I’ve seen a whole lot of lot of wining video contest entries in my day but damn, this has certainly got to be one of the weirder ones.  It’s the grand prize winner of the “Why I love my Hardie Home contest.”  Hardie is apparently a brand of siding and to enter you had to live in a house that has some and then create a video explaining why it’s so great.  First prize was 3 months worth of mortgage payments in the form of a check for Nine grand.  Here’s the winner:

Grand Prize Winner.  Prize: $9,000

See?  I told you that was weird.  And what do you think it cost to make that video?  Maybe 20 bucks for a DV tape, a cigar and a bag of fake snow?  20 bucks and those people turned it into 9,000 bucks.  Not bad.  And no, that video didn’t win thanks to an online vote.  Judges picked that video.

I entered my first video contest about 2 years ago and back then, winning contests was incredibly easy.  Few people entered and even fewer people made quality entries.  So as long as you were willing to put a little time and effort into your video (like these Hardie Home contestants did) you’d probably walk away with a big prize.  Production values mattered little since most contest organizers didn’t expect real filmmakers to enter.  They wanted average joes to shoot entries with their home video cameras.  And if you could actually see and hear everything that happened in the video, well that was just a bonus.  Just last year I myself won a $5,000 prize in a contest thanks to a video I shot on a $250 camera I bought at walmart….and then returned.  (my way of sticking it to the man)  It was a pretty hilarious video if I do say so myself but it certainly wasn’t broadcast quality by a long shot.  But it was funny and interesting and at the time, that’s all it took to win a giant check.

The quality of the videos that were winning video contests prior to 2009 didn’t seem to matter very much.  And that’s because companies weren’t using contests as a way to get high-quality advertising content.  The CONTEST was supposed to be the advertising tool.  Hardie Siding gave one person $9,000 but in exchange, a whole lot of people now know what Hardie is.  (like me)  The announcement of a video contest is newsworthy enough that Hardie probably got $9,000 of free advertising out of it.  Just google “I love my Hardie Home” and see how many places the details of the contest appeared.

But things have changed fast in the last year or so.  Real filmmakers have discovered video contests and video contest have discovered real filmmakers.  That’s because companies have realized they not only can get free advertising out of a video contest, but they can also get a free ad that they can use forever.  And on the other side of the equation, filmmakers have realized that their expensive camera and green screen and editing software is just collecting dust while they sit around and collect unemployment so maybe they should do something constructive with their free time and enter a video contest or two.

The point to my ramblings is this; watch that video that won the “I Love My Hardie Home” contest because you won’t be seeing many big-money winners like that anymore.  Hardcore filmmakers have taken over the game and the amateurs are being pushed out.  (Except in cases where the winners are picked by some kind of web vote.  In those cases, you can pretty much guarantee that the winning video will be a lame piece of junk made by some nut who has enough time on his hands to vote for himself over and over.)  But in the contests where judges pick the winners, it’s gonna be quality stuff from here on out.  The only reason a non-pro didn’t swoop in and win the Hardie Home contest is because only people who have houses with that specific kind of siding could enter.  I even briefly considered searching for someone with Hardie siding on their house so I could make a really slick entry about them!  Wow…I guess I should have looked a little harder and maybe gone for it.