If you have a camera, a piece of paper and 5 spare minutes you should probably go ahead and shoot an entry for the Infolinks “Double with a Bubble” video contest. This video will tell you everything you need to know about entering:
So that’s it. Take some footage of yourself showing off a bubble or a sign that says the word “double” and you could win one of 61 prizes. 61 PRIZES! Sure, 40 of those are t-shirts and tote bags but Infolinks is also giving away 10 video cameras and 10 ipods. Plus the best video of them all gets $1,000.
The deadline to enter is January 1st and so far, only 10 entries have been submitted. So if you’re a cheap bastard and you’re heading to a Christmas party next weekend, bring a camera and some bubble gum with you. You can tell your friends that your present to them is that you will shoot, edit and upload a “Double with a Bubble” entry for them!
The total number of entries in the Crash the Superbowl competition has inched up from 4047 to 4062. Over on the contest forum there seemed to be a lot of frantic people who’s entries never appeared in the gallery. So hopefully this means that all those folks have had their issues resolved and all entries that were submitted by the deadline are now up.
Officially, Doritos will be announcing their 6 finalists for the Crash the Superbowl Competition on January 5th. But from what I’ve read around the interwebs, they will start notifying those finalists in the middle of this month. So if you haven’t heard anything by Christmas you probably should make other plans for the Superbowl.
Recently we asked you guys to send us tips for what you thought were the best Crash entries submitted this year. We’ll be announcing our picks for our favorites next Wednesday. So check back to see if you’re a winner! (in our hearts) And if you have any other entries you want to bring to our attention, leave the links as a comment to this post.
Friend of V.C.N and frequent video contest winner Joel Moss AKA “Happy Joel” was recently interviewed by another friend of V.C.N., Matt of Films4Prizes.com…and you can watch said interview right here, right now:
If you’re like really, really new to the concept of making money and winning prizes by entering multiple video contests, Happy Joel is a guy you should study and Films4prizes.com is a site you should bookmark and check every, single day. Joel’s won like a billion dollars by entering video contests (correction: figure is closer to $200,000) and shares his secret to winning in the above interview. Spoiler alert: His secret tip is just to put the work in and enter ‘cause you never know when you might win. That’s simple but excellent advice. I know a ton of filmmakers and I tell them over and over that they should give video contests a shot. Some seem tempted and I’ve even helped a few people find contests and plan entries but in the end, the chicken out. They don’t want to risk spending their time, money and effort on something that might not pay off.
And that right there is why video contests ARE worth the time, money and effort. Though they’ve really grown in popularity, there are still a ton of video contests that are getting very few entries. So don’t be a wuss. Get over to films4prizes.com, pick a contest that sounds fun and go for it.
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.
If you’re a fan of video contests, you know that a lot of them can be sort of frustrating. There are so many ways to screw up a video contest that it’s rare to find one that is run just 100% right. So I decided that maybe we should take a moment every once in a while and profile contests that were done especially well. I thought long and hard about all the contests I’ve entered or read about and one of the best run-contests I’ve ever seen had to be the one that SkinIt.com held earlier this year. I actually ran out of time and didn’t get a chance to shoot an entry for this one but I did pay attention from the sidelines. And I have to say, I was very impressed with the entire operation. SkinIt by the way is a very interesting company. They design stickery-decal like things that you can stick on laptops, ipods, cell phones etc etc. Check out their website to see what I’m talking about. You can even order custom “Skins” and I’ve bought a couple to use in other video contest entries. They’re very handy for dressing up props.
So anyway, what made the Skinit contest so sweet? Well to start, they offered a huge prize for first place; $10,000. That ensured that they would get a mountain of great entries. Then they followed that up by offering large prizes for second and third place (something I always look for since Beardy tends to wind up in 2nd a lot!) They even threw in a $5,000 prize for the best story board idea. Aside from the big prizes though, Skinit did the best thing any company holding a video contest can do; They picked the winners themselves! So Skinit chose to reward quality and not whoever had the willpower to vote for themselves over and over again on youtube.
But that’s enough out of me. Let’s let someone from Skinit tell the rest of the story. Shreya Doshi, one of the organizers of the SkinIt video contest was nice enough to answer a few questions for us and provide a rare look into the other side of video contesting. Next time you see a contest that is being run in a really lame way, you might want to forward the organizers a link to his interview so they can see just what makes a video contest a success.
VCN: Where did the idea come from to hold a video contest to promote Skinit.com? Why did Skinit decide to hold a contest of their own?
SD: Video contests are on the up-and-coming these days – a lot of businesses, small and large, have used them as a way to interact with their customers and build their brand. We wanted to give our customers the chance to contribute to our brand and give them a chance to show us who and what Skinit is to them. We were hoping to open up the creativity gates and see just how much we could do with the Skinit brand, how far we could take a simple product. It’s easy to get stuck in the “same old, same old” when you live and breathe the same concepts day in and day out. Why not let someone fresh take a stab at it? The ideas people came up wit they were definitely refreshing and quite impressive!
VCN: The prize of the contest was very high: $10,000. Plus there was a storyboard competition that had a prize of $5,000. Why did Skinit decided to post such large prizes? I hate to be crude but in the end, did the company get its money’s worth from the contest?
SD: Quality. The prizes were intended to both motivate and reward entrants for quality contributions. We know it isn’t cheap to film and produce a commercial – it involves a lot of resources, time, and effort. It’s important to remember that and make sure we make our contest worth that effort.
VCN: Were you happy with the entries you received?
SD: We definitely received a wide range of entries and I think we ended up with some really professional and fun commercials. We have actually put a couple different ads on the air, not just the winner, and have seen a lot of great response to them! It was really interesting to see the variety of concepts that people came up with and the different ways the Skinit brand was portrayed.
VCN: Filmmakers who enter video contests are usually left in the dark when it comes to how the winners are selected. In the Skinit contest, who picked the winners?
SD: Our judging panel consisted of Paul Buss, CEO of Skinit, Steve Kovsky of San Diego 6 TV (XETV), Pete Weitzner who runs the broadcast journalism program at Chapman University, and Scott Wells, an award-winning commercial director and producer. The goal was to create a panel involving both members of the community and industry specialists that could objectively evaluate the entries.
VCN: How was the judging done? Did the judges all gather together in one place to watch every entry? Or did they watch them on their own? Or maybe the judges only saw a group of finalist videos? (this kind of insight into how a contest is run might seem boring but filmmakers will find it fascinating)
SD: The judges were all given evaluation forms and asked to rate each entry on a scale of 1-6 for each given criteria, including “popularity” based on comments left for each video on the SkinitTV YouTube page. The judges each reviewed the entries individually and then submitted their forms to Skinit. We tallied up the votes and averaged out the scores to determine our top videos. We then had a results meeting with all the judges and revealed the winners. Everyone had a chance to discuss the highs and lows, any surprises, their favorite ads, and their thoughts on the results.
VCN: Which video won the contest? What did everyone at Skinit like best about the entry?
SD: The Grand Prize winner was jaredcicon’s “You Dream It” entry. 1st and 2nd place were actually quite close – within fractions of a point! Made for an interesting discussion during the judges’ results meeting! “You Dream It” had great overall appeal, calling out to all of us who can think of “that crazy Dad.” It not only caught your attention, but held it all the way through the hook. It demonstrated the breadth of our products and the desire of personalization – an important element of the Skinit brand. And of course, it had a memorable punch line with the wife yelling “Jaaaareeedd.” I think that every person I saw watch that ad let out at least a little chuckle when they heard that!
VCN: What were some of the benefits for Skinit for holding a video contest?
SD: Well of course we ended up with some great ads and, like I mentioned earlier, have already aired a few of them – not just “You Dream It.” But beyond that – I think we had our first chance to interact with our customers and get a peek into how they see the Skinit brand. There was a lot of brand exposure for us as well as word of mouth spread and news of the contest got around. We definitely had a lot of fun watching all the entries and seeing the limitless creativity that exists out there. Having been our first contest – we also learned a lot about running contests! A lot of good ideas and entries came from this contest, but we’re hoping to really improve and expand things the next time around…
VCN: Thanks for your time and for setting a great example for other contest-holders!
UPDATE: Looks like Skinit will be doing another video contest next year. Check out this comment we got from them: “Wait until you see the 2010 contest- AWESOME PRIZE(s)! Way bigger than last year’s!” Sounds sweet. Better start thinking up some ideas now!
Invest in Your Love is a reoccurring video contest created to promote tourism to Tahiti. Every couple weeks a new competition is announced and couples can send in videos explaining why the need a free island vacation. Four couples have won so far but I don’t think I’ve posted the results before. The winners are picked by online voting and you can even vote once per day so some videos wind up getting more than 5,000 votes which is pretty ludicrous. Anyway, because the winners are picked in this way, quality entries don’t usually win so they’re not worth posting. But I just saw the latest winning video and I thought it was worth sharing for one very important reason. Here it is:
Kinda cute, right? At the very least it was amusing to see little kids talk about Bernie Madoff and Enron. But it’s sorta of odd that parents would use their kids to get a free trip to Tahiti, isn’t it? I mean, it’s not a free trip for the whole family. Only mom and dad get to go. I’d kind of feel gypped if I were those kids, But I digress. Here’s the thing that really caught my eye. At the very end of the video, for like three seconds, this message appears on screen:
Seriously? All images and music were used with permission? Including the seven or so seconds of the movie Rocky that is shown playing on a TV? (check the 1:16 mark) I just spent 5 minutes googling and I couldn’t even pin down which studio actually owns the rights to that movie. So I’m going to guess that these contest winners didn’t actually clear that footage.
And that is not a small deal. Is it likely that Sylvester Stallone or Warner Bros or MGM or whoever will come along and sue some contest winners from Lexington, KY? Hey…you never know. Did you ever think that you’d see the day when the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) would sue 15 year old kids for downloading music? And those kids didn’t even make any kind of profit from their acts of infringement.
Point is, be careful what you put in your contest entries. Maybe you’ve heard the term “Fair Use” but fair use isn’t as fair as you’d think. If you’re shooting documentary and a TV is playing in the background of a shot, that’s not copyright infringement. But if you shoot a video contest entry and deliberately play a well known film on a TV set for a laugh, you technically just broke the law. And if you end your video with a disclaimer saying “all images and music were used with permission,” then some could argue that you are also committing an act of fraud. No….I’m serious. If the rules of a contest state that only entries that don’t violate the copyrights of others are eligible to win and if you lie about the legal status of your entry you are intentionally deceiving the contest organizers into allowing your ineligible entry in to the contest. So worst case scenario, the couple that made this Tahiti video could be sued by the contest organizers, the losers of the contest and whoever owns the rights to the movie Rocky! Oh, and Sly Stallone and Talia Shire since actors are supposed to get paid to appear in commercials/videos/whatever and they are being used to promote tourism in Tahiti without their knowledge. (just look what happened to American Apparel after they put a picture of woody allen on a few billboards in NY without his permission)
As always, the best advice I can give anyone entering a video contest is this: Read and Follow the rules to a T. The use of copyrighted material has sunk the chances of many great contest entries. These Tahiti folks got away with a little copyright infringement but it’s always better to err on the side of caution.
