If you’ve noticed all the ads we’ve been running for Tongal.com you already know that they’ve been running some huge contests for some major-league companies lately.  One of their bigger clients is ACE Hardware and yesterday Tongal announced the winner of ACE’s “Customer Service Video Project.”  The goal in this contest was to shoot a video about how helpful ACE employees can be.  Here’s the spot that came out on top:

First Place Winner.  Prize:  $10,000:

Pretty good huh?  Looks really professional too.  I was keeping an eye on this contest because I actually entered this one myself.  I collaborated with my long-distance contest buddy HappyJoel Levinson; he created a song and I shot and edited a video for it.  We did manage to win a prize; $500.  But this was one of those times when I kind of knew I had missed the mark.  I think the video was cute but it was lacking pizazz.  You can’t tell from the video but the outside stuff was shot in the freezing rain.  But at least the shoot was a good excuse to try out my new camera gear.  I just bought an HVX200 last month and I’m really happy with it.  Now that I’m using a real video camera again I realize just how inhibiting DSLRs can be.  With the HVX I don’t need to worry about ISO numbers or syncing up audio in post or stuff going out of focus if I move the camera a foot closer to the subject.  I’m excited to shoot a lot more entries this year now that I don’t have to worry so much about the tech side of things.  Basically I’ll be able to just point and shoot.  Anywho, if you’d like to see the entry Joel and I did (or the rest of the winning spots) head here:  http://tongal.com/project/aceservice