2010 January | Video Contest News

Archive for January, 2010

Tim Tebow’s Crash the Superbowl entry!?

Posted by Beardy on January 29th, 2010

By now you’ve probably heard that CBS has agreed to air a pro-life commercial featuring Heisman troy winner Tim Tebow during the Superbowl next month. In the ad, Tebow supposedly discusses how his mother got sick on a missionary trip while she was pregnant with him and despite doctor’s advice to get an abortion, she didn’t. Tebow isn’t shy about his Christianity (see picture left) and he raised the $2.5 million necessary to air the ad during the big game himself.

But 2.5 Million dollars is a lot of money. So that wasn’t his Plan A. Apparently, Tebow originally hoped that he could get his message out for free by winning Dortios’ Crash the Superbowl contest. Check out Tim Tebow’s anti-abortion/pro-dortios entry below!

UCB's embed feature is wonky so click the pic to watch the video

Ok, obviously that’s not real and was produced by the Upright Citizen’s Brigade. But if you take out all the non-doritos stuff, that would be a really decent Crash the Superbowl entry! All it needed was some canned classical music and a ninja or a zombie and I would have believed it was a real submission.

Famous Dave’s fan film festival winners

Posted by Beardy on January 26th, 2010

The BBQ restaurant chain and sauce maker Famous Dave’s just announced the winners of their first “Famous Fan Film Festival.” BBQ lovers were supposed to shoot a short movie parody that incorporated Famous Dave’s in some interesting way. The grand prize was only $1,000 but I was amazed by the amount of love that went into some of the 30 entries that were received. Here’s the first place winner:

First Place. Prize: $1,000

That was neat. But I the second place entry cracked me up:

Second Place. Prize: $300 in cash and gift cards

I wish I could grill you! The guy who delivered the long monologue deserves an extra gift card just for remembering all his lines. You know what, I think I’ll post the third place entry too. It’s worth watching simply because the girl playing Mrs. Robinson is hotter than…hold on, let me check the famous dave’s website for a metaphor….Got it, she’s hotter than a full bottle of Devil’s Spit!

Third Place. $250 in cash and gift cards.

Like I said, even though the prizes in this contest were small, the contestants went all out. Check out this Top Gun parody that got an honorable mention. It was disqualified because videos were supposed to parody a single scene and they did like a whole crazy trailer. But they, and everyone who entered, got some Famous Dave’s gift cards as a thank you. So why did so many people put so much work into their entries when only a thousand bucks was at stake? From the looks of the videos, no pros entered this contest; only real, hardcore Famous Dave’s fans. Plus the theme of the contest was a great one and probably inspired a lot of people. Hopefully famous Dave’s will see this contest as a successful test run and do something bigger down the road.

Adweek says: The Crash the Superbowl finalists suck

Posted by Beardy on January 24th, 2010

I don’t know if this article appeared in the print addition of Adweek magazine or just on the website. But I do know the author of the piece, Barbara Lippert pretty much thinks Doritos’ Crash the superbowl finalists and most User-generated content, suck hard. Here’s a taste of the article:

“I’ve just looked at the six finalists in Doritos’ “Crash the Super Bowl” contest, and before going any further, I’d like to ask: Do I really have to pick one? Chosen from more than 4,000 entries by Doritos marketing people and agency Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, among others, these six really are that bad. Basically, the choices boil down to how you like your main character — smacked, zapped, bloodied or strangled. Oh, there’s also a fat slob who’s voluntarily been buried alive in a coffin full of Doritos. Hey, even Homer Simpson didn’t think of that one!” (lol, but I did!- Beardy)

“There’s no use bemoaning the uniformity of lame ideas here. Cheap production budgets produce cheap laughs. (And obviously, particularly since the advent of YouTube, the American public has been fed a steady diet of violent and dumb video jokes over the years.) The end product, the Super Bowl spots, are the Oreos atop the cake, the icing on the salty snack.”

Well shit lady, tell us what you really think! Obviously, a lot of people think the Crash the Superbowl finalists this year are kinda on the lame side. But the author of the adweek article uses the crappiness of some of the Doritos videos as proof that we little guys can never match the brilliant work that Madison avenue cranks out. She says….

“Here, in a nutshell, is why we need real newspapers, not just bloggers, and real ad agencies, not just amateurs trying it at home. Depth. If Apple’s “1984″ were made by these people, you could forget about allusions to a famous book (what?) or political philosophy (huh?). The sledgehammer would hit Big Brother in the balls.”

If Apple were to put up 5 million in prizes for “deep” Superbowl commercials you know what would happen? They’d get 4,000 entries and I bet at least 6 of them would be hella’ deep. But we’re talking about a contest held by a chip company, aren’t we? There’s not a lot of room for depth now is there. Just think, have you ever seen a “professionally” made Doritos commercial that was deep? Plus, comparing a legendary, 26 year old, Superbowl commercial with 6 user-generated ads from 2010 is a little unfair. If the author wanted her comparison to be more appropriate, she would compare this batch of finalist entries to commercials that ran during the most recent Superbowl. Like maybe that Cheetos ad where the girl gets pigeons to attack (and presumably poop on) a loudmouth on a cell phone. Or maybe any Godaddy.com ad ever that features a girl stopping just short of getting naked and then implying you can see the uncensored version of the ad on the Godaddy website. Yep….pure class. We amateurs should be ashamed of ourselves.

At least the author is willing to admit that last year’s winner, Free Doritos wasn’t as terrible as this year’s finalists. She says “Compared to this year’s crop, that ad was positively Bergman-esque.” Then she goes on to bash specific finalists:

“Most of the credit for this year’s ideas should go to Mo, Larry, Curley & Associates. There’s yet another entry involving a vending machine, and one with a dog who puts his no-bark collar on a cruel human. The faux corpse munching on chips in his coffin is an insult to people who value a Christian funeral, never mind an affront to sexy, non-slobby vampires everywhere.”

You really should check out the whole article. It’s brimming with disdain for “user-generated content.” Here it is: CHIPS OFF THE OLD BLOCK.

The comments from people that obviously make their living creating commercials are pretty harsh too. Last week, I encouraged VCN readers to support and vote for the Crash the Superbowl finalist that I though had the best chance of scoring in the Top 3 in the ad meter. (Underdog) It’s not so much that I am worried how Doritos will look if they have to air 3, kinda lame ads, but I’m worried that we, the amateurs, the content-creating users, the freelances and the little guys will look like we weren’t able to step up and create top notch material even when 5 million bucks is on the line.

Did Doritos do a great job picking their 6 finalists this year? No. Will marketing people watch the 3 CTSB commercials that air during the superbowl and assume that Doritos picked bad ads? No. They will simply assume that the 3 ads that air are the best of the best. They must be, they made it to the Superbowl, didn’t they?

And that’s what frustrates me. The more successful the Crash the Superbowl campaign is, the more imitation contests will spring up this year. Most of us will never win a big-money contest like CTSB, be we sure as heck have a good chance at winning smaller contests. And the reason there are so many of those smaller contests happening these days is because Doritos showed that when given a chance, we the viewers could deliver awesome content.

But what is Doritos showing the world we can do this year? If YOU weren’t impressed by this year’s crop of CTSB finalists, imagine how people in the ad industry (the ones who might want to do similar contests of their own someday) will react to the selected ads. Oh…I guess you don’t have to imagine. Just read the Adweek article.

Careerbuilder’s re-made “Hire My TV ad” superbowl commercials

Posted by Beardy on January 21st, 2010

Hey, do you remember the OTHER Superbowl commercial contest that was looking for entries last year? You know, the weirdly named, “Hire My Tv Ad” contest sponsored by Careerbuilder? For that one you were supposed to film an idea for a commercial and Careerbuilder would pick one they liked, re-shoot it professionally and then air it during the Superbowl. Guess they didn’t have enough faith in we non-pros to promise to put something we shot in front of 100 million people. Of course, they only offered one, $100,000 prize compared to the Doritos contest which offered a potential, max prize of 2 million bucks. So filmmakers didn’t go “all-in” for this contest like they did for Crash the Superbowl.

“Hire my TV Ad” was a very strangely run contest. After what seemed like forever, Careerbuilder announced they had picked THREE winners. But I get the impression that only the ad that airs during the Superbowl will receive the cash. The re-shot versions of the selected entries have just appeared on line. Here are the three winning entries and their three professional remakes:

CASUAL FRIDAY: Original

CASUAL FRIDAY: Remake

JOB FAIRY: Original

JOB FAIRY: Remake

Exactly which ad is supposed to air on Superbowl Sunday is supposed to be a mystery. But the contest site explains that the third ad has been deemed “Too Hot For TV.”

WORST SEAT: Original

WORST SEAT: Remake

All I can say is, Damn you Janet Jackson! You and your wayward nipple have made the networks way to anal about what they show. A flaming fart is PG-13 at worst.

Anyway, these are all kinda “meh.” Just like the re-shot Taxlsayer commercial I wrote about on Wednesday, the original versions all have more heart that the slick re-makes. The flaming fart one is actually FUNNIER than the remake and it looks nice enough to air.

The Hire My TV ad contest has a lot of potential and I hope Careerbuilder brings it back next year. But I’d suggest they raise the prize and offer to air the winning ad as-is. This re-shoot business is kind of a buzz kill.

Re-made Taxslayer.com winners start airing

Posted by Beardy on January 20th, 2010

Last spring, Taxslayer.com befuddled many a video contestant when they awarded first place and $25,000 in their annual Taxslayer commercial contest to frequent contest winner, HappyJoel Levinson. Here’s his winning entry:

Winner, 2009 Taxlsayer commercial contest. Prize: $25,000

The other contestants were befuddled because well….that’s a really weird video! It’s funny but obviously it wasn’t something taxslayer could actually put on tv. And that’s why so many of the other contestants were confused. The year before, Taxslayer aired the winning entry as-is. (click here to watch it) So contestants assumed that Taxslayer would be doing that again and many of them sunk a lot of time, money and production values into their submissions. I actually entered this contest and it was my first video contest loss. (winning was pretty easy back in 2007 and 2008.) In the days after Happyjoel’s video was picked I followed the reaction and let me tell you, people were PISSED. I’ve seen a lot of angry youtube comments in my day but damn, the other contestants flipped the fuck out.

Taxslayer explained that what they liked about Happyjoel’s video was the idea and they weren’t actually going to air the commercial. Instead, they were going to have professionals re-shoot it. I only spent about 80 bucks on my entry but I remember some really slick submissions. (here’s the one I was positive was going to win) If Taxslayer had let everyone know they were looking for “ideas” and not ready-for-tv ads, they would have saved a lot of filmmakers a lot of money.

Fast forward to tax season 2010. Happyjoel’s re-made video has finally hit the airwaves:

I’m glad that happyjoel actually got to play the part he created in his contest entry. But you know what? I think I prefer the original version. The (somewhat) fancy re-make is a bit stiff and the orginal was watchable because of how super weird it was.

Speaking of super weird, Taxslayer apparently decided to re-shoot a second entry from the 2009 contest. Here’s the re-make:

Yeah…that was pretty lame. But the weirdness deepens. Check out the entry that commercial was based on:

The orginal was funnier and more interesting than the remake! Whoever posted the re-shot version to youtube added this note: “Tax Slayer 60 second spot. This commercial was derived from contest creative. The spot was toned down to not look like an abduction, but rather a spoiled brat not wanting to conform.”

I cannot for the life of me figure out why Taxslayer chose that ad to remake or why they turned it into something that was thoroughly not funny. Whoever wrote that remake forgot the oldest rule in comedy; abduction victims are way more hilarious than spoiled brats.

Snickers and Bounce results

Posted by Beardy on January 19th, 2010

If there’s one thing I love, it’s candy. And I’d say my 5th favorite candy bar out there is the Snickers bar. Two weeks ago I would have ranked it my 7th favorite candy bar (after Hershey’s Symphony bar but before the Heath bar) but Snickers earned itself a bump in my candy ranking last week when they purchased $15,000 worth of commercials (3) that were made by Poptent users. Here’s my favorite of the three selected ads:

Purchased by Snickers. Price: $5,000

Heh heh. Nice. And if you read the “creative brief” that Snickers worked up for this assignment, you’ll see that the team who made the above video really nailed the “guys being guys” theme Snickers was looking for. You can see the other two ads that Snickers purchased for $5K a piece here.

But that ain’t all. Last week, Bounce also bought $10,000 worth of ads for their Bounce Dryer bars (2) created by Poptent users. The deadline for the Snickers assignment was in December but the Bounce deadline was way back in September. Man, what the heck took them so long to pick 2 videos? That procrastination is one reason the Bounce Dryer bar doesn’t even crack my top 10 favorite candy bars. Also, they taste like lint. Here’s one of the selected Bounce ads:

Purchased by Bounce. Price: $5,000

You can see the other ad that Bounce purchased for $5K as well as several amusing editor’s choice winners here.

Crash the Superbowl: Ad Meter Predictions

Posted by Beardy on January 17th, 2010

A few posts back I said I’d be reviewing all 6 of Doritos’s Crash the Superbowl finalists. Well, after discovering a free graph making program on-line where you can make the points look like little Doritos, I’ve decided to do something way geekier. Instead of doing straight reviews, I’m going to throw some hardcore graph action in your face and try to predict how each commercial might score on the real USA Today Ad Meter.

These graphs won’t show my personal opinions. Rather, they will show what I expect the average opinions of everyone in the USA Today focus group might be. If you missed our explanation the other day about how the USA Today Superbowl ad meter works, check it out here. Remember, USA Today’s focus groups include people from all walks of life. So no matter how much 90% of the group likes a certain ad, there will always be at least a few people who dislike it.

Predicting how a commercial will score on the Ad Meter isn’t actually that tough. The moments that people will score highly are easy to identify. So even if the scores on these graphs don’t match what the real scores would look like, the peaks and valleys will appear in the same places. So here we go. I’ll put the ads in order of best scoring to worst:

1. UNDERDOG. PREDICTED SCORE: 8.19

SUMMARY: The guys who made this spot knew what they were doing. It’s essentially designed to score well in the Ad Meter. EVERYONE loves dogs and EVERYONE hates jerks that are mean to dogs. And history is on the side of this video. Remember that Budweiser commercial where the dog trains the Clydesdale, Rocky-style? That scored 1^st on the ad meter in 2008. Like I said, everyone loves dogs. Plus, the cuteness and comedy in this ad start early which means which means viewers will “like it” for longer. Based on last year’s ad meter results, a score of 8.19 would get Underdog into the Top 3.

2. SNACK ATTACK SAMURAI. PREDICTED SCORE: 7.46

SUMMARY: This spot isn’t the most original submission I’ve seen but I bet it will make a lot of people smile. It’s got kind a kooky vibe that I think viewers will find appealing, even if they don’t know why. It LOOKS funny and FEELS funny, so even if it’s not actually super hilarious, I think it will score decently.

3. KIDS THESE DAYS. PREDICTED SCORE: 7.15

SUMMARY: Since a commercial’s final ad meter score is an average of how every second of the ad scored, Kids These Days probably won’t fair too well since it takes a while for the comedy to start. But the main gag is a strong, likable one. After Mr. Popped Collar gets shocked, I’m guessing viewers will keep their dials turned up as a retro-active sign of appreciation.

4. THE SMACKOUT. PREDICTED SCORE: 7.02

SUMMARY: This spot was perfectly cast. Unfortunately, it wasn’t perfectly shot. The color is just plain messed up. I like this story and think it was very well acted but it looks bad at times and I think that will be a turn off to viewers. The use of cleavage was also a little gratuitous and I suspect a lot of women will punish this ad by keeping the score a little lower than is reasonable. The slapstick is funny but not really Superbowl funny and I don’t think many viewers will be extremely impressed.

5. CASKET. PREDICTED SCORE: 6.85

SUMMARY: This is the best looking of all the CTSB finalists but all the other commercials airing during the superbowl will look as good as “Casket” or better. So production values won’t get them much ad meter juice. (Though I think the pretty church setting might result in an initial spike) This video has two things going against it; One, the protagonist’s plan is cruel and feels like a weak excuse for the guy to be in the casket and two, I think the “dead” man was miscast. Much of this commercial’s comedy comes from looks on the “dead” man’s face. I think the actor that was cast is simply annoying looking and I bet a lot of viewers would agree with me.

6. HOUSE RULES. PREDICTED SCORE: 6.29

SUMMARY: My gut reaction to this spot is that I like it. But unfortunately, because of the way it’s set up, it’s doomed to perform poorly on the ad meter. The graph tells the whole story. A whopping 22 seconds go by before the real comedy starts. That’s an eternity for a Superbowl commercial. I think that not only will viewers not start scoring the commercial positively until the action starts, I think some may even start scoring it negatively if they start getting bored.

When you look at each ad charted out like this, you kind of have to wonder why Doritos picked some of these ads for the finals. I mean, I was able to whip up these graphs in like an hour. Millions and millions of dollars are at stake in the Crash the Superbowl contest so it seems hard to believe that Doritos wouldn’t have somebody analyze each finalist’s chances in the Ad meter. Last year, a commercial needed to score at least a 7.49 just to make the top 10. So if Doritos did graph these out, then they already know that several of these videos just have zero chance of scoring “in the money.” Hmmm, could it be that’s what they’re counting on?

So, how does the USA TODAY Ad meter work?

Posted by Beardy on January 13th, 2010

I get the dial, but what's the pen for?

Yesterday I explained that the best way to ensure that Doritos will bring the Crash the Superbowl contest back next year is to help get the videos most likely to do well on the USA Today ad meter to air during the game. If ads that are doomed to flop make it to air, no CTSB ads will place “in the money” and Doritos might decide the contest isn’t worth the trouble and expense anymore. But if Doritos pulls off another high-profile ad-meter win like they did with “Free Doritos” last year, the company would probably want to stick with what was working for them. As long as just one CTSB entry makes the Top 3, that will be big news and result in lots of free publicity.

And this wouldn’t just be good news for people who are hoping for another shot at Doritos’ prize money. It would be great news for anyone who’s out there making money in online video contests. Video contests were few and far between just 2 years ago but the success of the Crash the Superbowl contest has inspired tons of other companies to hold their own user-generated content competitions. So the better Dortios does in during the superbowl, the more smaller video contests will spring up later this year.

Over the next week or so, we will be reviewing each of the 6 Finalists and analyzing their chances on the ad meter. (If you look to the right of your screen though, you will see that we already recommend that you vote for UNDERDOG since it’s the entry most likely to crack the Top 3.) But before we start, it’s important to quickly explain how the USA Today ad meter works….

Every year, USA Today gathers approximately 300 random Americans of all types to rate Superbowl ads. This is done in 2 locations in different states. These 300 or so people watch the Superbowl commercials with little dials in their hands. When the viewers see something the like, they turn the dial to the right. When they see something the don’t like, they turn it to the left. The more they like or don’t like something, the farther they turn the dial.

A number system is used to give each video a score. When a commercial starts, everyone’s dial is set to “neutral.” Data from the dial is recorded for the entire duration of a commercial. The scores for each individual’s dial are averaged out to one number for each ad. Then, all those average scores from all those dials are averaged out to give one, official score. After the game, those scores are tabulated and the ads are ranked by USA Today. Here’s USA Today’s list of the Top 10 ranked ads from last year.

So as you’ll see, last year, the Crash the Superbowl ad made the top spot with a score of 8.46 and the 2nd and 3rd place ads also had scores over 8.0. So in our analysis, “8.0” is our magic number. If an ad isn’t likely to score higher than 8.0, it probably doesn’t have a shot at making the top 3.

Help ensure that Crash the Superbowl will be back next year!

Posted by Beardy on January 12th, 2010

Not pictured: you.

It’s been a week now since Doritos announced their 6 Finalists in the Crash the Superbowl contest and it seems that the unanimous opinion of the people of the Internetz is that Dorito’s “Top 6” selections are….not wonderful, which is surprising because last year, all 5 Crash the Superbowl finalists were exceedingly wonderful! They were all tremendous, hilarious and totally original. (Well, that one with the cat wasn’t that hilarious but I’m trying to make a point here.) I hate to say it but pretty much every finalist commercial from last year is better than every finalist commercial this year. With one exception…but I’ll talk about that in a second.

I entered the Crash the Superbowl contest this time around and of course I would have loved to get to the finals. But because of the extreme level of quality seen in last year’s finalists, I didn’t get my hopes up. This was the first year I entered the competition and in all honesty, I saw my CTSB experience this year as a test run for next year. This year I figured out what I could pull together and for how much and in what type of time frame. So I wasn’t heart broken when I didn’t get an e-mail from Doritos before the official notify date. I was actually really looking forward to the announcement of the finalists so that I could see some kick ass video contest entries.

But there isn’t a ton of kick-ass going on in the official Top 6. All of the finalists are…ok. Two of them though are so technically flawed that I am stunned that they could have made it this far. A third has an inexplicably cruel story that makes absolutely no sense. But it looked slick so I guess that was good enough to make it this year. Not making the finals is not a big deal. But seeing sub-par ads reach the Top 6 really stings.

A bizarre mix of WIN and FAIL

So we’re all upset. But what can we do about it? Right now, I think the best course of action for all us disgruntled Doritos fans should be to start looking towards next year. The smartest thing we can do now is try to ensure that Doritos will bring the Crash the Superbowl contest back this fall.

How do we do that? By helping Doritos score another USA Today Ad meter win. As our pal Rummy once said, You go to war with the army you have, not the one you wish you had. That means instead of moaning about what videos SHOULD have made it to the finals, contestants should focus on ensuring that the best videos of the Top 6 make it to the Superbowl. Breaking into the Top 3 on the Ad Meter is the entire point of this year’s contest,. So if the selected commercials flop and don’t accomplish that goal, Doritos might decide to try something different in 2011.

So, for the next week or so, we will be reviewing all 6 of this year’s Crash the Superbowl finalists. Not only will we be critiquing these entries, but we will be analyzing their theoretical chances on the USA Today Ad Meter poll. We’ll be explaining which videos would have a fighting chance and which would be doomed to be remembered as the lamest spots of the game.

Spoiler alert! We have already been calculatin’ the odds of each video and have determined the entry that has the best chance of scoring a Top 3 spot is UNDERDOG. Not only does it have the best chances, it was actually my personal favorite video before the finalists were even announced! So in the case of Underdog, I was very happy to see it make the finals. We’ll have more on UNDERDOG and why we think it has what it takes to score another big win for Doritos, later. But since there are only 20 DAYS left to cast your votes, I wanted to declare Underdog as our official pick right now. If you look at the upper right hand corner of our sidebar, you’ll see a little daily reminder to vote. Click that banner and you’ll go right to Underdog’s page on the Crash the Superbowl site. And if you head to Doritoscontest.com, you can learn more about the entry and the guys who made it.

If you want another chance at Crashing the Superbowl, you first have to help make sure the contest comes back. So do like Beardy and vote everyday for the unstoppable juggernaut that is UNDERDOG!

AMC Technology winners

Posted by Beardy on January 8th, 2010

And now for something completely different….

As I said yesterday, if Crash the Superbowl was your first video contest experience, it shouldn’t be your last. Giant piles of money are just sitting out there on the web waiting to be claimed by any filmmaker willing to put in a little time and effort. I was stunned by the level of quality I saw in some of this year’s Doritos entries. If many of the filmmakers who participated in The Crash were to recycle their Doritos ideas for other video contests they’d walk away with plenty of big prizes.

Smaller money contests are definitely worth your time and energy because they are way, way easier to WIN than the big-money, high-profile competitions. Recently, a company called AMC technology held a video contest to promote their “Solutions for the Call Center” services. Because the company required that a lot of specific, technical info be included in the entries, only about 7 people entered. But AMC gave out three prizes: $2,500, 1,500 and $1,000. So anyone who entered at almost a 50% chance of winning some cash.

The theme of the contest was to show how AMC could help a business during the hectic holiday season. Here’s the winner:

First Place. Prize: $2,500.

Heh, heh. Guess what? That was my entry! Last year me and a friend went to a pub crawl called “SantaCon” where everyone dressed as Santas. So I had access to several santa suits. I bought one more, paid a few extras 30 bucks each to put the suits on and march around an office and kerblamo….2,500 bucks. The writing was tough because of all the tech-talk but the shoot only took about 2 hours. Editing probably took three. Max I put 15 hours into this. Tally all that up and I made $166 per hour (pre-tax.) Not to shabby. About a week and a half ago, I found out I won 3,500 in another contest so 2010 is only 8 days old and I’ve already got 6 Grand in checks coming to me thanks to video-contesting. So if you’re one of the 4,000 people who didn’t make it to the Crash the superbowl finals, quick feeling sorry for yourselves and making anti-Doritos facebook pages. Grab your camera and find a contest that is a little easier to win.

Juding the Crash the Superbowl Judges

Posted by Beardy on January 7th, 2010

Should that have been you up there?

First of all, if you’re new to the site, welcome! We’ve been getting hundreds of new readers a day thanks to the Crash the Superbowl contest. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be covering the contest closely but we’ll also be doing our regular thing which is covering video contests of all sizes. If this year’s Crash the Superbowl contest was your first video contest experience I recommend that it not be your last. You may not have made it to the finals, but there are plenty of other big prizes out there waiting to be won. I personally have never won a big money prize but in the last two years I’ve won a total of $30,000 in smaller contests. And there are plenty of other folks on the web who have won a who lot more than that. So I hope you all enjoy both our Dortios and non-Doritos related posts and share your own opinions in the comments sections. If you’d like to be know whenever we put up a new post, just click the yellow RSS button to the right to subscribe to the blog.

Doritos announced their “Top 6” on Monday night and now that I’ve had a some time to let the finalists sink in, I’ve warmed up to them. All of them are at least decent. Unlike a lot of unhappy folks, I wouldn’t classify any of them as “sucking.” Are all of them good enough for the superbowl? Maybe not. We’re there better entries that got overlooked? Yes. I think the Doritos judges were just maybe 2 or 3 choices away from having a really awesome Top 6.

But not everyone thinks so. In fact, based on the e-mails and comments I’ve been getting and from what I’ve read on the Crash the Superbowl forum, a lot of you really, really, REALLY hate the choices Doritos made. I’ve read lots of theories. Including:

1. The judges intentionally picked bad finalists to ensure the company would not have to pay out 5 million bucks.
2. One finalist entry was picked solely for politically correct reasons.
3. The USAtoday article that revealed “Casket” as a finalist gave them an unfair advantage
4. The contest was “rigged” in some way for some reason
5. Doritos picked 2 videos from the makers of the commercial that won the first CTSB competition in 2007 because they know them and like them.

One disgruntled contestant went so far as to create a facebook group in protest of the judges decisions:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?v=wall&ref=search&gid=234804648719

Personally, I won’t be joining that particular group. I think that 3 of Doritos choices are funny and good enough for the game. And three good ones are all you need. I even think one of them has a shot at the top spot on the USAtoday ad meter. I’ll be listing my three personal choices as well as my three predictions in the next few days. In the meantime, why don’t you guys let us know what you think in the comments section? Did the judges blow it or did they nail it? What ads do you think were robbed of a finalist spot? Which commercials do you think suck and why? Which one will you be voting for?

And I am looking for an answer for a specific question. I didn’t enter or even pay attention really to the CTSB contest last year. After the last year’s Top 5 were announced, what was the reaction? Did people instantly love “Snowglobe?’ Were people claiming the contest was rigged or that the judges picked 6 awful entries? If you followed the contest last year and can fill me in on what the consensus was, lemme know in a comment.

Doritos’ 2010 Crash the Superbowl Finalists

Posted by Beardy on January 5th, 2010

Well it’s finally D (for Doritos) day. Last night, at midnight central time, Doritos revealed the Top 6 finalists for their 2010 installment of the Crash the Superbowl commercial contest. The prize for making it to this round is $25,000 and a trip to the big game for each filmmaker.

Voting is now open and the public will decide which three of these submissions make it to the Superbowl. The finalists are:

“Underdog” AKA “Animal Cruelty” by jwsvoboda. Video #5584.

“The Smackout” by bhayword. Video #5511

“Casket” AKA “The Casket” by ms. Video #4374

“Snack Attack Samurai” by CBer. Video #1786

“House Rules” by Dejesus_77. Video #3713

“Kids These Days” by Blackmariastudios. Video #5427

You can watch all the videos and vote for your favorite at the Crash the Superbowl site.

I had figured that when the finalists were announced I would post the results and share my impressions but….I have no idea what to say here. There are two spots that I prefer but the rest are just…baffling. I know that I recommended that Doritos consider some entries for the top 6 that were rough around the edges but I never thought they’d choose entries that had actual technical flaws.

I am also feeling pretty burned about “The Casket” making the finals. As I’ve mentioned, my entry for the Crash the Superbowl contest, “Rest in Chips” was also about a guy who faked his death and in accordance with his fake last wish was buried in a casket full of Doritos that gets knocked over. As I explained in yesterday’s post and this post from November 19^th, I suspect that I might be the victim of plagiarism. If you watch both entries and ignore the superficial aesthetic elements (camera quality, location, actors, costumes) and compare the concept and story elements (fake funeral, a final wish, a casket of doritos, knocked over casket etc) it’s hard to deny that both videos MAY have both based on my original concept (which anyone could have seen in a storyboard I posted to youtube in October.) But even if I wasn’t plagiarized, my video was posted first. I never expected to make it to the finals but a major part of each entry’s score was “Originality.” And I believe that I read that if two similar ideas were posted, the originality score of the video that was uploaded second would take a hit. I even e-mailed Doritos and told them about my plagiarism concerns and so I can’t believe that “The Casket” still made it. The conspiracy theorist in me thinks that they almost are hoping for controversy.

Since I’m sort of at a loss for words right now, how about I turn the discussion over to you? What do you guys think of the finalists? Let us know in the comment section…..

UPDATE: SWEET JUMPING JESUS!!! It turns out that TWO of the entries in the top 6 were created by the same people! They are posted under different names but both “Kids these Days” and “Underdog” are products of a company called 5 Point Productions. That blows my mind!! People are going to flip the F#$% out when they hear about this. I think “Underdog” is great but the other entry is just ok. Doritos couldn’t spread the wealth around a little? In no way do I blame the 5 Point Productions people for this. Good for them for kicking so much ass. They couldn’t find ONE more decent spot among the 4067 that were posted!?

CORRECTION: Just One of the crash the superbowl finalists revealed early

Posted by Dan on January 4th, 2010

UPDATE: We blew it! Looks like Beardy got taken by some bad “insider” info. Two of our three “finalist” scoops turned out to be wrong! We are really sorry about that folks. We have removed the incorrect info from this site.

We were correct about one finalist though. “The Casket” was the only of the 6 finalist videos to leak before the official announcement at 12AM Central time today. So the portions of this post that pertain to “The Casket” will remain up.
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Tonight at 11PM Eastern time, voting begins in the 2010 installment of Doritos’ Crash the Superbowl video contest. From the looks of the CTSB website, the 6 finalists won’t be revealed until voting begins. So you’ll have to wait until then to see which entries made the cut. Or you could just continue reading and see three of those six videos right now.

Like I said, the Crash the Superbowl finalists won’t officially be announced until later tonight. But I can say with 95% certainty that these three ads have made the top six. WARNING: Two of these three videos are on this list because they are educated guesses based on very, very strong information. If you actually made any of these videos and you have not heard from Doritos, that means you didn’t make the finals! In that unlikely scenario, I apologize for getting your hopes up. Again, these 3 are 95% for sure.

INCORRECT VIDEO #1 REMOVED

INCORRECT VIDEO #2 REMOVED

“The Casket” by ms. Video #3006

“The Casket” is the only entry I am certain made the final cut because it was mentioned in an article about superbowl commercial sales on usatoday.com today. This….is not good. As some of you frequent readers may know, I was worried “The Casket” might get to the finals because I suspect that the makers of that entry may have plagiarized my own work. Here is MY casket-full-of-doritos entry, video #1983, “Rest in Chips.”

This is my video and NOT a finalist:

Both videos feature a dead man’s last wish to be buried in a casket full of Doritos, a funeral for that guy that turns out to be fake, a big, framed photo of the “dead” guy enjoying a bag of Doritos next to the casket, shots of that guy in his casket buried up to his face in chips and a climax in which the “dead” guy gets his comeuppance when the casket of chips is knocked over. So many of the same key elements appear in both spots that it’s hard to chalk the whole thing up to coincidence.

A month before I shot “Rest in Chips,” I created a (crude) animated storyboard so that I could plan out the timing of the shoot. I uploaded the storyboard to youtube the first week of October so that my actors and crew could get a better idea of what I had in mind. I named it something like “Doritos storyboard.” That means any potential Doritos contestants could have seen it while searching youtube to see last year’s winners. In fact, it would have been one of the top results since it was a recent upload. After maybe a week I realized this and pulled the video. Then I re-uploaded it with a generic name so it would not appear in Doritos-related searches. Here it is. If you watch it on youtube you’ll see that its upload date is October 12th. Play my youtube storyboard and “The Casket” at the same time and they almost seem to line up shot for shot. And for the record, I did some googling and “The Casket” was shot on November 1st. By November 1st I already had rough cuts of my entry posted to my youtube page.

I really never expected to make it to the finals and I’m not upset because I didn’t win. But I am upset that someone who may have plagiarized my work is going to be rewarded for their actions. Because “The Casket” was so slickly produced, I knew it would be a contender for the final six. So several weeks ago I e-mailed Doritos, sent them my links and told them about my suspicions. They told me they would send the information to their legal team. But I never heard from anyone from Doritos again.

Originally, I posted (at length) about my plagiarism worries on November 19th. Since then, my suspicions have only increased. The usatoday.com article mentions the name of the producer of “The Casket” and explains that he works at the church that appears in that video. They even mention the church by name. Based on this new info, I dug through my site logs and it seems very, very likely that the producer of “The Casket” found my post about his entry last week and read it over and over.

So think about that for a second. Imagine you just found out that you made the final 6 in the CTSB contest. Then imagine that you google “Doritos casket” (according to my weblogs, that’s how the person found my post) and see that the number one search result for that phrase was a blog post by another filmmaker suggesting that your entry might have been a rip-off of his idea. What would you do? I know what I’d do. If I didn’t steal the idea, I’d immediately e-mail the blogger or leave a comment and explain my side of the story. But no message ever came.

And now that I know that the producer of “The Casket” works at the church featured in their entry, I think I have a pretty good idea what happened. The producer or the director of the entry went to youtube after the Crash the Superbowl contest was announced and searched for “doritos” so they could see what the 2009 finalist videos looked like. “The Casket” was shot with a very expensive camera called a “RED Camera.” Any filmmaker who watches last year’s finalists would recognize that all but one of them were shot with RED cameras. So the producers of “The Casket” clearly did their homework. And I suspect that while they were doing their homework, they saw my storyboard. The idea in the storyboard seems kind of outrageous and un-film-able….unless you happen to have free and total access to an amazingly beautiful church. My theory is that they saw my storyboard and figured no one would be crazy enough to get a casket and dig a giant hole in the ground. I think they assumed the idea would never be shot so they took it and adapted the idea to fit the location they had at their disposal.

For the record, I have no concrete proof of any unethical behavior and if my theories are proven to be incorrect I will wipe all mention of them from this site and apologize to everyone involved. But the circumstantial evidence is pretty strong I think. I have a reputation of my own to think about and I’d never share these ideas in public if my gut didn’t tell me I was on to something.

I really have no idea what I’m going to do about all this but to quote The Dude; “This aggression will not stand, man.” If anybody has any suggestions about how I should proceed I’d love to hear ‘em.

Video contest winner attacked by poisonous jellyfish!

Posted by Beardy on January 3rd, 2010

The happy dude in that pic right here is Ben Southall. Last spring his audition video took first place out of more than 34,000 submissions in the “Best Job in the world” video contest. His prize was to spend 6 months “working” as Tourism Queensland’s Islands Caretaker. Basically the lucky bastard was a paid spokesman and his biggest duty was blogging about his experiences in the islands around the great barrier reef.

Last week, during the final days of Ben’s 6 month gig, he was out jet-skiing when he was stung by some super-tiny but crazy-deadly jellyfish. He rushed right to the hospital and the doctor knew right away he had been zapped by a “Irukandji” and fixed him up. But it sounds like it was sort of a close call. Apprently at least two people in Australia have died from Irukandji stings since 2002. Again, that dude is one lucky bastard.

So Ben is fine and probably back to the real world now. You can read all about his jellyfish encounter on his Best Job in the World blog. And hey, I found the video that got him his nearly-fatal gig. Here it is: