NOTE: Our traffic has gone up a good bit thanks to the Crash the Superbowl posts. So if you’re new to the site, thanks for visiting. If you’re looking for a place to promote your Doritos commercial, scroll down to the next post. But if you feel like reading some non-CTSB video contest news, scroll your eyes down to the next paragraph.
There are lot of reasons NOT to enter certain video contests. If the winner is picked by a public vote, you should probably stay out of that fight. If the prize is really small that means the company is cheap and might not even pay up if you win. But the most offensive red flag is a contest that charges you an entry fee. All I can say about that is Fuuuuu*k that noise. Finally, I try to avoid contests that are run by non-U.S. based companies. For one, those contests are usually open to everyone, everywhere which means that your competition is THE ENTIRE FREAKING WORLD. But more importantly, if you have a problem with that contest, what are you going to do? Fly over to their home country and sue them?
So those are what I consider to be deal-breaking red flags. That said, I think I have officially discovered the WORST video contest I have ever seen. Somehow they managed to pull off the rare, 4-red-flagger contest here. It’s “Doc Sniper’s Make Some Noise Video contest” and it immediately comes off as suspicious because the point of the contest is incredibly vague. Check out this description:
That’s it? Make a video with music in it? What the heck is the point of that? Ohhh..I know. The point is that to enter the contest, you have to pay a $10 ENTRY FEE! Pretty much any filmmaker will already have some kind of project that includes music in it. So maybe a ton of them will decide to take a shot, pay the 10 bucks and enter to win the massive $500 jackpot!
This just has “scam” written all over it. The winner of the $500 prize is picked by the “Doc Sniper” community. So think about that; you have to PAY to enter the contest and then if you want the prize, you have to get a bunch of people to register to the site to vote for you. I repeat, Fuuuuuuu*k that noise.
I kind of feel bad for ripping on DocSniper.com because after looking through the site, it seems to be the passion project of some young entrepreneurs hoping to build a new social networking site. I don’t think they actually want to rip people off but based on the business model they are presenting, I think that it’s inevitable that people are going to get screwed. Basically it looks like they are trying to build a pyramid scheme for video contests; if 100 people each pay 10 bucks to enter the contest then 50% of that money goes to the “winner” and 50% goes to Doc Sniper. According to the site, it is their goal to do one contest like this every month. But so far, just 3 people have entered the “music” contest. Are they still going to pay out the 500 bucks if they only take in $30 in entries fees?
The final red flag here is a little weird but there are several videos on the site from “Doc Sniper” himself in which he explains certain aspects of the site. Click right here to visit the site and watch one of these videos. (best example is on the front page in the upper right hand corner) Something is weird about Doc Sniper. It took me a second to catch on but the guy in the video is doing a fake American Accent. I kept poking through the site and in the forum, someone mentions that Doc Sniper is based in Australia. So there you go, the final red flag. And this red flag is so scary it has a picture of an even redder flag on it! The people behind this site are going out of their way to make it appear like they are based in the US (besides the accent, they seem to really drive home the fact that prizes are paid in US dollars.)
Like I said, I feel bad for coming down so hard on this site. Despite the weird fake accent, “Doc Sniper” even seems like a nice guy. So Doc, if you have a google alert set for your name and you see this, I recommend that you drop the entry fee idea ASAP. There are just way, way too many free video contests out there for the concept ever to catch on.
Beardy is a dreamer of big dreams. And Beardy’s latest big dream was to watch all 4047 entries in this year’s crash the superbowl contest and list his predictions for which commercials would make it to the finals. But alas, this was a pipe dream. For if one were to actually sit down and watch every, single entry that was submitted to the Doritos contest this year they’d be stuck in front of a computer for almost three full days. Beardy still wants to compile a list of predictions, but he could use some help.
So, have you seen a spot that you thought was especially awesome? Did you see one that you know is destined to make it to the finals? Or did you create an amazing commercial that you think should be recognized? Or did you make a spot was just OK but you feel like doing some shameless self promotion? If you answered in the affirmative to any of these questions, let us know. Send us a link to your favorite CTSB entries at videocontestnews@gmail.com or just leave it in a comment. In the next few days, I’ll edit this post and insert links to some of the more interesting suggestions I’ve received.
FEBRUARY 8th, 2010 UPDATE: In the post below I explain that I suspect that my Casket-full-of-Doritos idea for the Crash the Superbowl contest might have been stolen by another team of filmmakers. Well, the suspicious entry, “Casket” went on to score a spot in the finals and last night it aired during the Superbowl. Since I first wrote this post I’ve learned a lot about the other entry and I am more convinced than ever that I was plagiarized. For a more up to date version of this story, click here: http://videocontestnews.com/2010/02/08/dueling-caskets-full-of-doritos/
———————-
Beardy is camping out to buy tickets for tonight’s 12:01AM screening of Twilight so while he’s away I thought I’d step in and do a little self-promotion. I also wanted to share my Doritos hard luck story. Like pretty much anybody reading this site, I submitted an entry for this year’s Crash the Superbowl contest. And here is that very entry now!
Be honest, it’s the greatest thing you’ve ever seen right? I’m super proud of my submission but I know that the competition out there is tough. And I was totally ok with the fact that with thousands of entries coming in, 6 teams of professional filmmakers with deep pockets and Red cameras and fancy dollies would probably come along and take all the finalist spots. And like I said, I was totally cool with that. But then….I saw this:
Ahhhhh! Some team of professional filmmakers with deep pockets and a Red camera and a fancy dolly came along and filmed an idea a whole lot like mine! Man, that’s a bummer. The coincidences between that spot and mine are just crazy, aren’t they? When 4000 people each try and come up with an idea for a commercial for the same product there’s obviously going to be some overlap, but damn, there’s a lot of overlap here. Of course, I’ve seen a lot of CTSB entries that have really similar ideas. (For instance, how many Doritos-as-a-paper-football and dorito-loving-zombies spots have you watched in the last few weeks?) But of the 2200 or so Crash entries I’ve watched, I don’t think there are two of them that share more common elements than these two casket-full-of-doritos entries. I mean, it’s not just that both videos are funeral scenes. It’s that both videos include:
1. A dead man’s last wish to be buried in a casket full of Doritos
2. A funeral for that guy that turns out to be fake
3. A big, framed photo of the “dead” guy enjoying a bag of Doritos next to the casket
4. Shots of that guy in his casket buried up to his face in chips
5. A climax in which the “dead” guy gets his comeuppance when the casket of chips is knocked over
That’s sort of a lot of similarities to squeeze into 30 seconds, isn’t it? I have to wonder, what the heck happened here? Is this just a case of really bad luck or is the CIA monitoring my brainwaves as part of some kind of scheme to control the masses via secret messages hidden in a superbowl commercial? There’s no chance that another team of filmmakers were somehow (gulp) inspired by my entry, is there?
My entry, Rest in Chips was uploaded on Friday, November 6th and the other video, The Casket, appeared online a few days later. I might be paranoid but I’m not crazy enough to think that the makers of the other entry saw Rest In Chips and then ran out the next day and rented a church so they could make their own version of my spot. So I was left with only one conclusion; this was just a giant coincidence…nothing more.
But then it finally hit me; I am an idiot. After I wrote my script I created and animated storyboard so I could see if I could fit my entire idea into 30 seconds. On October 6th, I uploaded that storyboard animation on to youtube. Then I sent the link to a few people and asked for ideas and feedback. During that time, the video was set to “public” and could be seen by anyone. One of my friends even said to me “why did you put that on youtube? What if someone steals your idea!?” And I laughed and laughed at that notion. And then I stopped laughing because I realized I had made a very stupid mistake. I named the video “Doritos Storyboard.” Because the word “Doritos” was in the title, any CTSB contestant who went to youtube to study last year’s winning entries or actual Doritos commercials could have found and watched my storyboard.
I’ve been burned by plagiarism before so I went back to youtube and deleted the storyboard. But by then it had already been up for like a week. A few days later, I changed some of the dialogue in my script and created a slightly tweaked version of the animated storyboard. On October 12th I uploaded that video to youtube except I named this one simply “dortest” so that it would be hidden from youtube’s search engine. It’s still online. Here it is:
I hate to think the worst of people like this but if you think I’m going overboard, try a little experiment. Open The Casket in one window and my storyboard video in the other. Then hit “Play” on them as fast as you can so you can watch them simultaneously. The shots line up better than Dark Side of the Moon and The Wizard of Oz. I can maybe understand that two separate filmmakers could come up with the same ideas, but what are the odds they’d use the same site gags at the same moments??
I really have no idea what to think about this. I know it’s just speculation on my part but I think I might have declare shenanigans on the makers of The Casket. At the very least, I think it’s plausible that somewhere out there, another filmmaker who was planning on entering the CTSB contest went on to youtube and searched for “Dortios” related videos. If they “Sorted by date,” my storyboard would have been right up in their face. The storyboard seems too crazy to ever shoot (seriously, what kind of a nut would get a real casket and have a real grave dug?) so maybe they assumed it would never really be filmed and so the concept was fair game.
Or maybe it was the CIA. I dunno. At this point I’m pretty open to any possibilities.
1/6/2010 UPDATE: Well, Doritos announced their Top 6 finalists on Monday and I was extremely disappointed to see that “The Casket” made the cut. For making the top 6 they receive $25,000, a trip to the superbowl and a chance to see their ad air during the game. If their ad does air, they could win a bonus of up to 2 million dollars.
After writing this blog post I contacted Doritos and informed them of my plagiarism concerns and explained the situation. I received a response saying that the Doritos legal team would look into the matter.
So even though the company’s lawyers knew there might be a chance the idea was stolen the judges decided to choose it anyway. Since 40% of a video’s score was based on “originality” I cannot understand how “The Casket” could have gotten a high enough score to make the Top 6. There were 4000 entries. Common sense tells you that a fair judging system would yield many videos that were just fractions of a point away from making the top 6. So a serious deduction in any category should theoretically sink any videos chances.
Now that Doritos has chosen “Casket” as a finalist, a new and even bigger problem has presented itself. Even if the idea was not stolen from me, “Casket” should have been disqualified because it infringes on my copyright. Copyright infringement can happen on accident but that does not give the infringer a free pass to benefit from their actions. Unintentional copyright infringement is still copyright infringement. My storyboard animation for “Rest in Chips” was first posted to the web the first week in October. The version that is on youtube now was uploaded October 12th. On October 29th I posted the first rough cut of my entry to my youtube channel. It, and several other rough cuts are still there. That first rough cut was on line 4 days before “Casket” was even filmed. And finally, my entry was uploaded to the contest site well before “Casket” was.
This all means that I am the owner and creator of the “Dead man has his last wish to be buried in chips fulfilled but during the funeral he is revealed to be alive inside the casket full of chips that gets knocked over” story idea. If a commercial was running on TV right now that was as similar to “Casket” as my entry, storyboard and rough cuts are, the judges would never have been able to select “Casket” as a finalist because Doritos would be sued for IP theft and copyright infringement regardless of whether or not the concept was intentionally stolen. My rights as an independent filmmaker are the same as a multi-million dollar corporation. Just because my storyboard or entry have not aired on TV, it does not mean my Intellectual Property rights don’t count.
Since Doritos knew that I was concerned about plagiarism and since they knew that I have proof that I was the first person to publicly release this idea, I feel personally offended that they chose to ignore my rights and concerns. Back in the newspaper days, they used to say “never pick a fight with a guy who buys ink buy the barrel.” Let’s update that statement for the modern age and say that you should “never pick a fight with a filmmaker who has a blog and nothing to lose.”
Here’s a bit of advice you would do well to heed; never enter a video contest that is being advertised on a billboard. If you’re serious about winning contests, avoid the high-profile stuff and concentrate on winning the contests that only 9 people enter.
As much as I love Chipotle, I knew I should resist the temptation to enter their “My Chipotle” video contest since they’d probably recived thousands of entries. (they did) To enter the contest you were supposed to create a video explaining what your personal, favorite taco or burrito is. (Mine: Chicken burrito with black beans, medium hot salsa, rice, cheese and a smidge of sour cream.) The winners of the contest were announced like 2 months ago but since I actually considered entering this one, I was curious to see who eventually won. And here’s who did. First place was $10,000: http://mychipotle.com/#/view_submission/63673
I ‘d embed the video but it wants to just start playing on its own. I hate when websites do that so I won’t do it to you. Another musical entry took second prize which was $5,000 and a Chipotle party for 50 people. Wowza. http://mychipotle.com/#/view_submission/63773
I sort of love the first place winning video a lot. But the second place video is yet another Andy Sandburg comedy-rap rip off. There seems to be one of those in every big-money video contest. This one is especially annoying thanks to the creepy kid doing the rapping.
Anyway, wow. I swear to God….I am going to try and get to a chipotle as soon as possible. I need a burrito, STAT.
Video contests can get pretty ugly. If you're having a problem with a contest let us know! Maybe we can kick a little ass on your behalf. E-mail us at Videocontestnews@gmail.com.
