entire point of the contest. If it hadn’t been for “Justin Spence” ripping on other videos in the comment section I’d assume that he was a ringer hired by ForRent.com. A ringer would have done a better job concealing both his (alleged) plagiarism and his temper though.
In the comments section, Justin goes on to post a letter from the Taxslayer winner, Jared Cicon. In it, Jared says he’s cool with his work being the inspiration for this video. You can read that and the other comments here. Does it make it OK if the person being plagiarized doesn’t mind that he was ripped off? No….because it still unfair to all the other contestants who worked hard and came up with their own ideas. Actually, maybe the lion’s share of the guilt belongs to ForRent.com. After all, they decided to purchase and disseminate a commercial that looks like a rip off of a well known taxlsayer commercial…and that was a very dumb move on their part. (No pun intended.)
UPDATE: Justin Spence explained his side of the story on his website. Here’s exactly what he had to say about this:
Jared won a $25,000 video contest for Taxlayer.com with this video. I really liked how he used a Wes Anderson deadpan camera angle style on himself as the actor while talking to a buddy on the phone about the benefits of Taxslayer. I thought this was a brilliant tactic that I could use to try to win the ForRent video contest for $10,000.
As you can see in my ForRent video entry and Jared’s Taxslayer video from the links above, yes, there are some exact similarites to how I initially set myself up as the actor on the phone talking to his buddy at an upscale apartment complex. But, that is where the similarities end. The whole point of my video is to sell the user on the luxurious apartment complex that he is missing out on by not using ForRent.
During the contest, another contestant made a derogatory remark in the comments of my submission about how I plagiarized Jared Cicon’s Taxslayer video. At first, this made me really angry after growing up and seeing many filmmakers take shots that they loved from filmmakers like Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese et al. and use them in their own movies. There’s a famous quote in the movie Swingers, where one of the actors jokingly says, “What? Everyone steals from everyone. Every movie is derivative.” – as the camera slowly pans around them in an exact Quintin Tarrintino style pan around from Reservoir Dogs. So, I left that contestant a derogatory comment about how his video sucked and how he was just jealous.
The bottom line is that Spence saw some good ideas, shots and performances and copied them without crediting the source until after he was busted. And that sounds like pretty much a textbook explanation of what “plagiarism” is. However, Spence has sent me countless, obscene, angry and crude e-mails and comments since I first wrote this post and he continues to claim that what he did was not “plagiarism.” But it seems like he simply does not actually understand the term. When Swingers copied that shot from Reservoir Dogs, the copying was the point. That joke only worked if the audience understood that the slow panning shot originally came from another film. Justin however was not making an homage to that taxslayer video and he admits that he got upset when another contestant realized where he got his ideas. Plagiarists take other people ideas, pass them off as their own and then hope no one realizes what they did. And to me, that’s what it looks like this particular filmmaker did.
Sebelius says, "Only you can prevent the Swine Flu."
The US Department of Health and Human Services via the website “Flu.gov” is holding a video contest to get the word out about how to prevent getting the swine flu. Yeah…take a second to let that soak in.
Here was what H.H.S. was looking for: “Create a 15, 30, or 60 second video Public Service Announcement (PSA) that will inform and motivate people to take steps that will help prevent the spread of the flu. Make your video fun, smart, and entertaining.”
The contest was announced by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius in a youtube video of such shocking technical quality that it’s almost creepy. I don’t mean the video was fancy or anything it’s just that even the Standard Quality version of the video is so crisp and so sharp that it’s like a mini-Kathleen Sebelius is inside your computer talking to you through a hole in the screen. Seriously, what the hell kind of camera did they use to shoot that?!? Some secret NASA space cam that’s designed to make hyper-quality youtube videos? Here, check it out:
The prize in this contest is only $2,500 but Flu.gov managed to get around 240 entries. That’s a really good response. I bet the Health and Human Services spent a butt-load of taxpayer cash to promote the contest though. At the very least, every public school and government office in the country probably got a fax abut it.
Anyway, the contest organizers recently picked their Top Ten finalists. Now the winner will be picked in the cruelest way possible; a public vote….where users can cast a vote ONCE A DAY!
Oh God, what a nightmare. It’s hard enough to get all of your relatives and facebook friends to vote for your video once. But getting people to do it every day must be brutal. I love entering video contests but I never, ever enter competitions where the winner is selected by a “once a day” public vote. Why do contest organizers even do that?!? Don’t they know it’s just going to result in a bloody popularity contest where finalists sit at home registering accounts all day so that can keep up with everyone else’s cheating?
I’m guessing that by allowing people to vote every day contest organizers think that it’s going to cause a huge spike in web traffic. But why does the USDHHS care about that? Are they hoping to start selling ad space on Flu.gov?
As I said, there are 10 finalists in this competition. The quality of the videos is actually pretty high. Of course there’s the obligatory rap video, animated text video and fancy CGI video but those ain’t nothing to write home about. Here are some of the best entries:
Voting ends September 16th so be sure to go to the website and vote EVERY DAY! Or just once would be cool too, I guess.
