The results for Application Service’s “Database security Video Smackdown!” were announced back in December but I just saw the winning video today and it’s super weird so I thought I’d post it. Contestants were supposed to shoot videos about what else, Database security. The grand prize was only $1,500 but the winners also got a trophy which is kinda weird. The winning video is unique because it’s about the contest itself and the trophy actually makes an appearance. Though…it sort of looks like a baseball trophy. Anyway, here’s the winner. It sorta reminds me of that comedy central show, Stella. Oh, don’t watch this if you have an aversion to seeing blurred out man-asses.
First place. Prize: $1,500 and a trophy
If I could, I’d give those guys a trophy for “funniest fart joke in a video contest entry.” Three other videos also won 500 bucks each and you can see them here:
The deadline for the Louisiana Hot Sauce video contest was on my calendar for probably 3 months but I never got around to shooting an entry. Probably for the best since the winners were announced yesterday and I don’t think I could have topped two of them. The second place winner is just ok but the first and third place winning videos are great. I’ll post all three below.
The best video contest entries are those that include a quick moment of magic that makes the viewer want to watch the video again as soon as it’s over. As I was watching the first place winner I was thinking “oh this is neat, and it’s making me hungry…very effective…I can see….whoa!….HOW DID THEY DO THAT!?!” Watch the first place winner and you’ll know the “whoa!” moment as soon as it happens. Very nice work.
First place. Prize: $5,000
Second Place. Prize: $2,500
Third Place. Prize: $500
Special congratulations to friend of VCN, Danny Winn for taking third place. That song is good enough to be Louisiana Hot Sauce’s actual jingle!
Looks like Louisiana Hot Sauce got around 80 entries for this contest. That’s a pretty good number for a contest of this size. If you’re interested, you can see all the other entries on the company’s youtube channel.
There are a lot of video contests that I regret entering last year. Some of them were terribly run, others wasted contestants time by requiring them to shill for votes and still others yielded winners that were so inexplicably bad that you couldn’t help but wonder if maybe the whole thing had been rigged.
But there’s one 2009 contest I regret NOT entering; the Skinit.com TV challenge. Skinit makes sticker-type things that are designed to fit any kind of electronic device you can think of. Visit their site and you’ll get what I’m talking about: Skinit.com. Anyway, I was so impressed with their contest that after it ended I reviewed it in an article called “Profile of a Great contest: Skinit.com.” I interviewed a nice representative from Skinit for that piece named Shreya and last week, she e-mailed to let me know that Skinit had just announced that they were bringing the contest back for 2010 and that it was going to be even bigger than last year.
And she wasn’t kidding. Last year, the first place winner took home $10,000, a runner-up got $5,000 and the winner of the best storyboard entry also go $5,000. This year, there will be 6 categories: 1. Consumer Electronics ( 30 sec) 2. Consumer Electronics (60 sec) 3. Tailgate Packs (30 sec) 4. Tailgate Packs (60 sec) 5. WallSkins (30 sec) 6. WallSkins (60 sec)
One winner in each category will get $5,000 and then one overall winner will be awarded and extra $20,000. And as a bonus, the winning entry (and maybe even some of the runners-up) will have the chance to be shown on TV.
Last year, I entered just about any contest I could find if I thought I had a chance of winning. But this year I’m really trying to focus my efforts. And the skinit challenge is just the type of contest I love coming across. My favorite contests are those that provide lots of opportunities for people to win. It’d be awesome to win $25,000 but winning 5 grand would be pretty sweet too. The only thing that worries me is that the rules say that “popularity/public vote” will be one of the criteria used to determine the winners.
Hopefully it will not be a significant factor though. I don’t care how much money is at stake, I’ve pretty much sworn off all video contests that let “the public” pick the winners because those winners invariably turn out to be whoever has the largest social network or the time to vote for themselves over and over and over. But based on the skinit rules, it doesn’t seem like this is going to just be a popularity contest.
The deadline to enter the contest is still 99 days away so there’s lots of time to plan for this one. I for sure will be entering and I’m planning on going completely overboard….assuming I can think of an idea, that is.
One thing I love about video contests is that a lot of them have really bizarre premises. Take for example the “Are you an Avodisic?” contest sponsored by Mexican Avocados. First, it’s always a little funny when PR people try and promote basic food items like pork or Wisconsin cheese. But this contest gets even weirder when you read the details. They were looking for people to make short films about avocados that portrayed them as being sexy, sensual “love fruits.” The promo video for the contest literally featured a talking avacado wearing a garter belt that moaned orgasmically as “she” explained the official rules. (sadly, that video seems to have been taken down.) UPDATE: One of the “PR people” behind this contest apparently has a very good sense of humor. He wrote me today and mentioned the orgasmic avocado video could be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IOhGX_IYRQ. The video is safe-for-work but the audio isn’t!
The contest ended recently and it looks like a lot of people entered. As you can guess, most of the entries were really, f&*%ing, weird. There were three categories in the contest; Best Recipe, Most Entertaining and Most Original. One winner in each category was selected and those winner each got $2,000. You can see all the winners here:
I’m amazed at the amount of work some filmmakers put into their contest entries. The guy who made that video explained on youtube that the entry is made up of more than 500 still photos. Check out this making-of video to see just how this guy managed to pull of such an awesome entry:
Since the dawn of man, pistachios have been just these tasty little nuts that always happened to be around exactly when you were craving them. No one ever planned ahead of time to buy Pistachios, they just appeared when they were needed. But last year, a brand called “Wonderful Pistachios” decided this had gone on long enough so they started putting Pistachios in pretty bags and then marketed the f&*% out of them with commercials featuring Z-list celebrities like Levi Johnston.
One tier of the company’s marketing campaign was a commercial contest. Wonderful Pistachios picked 10 finalist videos and then let “the public” decide the best one. First place was good for $25,000. The people have spoken and here’s the winner:
First Place. Prize: $25,000
Some of the finalists were pretty lame so I’m kind of surprised the public vote yielded a decent winner. The video’s got nice production values, fancy editing, good music and lots of nut shots (you know, shots of nuts.) So it’s a job well done. But I think the guy that made THIS entry got robbed:
Runner up. Prize: $500. Prize declined by filmmaker
Apparently, the director of that entry thinks he was robbed too. His name is Michael Boudin and he’s won more that $60K in various video contests. I know that because a few weeks ago, Films4Prizes.com did a video Q&A with him. You can see it here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXT77SZHU3s
After the winner was picked, Michael was offered a $500 runner-up prize. He turned it down though. I’ll cash just about any check that comes my way but I think he made the right call. As Michael explains on youtube, he believes in his concept and plans to re-shoot the idea for a different contest. If he had accepted the 500 bucks, Wonderful Pistachios would have been able to do whatever they wanted with the video, concept and script. Basically they offered to buy it for a few hundred bucks and said “no deal.”
So think about that the next time you see a bunch of legal mumbo jumbo in a contest’s official rules that state that all entries become the property of the sponsor once you submit them. That’s total B.S. Your work is yours until you SIGN over your rights of ownership. You always have a right to say, “No thanks” and you shouldn’t accept just any amount a company offers if you don’t think it’s a fair price for your work.
If you’ve never heard of Mofilm, it’s….well, it’s hard to describe. If a film festival and an online video contest could have a baby, it’d look like Mofilm. It’s a website/organization that runs big online video contests in conjunction with top tier, international film festivals. But unlike a typical video contest, sometimes the sponsors want to see creative entries that have nothing to do with their products. But then again, some sponsors are looking for straight up commercials or shorts that incorporate their stuff in unique ways.
The Barcelona Film Festival competition is the perfect example of a Mofilm contest. It was made up of two parts; one was the Pepsi “60 seconds to Refresh Your World” Movie Competition and the other was the Barcelona 2010: Make An Ad Video Competition.
Entries for the Pepsi contest were supposed to have nothing to do with Pepsi. Filmmakers were instructed to make awesome short films that were relevant to the themes of the contest. 700 videos from 112 countries (what!?) were submitted and it’s no wonder. Five 1st place winners each won trips to the 2010 Barcelona Film Fest. I can’t embed videos from Mofilm so click here to view the Pepsi winners:
I recommend “GPS” and “No Vegetables.” At the Barcelona fest, one entry will be selected as the Grand Prize winner. The filmmaker will receive $10,000 and $20,000 to shoot a commercial that Pepsi will air on TV.
The other half of the contest was the more familiar, Make an Ad competition. Five brads: Best Buy, AT&T, Yoplait, Chevy and Samsung all participated and gave out more trips to Barcelona and other big prizes. You can see the winner for each of the brands here:
I recommend “Changing Lives” shot for Samsung. It starts out slow but gets very creative as it goes on.
The funny thing about Mofilm is that if you win a trip to one of their sponsor film festivals you don’t get much notice. The Barcelona winners were just told on Monday that they had won. But the Barcelona film fest starts on February 15th! Hope the winners all had passports already or they’re outta luck.
Last week I posted the winner of the “Life’s Good” HD online film fest sponsored by LG. The winner was a very, very impressive HD short film called “Nuit Blanche.” You can see it by clicking here. But frequent video contest winner and friend of VCN, Lucas Ridley wrote me and explained that the whole contest was sort of one big clusterf%&k. Lucas is a hang glider and submitted an excellent entry in LG’s “Sports” category. You can see it here: A Leg to Fly on.
Though he submitted his entry on time and followed all the rules, for some weird reason, LG basically acted as if the entry didn’t exist. Lucas’ dealings with LG were so odd that I asked him to share his story. This is from Lucas:
Here’s the history:
* Made this film specifically for this contest in about a weeks time
* Made the Oct 16th deadline (had to mail in a physical DVD)
* Receive identical emails (on 16th and 17th) from two different people asking if this has been entered any where before and has it won any awards, my responses go unacknowledged.
* entries begin to appear on their website and youtube channel, except mine so I emailed on Oct 22nd asking when and where mine will be viewable, same day response was: “We’re not posting anything new for a while till we process the entries.”
* Nov 3 emailed to see if I could post the video to my personal account, response again came the same day: “OK to post on your personal acct.”
* Email sent on Nov 16th goes unanswered (month after entry deadline and my video is still not up anywhere): “Hi, I’ve looked at your updated website and youtube page and can’t find my submission, “A Leg to Fly On” on either of them? I’m kind of worried about what that means? Can you please give me a heads up? Thanks”
* Email sent on Nov 23rd gets answered the next day: “Hi, I’m just following up from my email a week ago since I haven’t heard anything yet.
From the response I received when I sent in my video it seemed that there wasn’t any problem with my video but I still don’t see it up on your youtube channel or your website. Please inform me of the status of my short film. Also, I never read in the official rules anything about a top 12, but there is a top 12 on your youtube page. Please let me know, I spent a lot of time and energy on this and I’m not getting a response back. Thank you” >>>>their response>>>> “Lucas
Not all films entered were posted on the LG FilmFest YouTube site. Keep watching the lgfilmfest.com site for more news about contenders.” >>>> That was the last I heard from them – and they never posted any more news about contenders.
* Over a month goes by and still my video is not viewable on their youtube channel nor on their website so I email them again on Jan 1st to no response: “… I was hoping you could give me a quick update on my film? I was also looking for the contest rules, but they were taken down …”
* Jan 10th follow up email with no response: “Hi, 10 days ago I emailed about getting information on where my short film is since I still have not seen it displayed on your site or on your youtube channel. Please advise, thank you”
* Jan 25th, my last email to them: “Hi, I am very concerned now that I have not heard any news or received a response from this email address in two months and the winners will be announced soon. Is my video being seriously considered for this contest? Thanks”
If you managed to read through that, there was no indication that my entry would have been disqualified for any reason, and they acknowledge that they did receive it.
Sketchiness:
* Lack of communication after it was obvious they were never going to put my video up on their website (my entry that I posted to my personal youtube acct has more views than all of the entries in the Sports category combined, so it’s not like it wasn’t watchable).
* Removing the official rules from their website
* they originally had entries like “The Moon – Vancouver Film School” which is like a year old, and clearly not made for this contest, but they renamed it something else and put it up like it was an entry, but since have taken it down.
* The quality of the other entries seem like they might be a similar story. Nothing created specifically for this contest (which wasn’t part of the contest rules or anything – to my memory at least since they’ve taken the rules down too -, just adds to the peculiarity), but it seems they just hand picked existing films out there, to give the illusion of high quality associated with the brand LG.
* There are only 5 entries shown for the Sports category. So it wouldn’t be a limitation of space. (did i mention that my single video has more views than all 5 of those entries combined? Not bragging, but just saying, it’s not like my video was unwatchable)
* The duplicate emails from two different email addresses asking if my film had won any awards before, of which I never heard a response from either, after my response to them.
* The “Top 12 Films” category on their youtube channel, now has been changed to just “Top Films” – neither of which were outlined in the official rules (again, to the best of my memory, but I’m 99.99% sure about this, since they took down their official rules)
My concern comes from a worry about the mistreatment of creators of content, like those reading this right now. My advice for the future is to never waste your time creating content for an LG contest in the future, because it won’t be given a fair chance and you will be ignored at best (unless it is a contest properly administered through youtube, like the one they did about two years back). I have learned, and advise others to do this, to copy and save the official rules of any contest you enter so you have something to fall back on if the rules are mischievously taken down, which if they are, you probably aren’t going to hear back from them anyways, but it never hurts.
I feel like this contest was just one in disguise to attract attention. Despite feeling like I fell into some advertising trap portrayed as a legitimate contest, I did still enjoy creating a short film that I’m proud of and others have seemed to enjoy, but I have learned my lesson to stay away from LG in the future and encourage others to do the same (to clarify this was LG Canada who put on the contest). Instead, spend your time on real contests that give our community a platform to display true user-generated work with a great deal of feedback and moderation and the best example of that so far has been the Doritos contest and I hope other contests begin to rise to that bar they’ve set, because this one feels like it took that bar and started clubbing baby seals with it. Okay, maybe that was a harsh ending, but a decent south park reference any way. What are your all’s thoughts on this? Did anyone else out there submit to this contest?
Ok, you’re back with Beardy now. This is not the first time a suspiciously amazing video has won an LG video contest. Last summer, I shot an entry for a contest were people where supposed to dance to the theme song for the new remake of FAME. The Fame video contest was also sponsored by LG and at the last minute, an OUTRAGEOUS, over the top entry was submitted and wound up winning the $50,000 grand prize. It’s called, The Art of Fame.
The Art of Fame and Nuit Blanche are the two most ELABORATE and professional video contest entries I have ever seen. And both were made for video contests sponsored by LG. Sure, both contests had big grand prizes and big money always attracts some pros, but is it possible that LG might be hiring or soliciting….ringers? The winner of the $100,000 HD fest grand prize works for a well-known production company and the short was not created for the LG contest. Is it possible that maybe someone at LG saw the short somewhere and then encouraged the filmmaker to enter it?
Sound far-fetched and pointless? Well, guess what? The head of a tech company once strongly encouraged me to enter his video contest. The contest was his idea and he wasn’t happy with the submissions so went looking for someone who could do just want he wanted. He saw some music videos I made on youtube and said if I made a similar music video for his contest I’d have a very good chance of winning <wink, wink.> We stayed in touch during the whole production process and sure enough, I won. My video was by far the best submission and the video even went viral but I never would have entered if I hadn’t been recruited by the sole judge of the contest. So….ringers do happen.
Anybody else enter the LG contest? If so, did you get jerked around at all?
Image from one of Doritos' Crash the Super Bowl winners; Casket
Back in October, I wrote, directed and edited an entry for Doritos’ annual Crash the Superbowl contest entitled, “Rest in Chips.” My commercial was about a dead guy who’s last wish was to be buried in a casket full of Doritos but to the surprise of everyone at his funeral, it turns out he faked his death and is alive inside the casket of chips that eventually gets knocked over. Sound familiar? It might if you watched the Super Bowl last night. Because during the first quarter of the big game, Doritos aired the three winners of the Crash the Super Bowl contest and the third winning ad they showed just happened to be about a dead guy who’s last wish was to be buried in a casket full of Doritos but to the surprise of everyone at his funeral, it turns out he faked his death and is alive inside the casket of chips that eventually gets knocked over!
Unfortunately, it wasn’t MY fake-funeral/Casket-full-of-Doritos-that-gets-knocked-over entry. It was another entry called “Casket” and it was created by a team of filmmakers from a “non-denominational megachurch” in LA called Mosaic that’s popular with aspiring filmmakers and actors. The church is headed by a well known author, producer and self-professed leader named Erwin Mcmanus and he funded the production of “Casket.” (you can read about Mosaic and their Crash the Superbowl aspirations here) Here’s their ad:
I’m sorry to say it but I suspect that the team that made “Casket” may have stolen several of their ideas from me. How can that be? Well first, here is the entry that I created for the Crash the Super Bowl contest, “Rest in Chips:”
Sure, they’re not on the same level technically, but there are so many similarities between the stories of “Casket” and “Rest in Chips” that I’ve had a hard time accepting that they’re just coincidences. If you ignore the aesthetic differences between the two entries (camera quality, location, music) you’ll see that they share many common key elements. (The kind of stuff you’d see in the scripts for each spot) Really, the only significant difference in the two stories is WHY the two “dead” guys each decide to fake their deaths. Other than that, in just 30 seconds, both ads manage to feature:
1. A dead man’s last wish to be buried in a casket full of Doritos
2. A “dead” man who turns out to actually be alive
3. A fake funeral orchestrated by the “dead” man as part of a nefarious scheme
4. A framed photo of the “dead” guy enjoying a bag of Doritos next to the casket
5. Shots of that guy in his casket buried up to his face in chips
6. Unsuspecting mourners who scream/gasp in surprise when the hoax is revealed
7. A climax in which the “dead” guy gets his comeuppance when the casket of chips is knocked over
That’s a lot for just 30 seconds, isn’t it!? Well, the coincidences don’t stop there. As it turns out, all of those elements can also be found in this crude animated storyboard that I made weeks before I went out and shot my entry:
Yeah…see where I’m going with this? I created that storyboard as a test to see if I could fit all the dialogue and action into 30 seconds. Then I posted it to youtube so that I could send the link to friends so they could give feedback on the idea. The above version was posted to youtube on October 12th, 2009. But that is actually the second version. I posted the first version of the storyboard video on October 6th and named it “Doritos Storyboard.” After about a week, a friend actually said to me, “aren’t you worried that another contestant could see that and steal your idea?” I realized he was right and that I had made a dumb mistake. Because the video was named “Doritos Storyboard,” any prospective Crash the Superbowl contestant who went to youtube to watch last year’s winning entries or other Doritos-related videos for inspiration could have seen my storyboard. In fact, it would have appeared at the top of the page if the results were “sorted by date.” So I pulled the original version and replaced it with the generically named “Dortest” version around October 12th.
The funeral photo used in "Casket"
A week or so after the submission period for the Crash the Superbowl contest closed, I saw “Casket” and I was flabbergasted. I remembered the storyboard on youtube and immediately suspected that I had been ripped off. I had to do something about it so I did what any self-respecting dork would do. I blogged about it. I first compared the two ads in this blog post from November 19th: A Tale of Two Caskets (full of Doritos.) Since “Casket” was so slickly produced, I was worried right from the start that it might make it to the finals. So while Doritos was still evaluating all 4,000+ entries they received, I e-mailed them my concerns on December 9th. They responded to my e-mail and said the company’s “legal team” would look into it.
Since the official rules said that Doritos judges were supposed to assign each entry a score, and since 40% of that score was supposed to be based on “originality and creativity,” I assumed that even if there wasn’t plagiarism, I uploaded my casket-full-of-doritos entry to the contest site first, so logically, that would impact “Casket’s” originality score. And in a competition with 4,000+ submissions, the Top 6 videos would probably be decided by just fractions of a point. So losing even a few originality points would end an entry’s chances of winning, right?
Boy was I wrong about that one. On January 5th, 2010, “Casket” was announced as one of Doritos’ 6 CTSB finalists. And man, let me tell you, I flipped the F%^& out. I wasn’t just mad because a team of filmmakers that may have ripped me off had just won $25,000 and a trip to the Super Bowl, though. In a way, I was much more upset with Doritos. They knew that somewhere out there a filmmaker suspected that the “Casket” team had plagiarized his entry/storyboard. There were tons and tons of awesome videos submitted to this year’s competition. Why did they have to pick the one video that they knew would drive some poor guy crazy and maybe even get them into legal trouble!?
The funeral photo used in "Rest in Chips"
A single question has been on my mind since I first saw “Casket” back in November. “When did they come up with that idea?” Obviously the entry was a very elaborate production. Maybe they had spent months working on the thing. If it turned out that the team came up with the concept for their entry prior to say, the start of October, then there was no chance they could have stolen the concept from me….unless they were mind readers.
I’m not insane and I’m not some jerk who likes ruining other people’s moments of glory. I absolutely, positively do not want to paint anyone as plagiarists if they’re totally innocent. I also really do not want to put my life on hold while I engage in a copyright battle with a megachurch and a multinational corporation if I don’t have to. In the last few weeks I have exchanged many e-mails with FritoLay and the lawyer for the “Casket” team (yes…they already got a lawyer and it seems like he was hired just to deal with this issue.) I have asked them over and over and over and over to PLEASE, send me some kind of documents, materials or other proof that “Casket” was an independent creation that wasn’t wrongfully derived from my works. My sincere hope has been that someone would want to provide me some kind of evidence that would put me, and my family and friends who support me, at ease. I would have been happy just to see some copies of some e-mails that showed that their idea pre-dated the creation of my script for “Rest in Chips.” If they could prove they were innocent, or even just offer a credible explanation, then I could apologize, drop the whole thing and move on with my life.
The beautifully drawn funeral photo from the storyboard video for "Rest in Chips"
But even though the filmmakers behind “Casket” have known for weeks, and probably even months that some crackpot out in the suburbs of Chicago was accusing them of plagiarism they have not done one thing to counter my claims. I have asked repeatedly for some shred of proof that they weren’t guilty of ripping me off. But according to their lawyer, they don’t want to give me ammunition in case I sue them.
Let’s cut the BS here. If there was some A%&hole running around the Internet, endangering my commercial’s chances of airing during the Superbowl and telling Doritos and the rest of the world that I might have stolen some of their ideas, you know what I’d do? I’d shut that guy down immediately with a big facefull of proof. I’d e-mail the guy and tell him he was full of s%^&. I’d write my own blog posts and fill them with proof that my works were independent creations. For God’s sakes, I’d offer to take a lie detector test if the guy wanted me to! I would immediately do whatever it took to shut down a false accusation of plagiarism against me.
Now what I wouldn’t do is hire a lawyer if I had nothing to hide and I certainly wouldn’t keep my “proof” hidden from the world. I think the thing that most makes me believe that I was ripped off is the fact that none of these people have ever contacted me to simply say “You’re wrong, and here’s why….”
The other thing that makes me think I was ripped off are the cold, hard, dirty facts.
Alive in a casket full of Doritos. From "Casket"
Here are my facts: I wrote my script for “Rest in Chips” around October 1st. I created an awesome-looking animated storyboard based on my script and first uploaded it to youtube on October 6th. That video could have been seen by anyone searching for Doritos-related videos up until about October 12th. I shot my entry on October 25th, I posted my first rough cut to the web on October 28th and I uploaded my final entry to the Crash the Super Bowl contest site around November 5th.
Because Doritos and the Mosaic team would not even tell me WHEN the idea for “Casket” was born, I decided to do some digging myself. And by “digging” I mean I just read the articles that showed up in my google alert notices. The information below all comes from interview quotes from members of the “Casket” team. These are my sources (1) (2) (3) (4) Here’s what I’ve learned in the last few weeks:
1. The idea for “Casket” was first suggested in a Mosaic pitch meeting that seems to have taken place in early October, probably around October 9th.
2. The idea for “Casket” was pitched by one member of the group. The group decided to shoot the idea and the person who suggested the idea then “wrote the original script.”
3. At least 4 other people are credited as having co-written or contributed to the script for “Casket.”
4. “Casket” was shot in one day on November 1st and the entry was uploaded just before the deadline on November 9th.
Alive in a Casket full of Doritos. "Rest in Chips"
As I said, members of the “Casket” team shared all of this information during interviews so unless they all lied to several reporters, the above points are facts. And these facts line up perfectly with my theory of how I may have been plagiarized. FritoLay has had a timeline of when I created the various incarnations of my Crash the Superbowl entry since mid-December. I explained weeks ago that I wrote my script shortly after the Crash the Superbowl contest began and then created an animated storyboard version of my script and uploaded it to youtube on October 6th.
For roughly a week, the storyboard was on youtube and could be seen by anyone doing a search for videos tagged “Doritos.” The “Casket” team has gone on record stating that from the day they decided to shoot an entry for this contest to the day they uploaded their video, only a month had gone by. That means that their pitch meting seems to have happened right at the time my storyboard was visible on youtube.
Alive in a casket full of Doritos. From the video storyboard for "Rest in Chips"
I find it very hard to believe that not one member of a large, well-organized team of professional filmmakers went to youtube before their pitch session to research last year’s winning entries and watch other Doritos related videos. I have known about the Mosaic pitch meeting for a while and my theory has been that one member of the team prepared for that pitch meeting by doing some Doritos research on youtube beforehand. While there, they saw my storyboard, realized the idea would work great in one of Mosaic’s churches (I think they have 7 total) and probably figured that the concept was fair game and took it. Now that I know when that pitch meeting took place, I suspect that my theory accurately describes how things happened. And since it seems that as many as 5 people contributed to the story of “Casket,” that explains the differences between my works and the final version of the other team’s entry.
The goal of Doritos’ Crash the Superbowl contest was for the winners to score a spot in the “Top 3” on the USA Today ad meter. If one of the Doritos finalists were to be ranked the best spot of the game, the creators would get a million bucks. Second best would get the filmmakers $600K and 3rd would get them $400K. The ad meter results are in and one Doritos ad actually scored the #2 spot. But “Casket” wound up being ranked #14. (click here for the full ad meter results)
I mention this because I want everyone reading this to understand that there is no big jackpot that I am trying to grab a piece of here. All the makers of “Casket” got was $25,000 and I’m sure that money is already divided up and gone. So my concerns aren’t part of some crass sue-a-church-and-get-rich-quick scheme. For me, this is about principle and as I’ve told the lawyers at Doritos many times, my number one goal is simply to find out the truth about what the heck happened here.
Now that the contest is all over, I really don’t know what I should do next. Should I get a lawyer? Should I seal myself up in a casket full of Doritos and pretend this never happened? What the heck is the little guy supposed to do in this country when he suspects that some giant megachurch with deep pockets and lawyers on retainer infringed on his copyrights?
Right now, the only thing I know for sure is that next year, I’m entering Careerbuilder’s Super Bowl commercial contest.
BTW: I normally post under the pseudonym “Beardy” but here’s info about the real me. Ironically, I do not actually have a beard. If anyone (even a member of the “Casket” team) wants to contact me I can be reached at Videocontestnews@gmail.com.
Super Bowl XLIV just ended and that means that the 2010 installment of Doritos’ Crash the Super Bowl contest is finally over too. All three winning commercials aired in the first quarter but SURPRISE!…Doritos snuck one more Crash the Superbowl finalist in during the 4th quarter. And holy crap, the USA Today Ad Meter results have just come in and SURPRISE again! One of the Crash the Superbowl ads cracked the top 3! I’ll post all the numbers below but first here are the official winners in the order they ran. From what I’ve read, the order that the commercials aired reflect which entries got the most, second most and third most votes last month.
1. Underdog. Created by Nick Dimondi/Joshua Svoboda
2. House Rules. Created by Joelle de Jesus
3. Casket. Created by Kevin T. Willson
SURPRISE BONUS AD. Snack Attack Samurai. Created by Ben Krueger
A few days ago I explained here and here that it looked like Doritos had already revealed the names of the Crash the Super Bowl entries that were going to air tonight. The finalist entries that were publicly identified as destined for air last week were Snack Attack Samurai, Kids These Days and Casket. Looks like those predictions were off by one. But hey, way back in December, before the finalists were even announced, we predicted in this post that “Underdog” would go all the way this year. So hurray for us!
UPDATE: Oh snap!!!! The Ad Meter results are in and UNDERDOG was rated the second best commercial of the entire game right after the Betty White/Snickers spot! That means the makers of Underdog, 5 Points Productions will be receiving a $600,000 bonus from Doritos. As for the other three Crash the Super Bowl entries that aired tonight….well, they didn’t fare so well. None of them even cracked the top 10. Here are the numbers.
1. Underdog. Ad Meter Score: 8.27. Ad Meter Rank: #2
2. House Rules. Ad Meter Score: 7.12. Ad Meter Rank: #11
3. Casket. Ad Meter Score: 7.00. Ad Meter Rank: #14
4. Snack Attack Samurai. Ad Meter Score: 6.79. Rank: #17
Now even though none of the other ads made the top 3, the scores are still quite impressive. After all, there were 60 commercials ranked by the ad meter. Plus since Snack Attack Samurai aired so late in the game I bet its score suffered because the focus groups in the Ad Meter polling were probably a little burnt out by then. You can see the full list of ad meter results here: USA Today Ad Meter.
So what did we learn tonight? Well, we learned that Beardy is a genius! We totally called this one. Over the last few weeks we’ve repeatedly claimed that “Underdog” was going to make it to the top three and not only that, we predicted that it was the only one of the six finalists that had a chance of doing so.
Seriously though, now that the dust is settling it’s clear that the big winner of the 2010 installment of the CTSB contest is 5 Points Productions. Though the Crash the Super Bowl contest has only been run three times, that plucky team of filmmakers from North Carolina have now won the competition TWICE! The 5 Points entry “Live the Flavor” won the first installment of the CTSB contest and aired during the 2007 Super Bowl. Now their entry “Underdog” has also came out on top. Plus they were the first filmmakers ever to get TWO entries in the finals in one year!! (The other was Kids These Days) That’s three unbelievable achievements so it looks like Doritos should get ready to crown them as the new, “Kings of the Crash.” They’ve earned it.
Yesterday I explained that on Wednesday night, CBS seemed to reveal 2 of the 3 winners of the Crash the Superbowl contest in their special “The Superbowl’s Greatest commercials.” Near the end of the show they featured a montage of new commercials explaining it was a “sneak peek” of ads that were going to air during the big game on Sunday. Two of the commercials in the montage were Crash the Superbowl finalists: Snack Attack Samurai and Kids These Days.
One of the most interesting things about the Doritos contest is that no one, not even the finalists are supposed to know who won until the three winning ads appear on TV during the Superbowl. However, the 6 videos that made it to the finals were also supposed to be kept secret but USA Today revealed one finalist (“Casket”) early in a story about Superbowl ad sales. So it seems that Doritos may be trying to milk the CTSB contest for all its worth by seizing every media opportunity that is presented to them, even if they have to share a few secrets to ensure coverage.
Possible case in point, I saw this really weird article from of all places, the Sacramento Bee. The piece is about a local actor and in the article they repeatedly assert that Casket WILL be airing on Superbowl Sunday. They even go so far as to say when “Casket” will air. Here’s some of the piece:
“Rocklin High School grad and actor Nick Armstrong has a lot riding on Sunday’s Super Bowl.
The Sacramento native will appear in a Doritos commercial that’s scheduled to air sometime before the halftime show. It’s one of three Doritos commercials competing in the chip company’s “Crash the Super Bowl” contest, and the most popular will win $1 million.
Four thousand commercials were submitted to Doritos, and three of them – including “Casket,” which features Armstrong – will be broadcast Sunday. USA Today’s Super Bowl Ad Meter – a survey of television ads conducted as a live poll during the telecast – will determine the most popular.
Besides the $1 million for first place, Doritos will pay the second-place finisher $600,000 and the third-place finisher $400,000.”
Notice what was missing from that article? The “ifs,” and “maybes.” The paper wrote about “Casket” like it was a done deal. So does the Sacramento Bee know something we don’t? Ehhh, maybe not. This article does have one red flag in it; the author seems to imply that the 3 Doritos commercials that air will receive a cash prize even if they don’t make the Top 3 on the USA Today ad meter. It seems like they got their facts mixed up. So maybe they got the rest of the facts mixed up too? It’s a tough call, the author really makes it sounds like he’s privy to some inside information.
Last night, CBS aired a special called “The Superbowl’s Greatest Commercials.” It was basically just an hour-long run-down of popular Superbowl ads from the past. But at the end of the show, they revealed snippets of several ads that will be airing during this year’s Superbowl. Here’s what the host said when introducing the montage:
“Here’s a sneak peak of a few more spots that will air during the big game.”
The montage didn’t include many commercials, but it did include footage from 2 of the 6 Crash the Superbowl finalists; SNACK ATTACK SAMURAI and KIDS THESE DAYS. You can watch the entire show at CBS.com for free, but the sneak peek segment is actually available on it’s own. Click here to watch it.
I really don’t know what to think about this. Did Doritos really just announce two of the three commercials that won the Crash the Superbowl competition early? I’m leaning towards “yes.” CBS just declared to the world that those commercials “will air during the big game.” That’s a definitive statement right there and if CBS doesn’t air those two ads, I’m sure a crafty lawyer could paint that as breach of a verbal contract or something. At the very least, they’d be unfairly getting the hopes up of the projected winners. I mean, could you imagine the phone calls that the makers of these two entries must have been getting when that show aired? Would Doritos really put them in a position where they would have to tell all of their friends and family that CBS was wrong about which ads CBS was going to air on Sunday?
The case for the early reveal seems more plausible when you remember the way that the top 6 finalists were announced this year. Hours before the official announcement, USAtoday ran a story about this year’s Superbowl ads that identified “Casket” as one of Dorito’s finalists. So clearly, Doritos already broken with tradition this year and leaked information early to the media.
On the other hand, if you watch the entire montage you’ll notice something fishy. Remember the Careerbuilder “Hire My TV Ad” Superbowl commercial contest? Careerbuilder picked three home-made ads and then re-shot the ideas professionally. All three of the re-shoots can be seen here: http://www.careerbuilder.com/tv/
According to the Hire My TV ad website, Careerbuilder was going to pick JUST ONE of these three remakes and air them during the game on Sunday. But the “Superbowl’s Greatest Commercials” montage includes footage from ALL THREE Careerbuilder ads….including the commercial that CBS already turned down because of lewd content, i.e., a flaming fart. The Hire my TV ad website has that ad, entitled “Worst Seat,” as labeled “Too Hot For TV.”
So either Careerbuilder decided to buy 2 more commercial slots and CBS changed their mind about the “Too Hot for TV” ad, or the above montage contains commercials that will not air during the Superbowl
Think about it this way; it must be hard to get companies to reveal their Superbowl ads early. Maybe that’s why 5 of the ads in the montage are commercials that have already been seen all over the web. So it’s quite possible that the producers of “The Superbowl’s Greatest Commercials” were just lazy and instead of explaining that some of the featured ads MIGHT air on Sunday, they just lumped them in with the other sure things. I guess we’ll find out the answer in just a few more days.
2/6 UPDATE: Hmmmm, yesterday, USA Today released it’s official list of all the commercials that will air during the Superbowl. Careerbuilder is listed as only airing one ad. So now we know for sure that 2 of the ads in the CBS montage won’t air during the game. Unless the careerbuilder contestants already knew which ad was going to air, that was areal punk move by CBS. The might have got a lot of people’s hopes up for nothing. Same goes for the Crash the Superbowl finalists. I still think that the two featured Doritos ads will air, but now nothing looks 100% for sure.
It seems like this contest started taking entries forever ago, but the “Life’s Good” HD film fest sponsored by LG has finally announced their grand prize winner. Contestants were supposed to submit films that were shot in HD and followed the theme of “Life’s Good.” There were several categories (sports, fashion etc) but it was a narrative film that took the top prize of $100,000.
The LG winner is called Nuit Blanche and was directed by Arev Manoukian. Here’s the official description:
“Nuit Blanche explores an experience many of us have lived before – a fleeting yet powerful connection with a perfect stranger. Set in a dark cobblestone street in the 1950’s, a man catches the gaze of a woman in a cafe across the street. This split-second moment becomes suspended in time, as the two gravitate towards each other in a hyper real fantasy where nothing can hold them back.”
I just watched all 3 minutes and 22 seconds of the short film and all I can say is “F*CK YES!” I have seen some amazing video contest entries before but this is hands down the most impressive one I’ve ever come across. It starts off slow but then gets awesome and finishes beautifully.
Grand Prize Winner. Prize: $100,000
That’s outrageous, isn’t it? My only grievance is that it seems like this was a pre-existing short film and that it wasn’t shot specifically for the contest like so many of the entries were. The credits say that the short was “made in part with the support of the National Film Board of Canada’s filmmaker assistance program.” In fact, it looks like the short was produced by the very successful production company, Spy Films. Oh well, it’s still fantastic. I mean, did you notice that the guy blew a piece of glass out of his way there at the end? All those fancy effects and expensive production values and that little moment is what made the short for me. It just goes to show that even in the CGI era we live in, the best films are those that use effects to express fundamentally human and universal ideas and emotions.
If you want to see just how much post-production work actually went into this short, click here to watch a video about the Making of Nuit Blance.
Yesterday, voting in Doritos’ Crash the Superbowl contest came to a close and I’m sure all the finalists are relived that they can finally stop hustling for votes and catch their breath. By now, Doritos probably knows which three ads will be airing during the big game but for the rest of us, we won’t find out until the winning commercials actually air on Sunday. As if the month of vote-grubbing wasn’t brutal enough, the finalists won’t even know if they won or lost until they are sitting in the Doritos skybox, watching the game on TV.
A free trip to the Superbowl has got to be a lot of fun. But how much can you enjoy it if you have to spend the whole weekend wondering what the fate of your entry is? It’s gotta be rough. And Doritos films all the finalists as they sit and watch the game happen on TV. Imagine what it would feel like to be one of the 6 finalists on Superbowl sunday. You’re watching the game from the skybox and then the Doritos folks hustle you over to a TV. You sit and watch and….a commercial that isn’t yours plays. The winner flips out and you congratulate him and go back to the game. Now there are only two spots left. So you have to wait and wait and endure this pattern two more times.
Here’s an interesting news story I found from last year about the Herbert Brothers Crash the Superbowl experience. If you skip past their ad, you’ll see some footage that was shot inside the Doritos skybox. They even show the moment when everyone saw that “Free Doritos” was the ad that made it to air. (as a surprise, they also aired a second CTSB ad later in the game.) When the big reveal happens, everyone seems pretty happy for the Herbert Brothers, but I bet there was more that one person in that room that felt like jumping through the skybox window at that moment.
Seems like every marketing guy and their momma is trying to entice us Joe Handycams into shooting ads for their company these days. There’s a lot of cash and a ton of prizes waiting to be won in online video contests and if you have even a smidge of writing, shooting or editing skills, all that awesome stuff could be yours. So you guys focus on winning ‘em and we’ll cover the aftermath of your glorious victories and/or pathetic defeats!
Video contests can get pretty ugly. Organizers do not always want to play by their own rules, other contestants flagrantly cheat and poorly run competitions cause frustrations for everyone. Wish you could bring a problem to the attention of a contest’s organizers but you’re worried that you might be branded a no-good troublemaker? We can help. Let us know about your problem and we’ll try and kick a little ass on your behalf. E-mail us at Videocontestnews@gmail.com.
