You know what Lonely Planet is, right?  If you don’t, go google it and come back.  We’ll wait…

Back?  Ok, good.  Earlier this fall, Lonely Planet announced a very neat idea for a video contest.  People were supposed to create their own travel videos that fit one of a variety of categories and the winner (as determined by a public vote) would get a trip for to San Francisco and would get to shoot a segment for Lonely Planet.  I know, it sounds like actual work but the trip was valued at $10K.

LP picked the finalists for each category.  This announcement vid will give you a taste of each of those entries.

Unfortunately, LP left the selection of the winner up to the “public.”  I’ve seen so much ballot stuffing in so many contests by now that I automatically assume every video contest “winner” in vote-based competitions won because they just voted for themselves over and over.  Of course, I have no idea if the winner stuffed his ballot box or not.  Like I said, I’m just suspicious of all vote-winners.  Anyway, here’s the winner:

This video is actually well made and funny.  There’s a moment in this video where a kid asks “does it smell like bacon around here” in a totally non-ironic way that’s great.  To most editors, that would have been a funny outtake.  But whoever edited this vide did a great job and incorporated some weird, random moments that a normal travel show would leave out.  So I hope the editor gets to go on the trip and work on the video too.