Archive for the ‘Unpleasant Crap’ Category

Mysterious act of plagiarism in Mofilm contest

Posted by Beardy on July 2nd, 2010

Well, Beardy is back from his road trip across the south and apparently, a lot of stuff happened in the video contest world while I was off line. For instance, here’s a story I first read about on the forums at Poptent.net.  Check out the video that won the “critic’s choice” award in the Nokia Mini Mo contest.  It was a contest for students in the UK and was run by Mofilm. The goal of the contest was to shoot a film parody with a mobile device in under 2 minutes. The filmmaker that shot this entry was named Jemma Lyon and she won a trip to Cannes for her ingenious little film.

Click image to view

Yeah that was cute. Too bad it was a word for word rip off of a pre-existing viral video. Here is the much, much better original:

I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a blatant and despicable act of plagiarism in my life. But please, hold your hatred to the end because this story is about to get weird.

As soon as “Forest Chump” was announced as one of the winners in this contest, some keen viewer contacted the creator of the original Forest Gump in 60 seconds video (Will Tribble) and told him he had been ripped off. He (and lots of other Mofilm users) complained and to their credit, Mofilm reacted quickly. Here is the official statement they put out:

MOFILM would like to issue a direct apology to community involved with the recent Nokia MiniMo contest and Will Tribble.

It has come to our attention that the Critics Award winner “Forrest Chump” was not an original creation, as required by the terms and conditions of the competition but had been copied from Will’s Tribble’s “Forrest Gump in One Minute, in One Take“  This issue should have been dealt with as soon as it was flagged however it was not. We will be holding a full review of the administration of this competition.

We would like apologise unreservedly once more for this error. We didn’t realise that the film that we chose was a copy, we would have instantly removed the submission from the competition if we had. As it stands, the original winner has now had their prizes revoked and we will be announcing a new winner soon.

Will Tribble has also been invited to the London Film Festival as the guest of MOFILM and the One Minute One Take film will be shown during the MOFILM London Film Festival ceremony.

Though Mofilm said that Ms. Lyon’s prize had been “revoked,” it seems that they may have made this announcement AFTER she already got her free trip to Cannes. So did she get to go on the trip or didn’t she? I’ve done some checking at it looks like Ms. Lyon was in Cannes when Mofilm/Nokia decided to revoke her prizes. They then made that girl get on a plane and go home early. Damn….that’s cold.

But that girl is a despicable little plagiarist, right! So she got what she deserved! Well, maybe not. Check out this statement that Ms. Lyon sent to the website Adrants (among others) after they covered this whole debacle:

“I would like to make a statement regarding the alleged plagiarism accusations from the Nokia Minimo movie competition.

I was approached by a Nokia representative who asked me to remake any video in under two minutes for his Nokia assignment. I was unaware that this was a competition at the time and did not receive a brief. The representative also promised to give me a mobile phone in exchange for assisting him with his project. I never received the phone.

The Nokia representative was present during the filming of my video and after being asked several times if the film was OK to submit he insisted it was and persisted to show the actors the original video to direct them where to stand and what to do. At no point did the representative inform any of the people involved that the film was breaching the terms and conditions and I was led to believe that the entry was valid.

Further to this, Nokia became aware that my entry was based on another video three days prior to sending me on the trip to Cannes, but they still sent me on the trip and refused to act until the public outcry.

My name has been tarnished by this event. I have been branded a cheater amongst many other things too awful to write and I have yet to be informed of how Nokia aim to rectify this. I aspire to pursue a career in the creative media industry and this libel is a great hindrance to my progress to achieving the career I want. My efforts to expose the truth have been greatly subdued by Nokia and the rule of law seems not to apply to large powerful corporations in certain instances.

In conclusion, I would like to reiterate that basing my video on Mr Tribble’s creative work was done in ignorance. I was not aware that I was breaking any rules and the Nokia representative never informed me that I was doing so. I previously had no interest in submitting an entry but I was misled into thinking that I was merely helping the Nokia representative, he has since personally apologised to me for the way I have been treated.

Nokia has allowed my name to be dragged through the mud by shrouding the situation with half truths and even some out right lies in order to save their own reputation.”

If you’re a regular reader of this website you’ll know that when it comes to video contests, there is nothing I find more reprehensible than plagiarism. But this girl gets a pass. I believe what she said in her statement. If it wasn’t for a rep from Nokia egging her on I don’t think she would have copied the original video or even submitted it to the contest. Nokia has even confirmed that one of their employees was involved in the creation of “Forest Chump.”

Having continued to investigate the original minimo Critics Choice Award, it appears that one of our student team assisted in the making of the video, including offering their Nokia handset to shoot the short film and suggesting that the film was okay to submit to the competition. We are obviously very disappointed to discover that this has happened. While we believe that the original winner did not intentionally break the terms and conditions of the competition, the submission remains disqualified.

I have seen this “student team” member also referred to as being a member of a Nokia Street team. So…what exactly do we have here? A case of plagiarism? Yes, of course. But the big question is this; WHY WAS A REPRESENTATIVE OF NOKIA HELPING A FILMMAKER CREATE A SUBMISSION FOR THEIR VIDEO CONTEST? Did Nokia/Mofilm feel like there weren’t enough entries being submitted so they sent out a “street team” of students to encourage their friends to make entries? If these student reps were under pressure to increase the number of entries, is it any wonder that something like this happened?  In fact the plagiarized film, Forest Gump in One Minute in One Take fits the concept of this contest (remake a film in under 2 minutes) so well that it almost seems like it could have been the inspiration for the whole competition!  At the very least, Nokia/Mofilm had to have known about it since it seems they may have sent it to their street team members as an example of what their ideal entry would be like.

I’ve seen some contest sponsors try and pull some shady shit before but secretly helping filmmakers create entries, encouraging and ignoring a hardcore act of plagiarism and then passing all the blame and shame on to a seemingly innocent young filmmaker might just take the cake.

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Was Taxslayer’s video contest an un-winnable scam?

Posted by Beardy on May 25th, 2010
taxslayerscam

Did you enter the 2010 Taxslayer.com video contest?  Are you SURE you entered?  Because according to Taxslayer, even if you submitted videos you probably didn’t “officially” enter the contest.  Based on a letter I recived yesterday from the Director of Taxslayer.com’s Growth Division, Darcel Walker, I now believe that this year’s Taxslayer video contest was a scam and that it was managed in such a way as to ensure that the contest would be voided due to lack of “official” entries so that the $20,000 in prize money would not have to be awarded.  In fact, the actions of representatives of Taxslayer were so egregious they may even constitute an act of fraud.

As we explained in our May 11th post, Taxslayer.com Lies to Filmmakers, Cancels Video Contest 20 Days After Submission Deadline, the official rules of the 2010 Taxslayer.com video contest had a provision that gave them the option of “voiding” the contest if less than 25 entries were received.  Though approximately 17 people submitted entries by the April 15th deadline, Taxslayer decided to exercise their cancellation option and not award any prizes.  This came as a bit of a mind-blower to me since I had spent roughly 50 hours and hundreds of dollars creating 2 entries for the contest after a man named Daniel Eubanks, the  head of the taxslayer contest gave me a written and signed guarantee that his contest would “definitely not” be canceled due to lack of entries.  You can read the e-mails he sent to me here.

taxwalkercopy

Scan of the letter I recived yesterday from Darcell Walker of taxslayer. Click to Enlarge.

A good contract lawyer would tell you that the e-mails we exchanged constitute a legally binding agreement.  Mr. Eubanks knew that I would go out and make entries for the contest if there was no possibility it would be canceled and in exchange, I was promised the CHANCE to win as much as $20,000 for my efforts.  But taxslayer went back on their word, canceled the contest and denied me the chance of winning that I was promised.

In the real world, you can’t just promise someone something in exchange for work and then walk away when the time came to pay up.  So I did what any business person would do; I sent them a bill for my time and expenses.  Taxslayer did not take this well.  Mr. Eubanks, the head of the contest and Assistant director of Taxslayer’s Growth Division refused to respond to my calls, messages and e-mails.  He even hung up on me the one time I got him on the phone.  So I went over his head and mailed my invoice, a letter and copies of Mr. Eubank’s guarantee directly to the Director of Taxslayer’s Growth Division, Darcel Walker.  Yesterday, I received a response that was so despicable and so underhanded that I don’t know how the man had the stones to send it.  I’ll scan and post the entire letter but here is the most insulting part; turns out I can’t complain about the video contest because according to Mr. Walker, I never entered.  Here’s a piece of what Mr. Walker had to say:

“I have recently recived your letter and invoice for production services concerning our recent taxslayer.com video contest.  As you know, we canceled the contest due to lack of video submissions.  In regards to your entries, you never officially entered the contest. You were required to agree and accept the official rules of the contest, sign and mail a release form and mail a high quality AVI and a Beta tape for each entry.  We never received a signed release form, Beta tapes and a High Quality AVIs from you.  Therefore, you never officially entered the contest and were not consider eligible for the prize money.”

Did the taxslayer rules say that I had to declare via e-mail that I accepted the rules?  Yes.  Did I follow that instruction?  Yes.  Did the taxslayer rules say that contestants must MAIL a release form, an AVI file and some Beta Tapes?  Yes.  Did I submit them?  Of course not.  Why?  Well to start, the Taxslayer rules didn’t even say WHERE these materials should be mailed to. The release form didn’t have an address on it either.  And the official rules provided no contact info for anyone at Taxslayer.  The only e-mail address they provided was for submissions and the rules even said questions sent to that address would not be answered!  So even if contestants were expected to mail in tapes and releases and AVI files, how could they if the rules didn’t say where to send them and didn’t provide a phone number or e-mail address so that they could get that information?  But here is the main reason I didn’t submit a beta tape, AVI files and release forms: TAXSLAYER WAS TELLING CONTESTANTS THAT THEY SHOULD ONLY SUBMIT THOSE MATERIALS IF THEIR ENTRY WAS SELECTED FOR THE FINALS. Yes…I’m serious.

Here’s an e-mail exchange that Daniel Eubanks, head of the Taxslayer contest had with one contestant:

> Sent: Friday, April 02, 2010 1:34 PM
> To: Daniel Eubanks
> Subject: Re: Contest Entry
>
> Do I need to worry about the beta tapes, release or AVI file at this time? I saw in the official rules it said about these but during submission it didn’t, and also, I didn’t see an address on where to send them. Please advise, Thanks a lot—Shane

> On Apr 2, 2010, at 5:05 AM, Daniel Eubanks wrote:
> Shane,
>
> Our address is below, you will need to send if notified as a finalist.
> Thanks!

On March 31st, I also e-mailed Daniel Eubanks and asked if contestants needed to submit those materials.  He didn’t respond to me even though we had already exchanged a few e-mails at that point.  So Mr. Eubanks intentionally withheld information that apparently would have made my entries complete.  I heard from other contestants that they had been told they did NOT have to submit those materials unless they made it to the finals.  I have heard from many of the 17 or so people who entered this year’s taxslayer contest and only ONE of them said he mailed taxslayer the aforementioned Beta Tapes, AVI file and notarized(!) release forms.  And he had search for Taxslayer’s home office number and CALL them to find out where these materials should be shipped because the rules didn’t say.

Taxslayer's so-called contest "release form." Click to enlarge

Taxslayer's so-called contest "release form." Click to enlarge

Taxslayer pulled its contest website down but with a little googling I was able to find an archived copy of the release form Mr. Walker said I needed to submit for my entry to be valid.  Turns out, the document is titled “TaxSlayer.com Commercial Production Agreement.” I’ll post an image of it.  It is very clear that it is not a release form.  It is an agreement between Taxslayer and anyone who WINS the contest.  In fact, there is a space for Jimmy Rhodes, the HEAD OF TAXSLAYER.COM to sign!  It could be argued that it was the contestant’s responsibility to get Mr. Rhodes to sign the agreement and if you left that space blank, the form was technically incomplete.  And check out the details of that production agreement.  It says you must send taxslayer 5 BETA TAPE copies of each of your commercials.  Only professional production companies would have a beta deck.  So the cost of having a post house makes some dubs for you would probably be a few hundred dollars.  If taxslayer.com actually expected you to enter into a signed agreement with the head of their company and send in 10 Beta tapes (5 for the 15 second version of your entry and 5 for the 30 second version) then they placed obstacles to entry that were so insurmountable that they would NEVER get 25 “official” entries.  It seems that no matter how thorough a contestant might be, there would always be some loophole that would keep an entry from being valid.  In short, the rules of this contest and the misinformation given to contestants ensured that this contest was 100% un-winnable.

So all this leads to one big question;  Was the 2010 Taxslayer contest a scam?  It seems that the organizers of the contest went out of their way to see that NO ONE could win.  The head of the contest told contestants NOT to send materials in that his boss, Darcell Walker now says were MANDATORY for a submission to be valid.  Is it possible that Daniel Eubanks SABOTAGED this contest?  The whole promotion was canceled because they didn’t receive enough entries.  But it now seems that agents of taxslayer.com actively worked to ensure that they would NEVER receive enough “legitimate” entries.  I submitted my first entry a day before the deadline and I submitted my second entry 12 hours before the deadline.  Why didn’t Taxslayer e-mail me back and say “hey, what about your beta tapes and AVI files?”  Didn’t they WANT to get valid and complete entries?  And why didn’t the taxslayer rules even say WHERE these materials should be sent?  And in what kind of universe would they ever need 5 beta tapes of each version of the entry?  If they received 25 entries consisting of two videos each (15 sec and 30 sec) that would mean they would have received 250 BETA TAPES!  And that’s just if the minimum number of contestants entered.

There are only two possibilities here.  Either Darcel Walker of Taxslaer.com lied to me in an attempt to prevent me from me being compensated for work I did after recived a written guarantee about that work from his colleague or the contest was a scam and Taxslayer knew they would never have to award any prizes.  They put a clause in their rules that said that they had the option to void the contest if not enough valid entries were received and then they made it virtually impossible for contestants to submit valid entries. If this is what actually happened then we are getting into some dark territory.  If Taxslayer let people waste their time and money on a contest that could not be won then we could be looking at an honest to goodness act of FRAUD.  We are beyond screwing filmmakers and breaking contracts.  We are now talking about a possible criminal act.

But what would taxslayer have to gain from running a video contest and then making it impossible to win? Free publicity maybe?  One big reason companies run video contests is because the announcement of those contests always get a little press coverage.  And one reader who entered this year’s contest actually suggested to me that Taxslayer may have held off on canceling the contest because they wanted the suckers who entered to do some free promotion for their company.  See, the taxslayer rules stated that the 25 videos ranked highest by “the youtube audience” would make the finals.  So, during the three week-long period between the submission deadline and the day the contest was officially canceled, filmmakers promoted their entries to family and friends and on their social networks totally unaware that they were giving free advertising to a company that was about to screw them.

But the thing that Taxslayer really had to to gain was cheap or even free content.  A video posted by Taxslayer that explains the contest states the following:

Upon submittal, all videos become the property of taxslayer.com and the creator relinquishes all ownership and rights to the video.

Holy S&%*.  That statement right there could mean that taxslayer intends to use the entries they got (or more likely, the ideas in those entries) and not pay the people who created them!  That would be pretty outrageous though.   I think it is more likely that Taxslayer will try to buy entries at prices way below the original prize amount.  My theory is that taxslayer knew that no one would create tv-quality videos for them for only a few grand.  So they dangled $20,000 in prize money in front of us to get us to enter while possibly knowing there was no way in the world they would receive enough complete entries for the contest to be valid.  I suspect that they intentionally lied to filmmakers and told them whatever they wanted to hear (the contest won’t be canceled, you don’t need to send in beta tapes) just to get them to enter.  I think it was their plan all along to cancel the contest and scoop up their favorite entries for a song later on.

Though Darcel Walker of taxslayer.com is trying to bluff me into thinking otherwise, I believe I DID officially enter the 2010 taxslayer video contest.  The head of that contest told contestants that the release forms and tapes and AVI files were not required unless a video was selected for the finals.  I did not submit those materials because of Mr. Eubanks’ instruction.  So either Mr. Eubanks was lying when he said the additional materials were not required at the time of submission or Mr. Walker is lying to me when he says those materials were required at the time of submission. Either way, employees of  Taxslayer.com/Rhodes Financial Services have behaved unethically and now it looks like they may have possibly even committed a crime.  Here is a brief explanation of what constitutes fraud:

Fraud must be proved by showing that the defendant’s actions involved five separate elements: (1) a false statement of a material fact,(2) knowledge on the part of the defendant that the statement is untrue, (3) intent on the part of the defendant to deceive the alleged victim, (4) justifiable reliance by the alleged victim on the statement, and (5) injury to the alleged victim as a result.

Let’s break this down and see if taxslayer’s actions fit this definition of fraud:

1. a false statement of a material fact

Head of the Taxslayer contest Daniel Eubanks told me that the contest would “definitely not” be canceled due to lack of entries and he told contestants that they did not need to mail beta tapes and AVI files for their submissions to count.  The contest was eventually canceled due to lack of entries and according to Mr. Eubank’s boss, the Beta tapes and AVI files WERE required for a submission to count.

2. knowledge on the part of the defendant that the statement is untrue

Whether or not Mr. Eubanks knew he was lying to contestants cannot be known at this time.  However, since he was the head of the Taxslayer contest I can’t imagine he didn’t know he was misleading contestants.  If Mr. Eubanks told the truth, then Mr. Walker intentionally lied to me when he said I did not officially enter the contest.

3. intent on the part of the defendant to deceive the alleged victim

Mr. Eubanks told contestants things that turned out not to be true.  He did this because I believe he knew that if he told them otherwise, they would not enter the contest.  If Mr. Eubanks lied in his letter to me he did so knowing that my entries were valid in the hopes that I would drop this matter.

4. justifiable reliance by the alleged victim on the statement

I entered the taxslayer contest because Mr. Eubanks falsely told me the contest would not be canceled.  I and other filmmakers did not submit Beta Tapes and AVI files because Mr. Eubanks told contestants that they were only required if an entry was selected for the finals.  If Mr. Walker is lying, he did so to try and get me to give up on my efforts to collect on my invoice.

5. injury to the alleged victim as a result.

The invoice I sent to Taxslayer for my expenses and time as a writer, cinematographer and editor totaled $4,347.  Every other filmmaker that did not submit Beta Tapes, release forms and AVI files because Mr. Eubanks told them not to wasted their time and money creating invalid entries for the taxslayer contest.  If Mr. Walker lied, he refused to accept my invoice for untrue reasons.

This matter has suddenly become very serious.  If you entered the 2010 taxslayer contest and were told that you did NOT have to submit beta tapes, release forms and AVI files until after your video was selected as a finalist, or if you entered this contest and are concerned that you may be the victim of fraud, please e-mail me at VideoContestNews@gmail.com.

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Did this angry comment come from the head of the Taxslayer contest!?

Posted by Beardy on May 12th, 2010

Yesterday’s entry about the ugly story behind the cancellation of the 2010 Taxslayer.com video contest seems to have gotten the attention of someone at Taxslayer.com.  On Tuesday afternoon, someone who called themselves “Sam Jenkins” left a suspiciously angry comment for me in the “Taxslayer.com lies to filmmakers, cancels video contest 20 days after submission deadline” discussion.  To leave a comment on a wordpress blog you need to leave an e-mail address.  To see if “Sam Jenkins” was a real person, I e-mailed him at the address he left.  The e-mail bounced back; the address  was fake.  Not a good sign.  Here’s the comment “Sam” left:

Author : Sam Jenkins

Comment:

Dude…get over it. You are right, as you proved, it is nearly impossible to create a quality commercial in 9 days. Your entry was awful. You would have lost anyways. Grow up, you should be ashamed of yourself. On another note I wouldn’t be surprised if this guy and his company slap a slander suit on you so fast your head spins.

Wow “Sam,” why so serious?? And if you think I suck so hard, why the heck do you read my blog?  I’m eager to address the points that “Sam” made and I’ll do so at the end of this post. But first I want to try and answer the question of who “Sam Jenkins” is.  I’ve been running this blog for 9 months and I don’t think I have EVER gotten an angry comment that didn’t come from someone with a personal axe to grind. I’ve covered a lot of people’s crappy behavior and bad sportsmanship here on VCN and sometimes those people find the posts about them and freak out.  They want to attack me but don’t want to make themselves look worse.  So they post under a fake name.   I think I’ve gotten pretty good at spotting fake names though.  For instance, I can’t help but wonder if maybe the name “Sam Jenkins” is a reference to legendary (and also fake) Internet nutball, Leroy Jenkins.

Sam Jenkins: Artist's Rendering

Sam Jenkins: Artist's Rendering

Over time, I’ve honed the art of figuring out who anonymous posters are in to a science.  After a few minutes of research and a few seconds of deduction, I can say that I am 99% sure that the person who posted as “Sam Jenkins” is actually The Assistant Director of Taxslayer.com’s Growth Division and the head of the Taxslayer.com video contest, DANIEL EUBANKS.  Mr. Eubanks is the person I have been TRYING to deal with at Taxslayer.com and he is the person that twice told me me that this year’s contest would “definitely not” be canceled.  Yesterday’s post was mostly about how he lied to me and how rude he’s been to me these past few days.  So besides the obvious reason that Mr. Eubanks doesn’t like me (he hung up on me on Monday as soon as I said my name!) I have actual evidence and facts to support my theory that Mr. Eubanks is our hater.  Note: Because I don’t want to be slapped so hard with a slander suit that my head spins, I should point out that I have no concrete evidence that the above comment came from anyone at Taxslayer…though I do have a whole lot of circumstantial evidence. I am not saying that Daniel Eubanks did this for sure.  But my personal opinion is that he did.

I used a very awesome piece of code in my website that lets me know a lot of information about the people who visit here.  Mostly I just see a bunch of cities and IP addresses when I check my logs.  But if you work for a company that is big enough that it names its network, I get to see the name of your company.  For instance, yesterday I got a visitor from “The British Museum!”

Taxslayer.com’s parent company is called “Rhodes Financial Services” and is located in Augusta, Georgia.  That’s the company that Mr. Eubanks works for.

When I got the announcement about the taxslayer contest being canceled, I e-mailed Mr. Eubanks and expressed my disappointment.  I sent him a link to this post from VCN.  It’s a list of all the 2010 Taxslayer entries.  I told him that I found 18 entries and that it seemed like there were more than enough to choose from.  After I sent Mr. Eubanks that link, I checked my web logs.  Sure enough, someone from “Rhodes financial Services” in Augusta, Georgia had visited my site.  I labeled this person’s IP address so that I could recognize them every time they visited.  This visitor took a special interest in my first post about the cancellation of the taxslayer contest.  They checked the discussion on and off all day long for several days, presumably to see what new comments had been added.

By last Friday, Mr. Eubanks had stopped responding to my e-mails and refused to take my calls.  I was really offended by this so I e-mailed him again and told him that I knew he was still interested in what I had to say because I could tell from my site’s traffic logs that he was checking Videocontestnews.com several times a day.

This is a very important part of the story.

So I checked my traffic logs on Tuesday afternoon and I noticed that the visitor from Rhodes Financial Services had been staying away from the site and hadn’t seen my LATEST Taxslayer post….the one where I explain how rudely this Daniel Eubanks guy had been treating me.

Then, at about 2:40 Tuesday afternoon, I got the angry comment from “Sam Jenkins.”  So I checked my web stats to see where the comment came from.  “Sam Jenkins” posted his comment from a Droid smart phone.  Posts from smart phones are untraceable because they list the cell phone provider’s IP address and the HQ could be anywhere.  Though I couldn’t tell where “Sam” was posting from, I could see how and when he had visited my site in the past.

The results of my search speak for themselves.  Here’s what how things went down:

The Droid Phone: Practically designed for writing quick, anonymous comments

The Droid Phone: Practically designed for writing quick, anonymous comments

The visitor from Rhodes Financial hadn’t checked the site all day on Tuesday and didn’t see the new, more explicit taxslayer post. My theory is that now that Mr. Eubanks knew I could tell when he visited my site, he was intentionally staying away.  But I think he couldn’t resist checking it again so he tried to be sneaky and checked the site with his phone.  At 2:41pm, someone (let’s call him Droid Guy) checked the site from a Droid phone.  6 minutes later, Droid Guy clicked the “view comments” button on the new post.   4 minutes after that, the visitor from Rhodes financial visits the site for the first time all day.  (maybe he couldn’t see it too well on his tiny phone and really wanted to study what I had to say?)  The Rhodes visitor clicked around like a mad man for the next 30 MINUTES.

In the middle of his visit, the Droid Guy returns for a moment.  Droid guy is back at 3:17 and goes directly to the comment section and leaves his rant.  He then disappears.  His brief visit occurs at exactly the same time that the visitor from Rhodes Financial has the site up on his computer screen.

I’m just going out on a limb here…but it seems very possible that Mr. Eubanks remembered that if he left a comment from his office computer I would know it came from him because of his IP address.  I think he didn’t want me to be able to link the “Sam Jenkins” comment to him so he thought he’d be a smart guy and whip out his smart phone so that he could post anonymously.  Again…that’s just a theory.

Here is part of a screenshot of my web logs.  Be aware that “taxslayer” is the label I gave to Rhodes Financial’s IP address so I could spot it when it popped up.  I also added the big red arrow to indicate when the Droid Guy left his comment.  Notice he was not on the site right before or right after he said his piece but the visitor from Rhodes certainly was.

weblog511

Click to see a larger version you can actually read

I immediately suspected that “Sam Jenkins” could really be Daniel Eubanks of Taxslayer.com so I held the comment for moderation.  When trying to smoke out a hater, this is a great tactic.  It causes the person to check your site over and over as they wait to see if you are going to let their comment go public.  Droid Guy visited the site again later in the day but again, I have to assume the text was too small to read on a phone.  Two minutes later, the visitor from Rhodes was back and the Droid Guy was gone.  The Rhodes visitor checked the comment section of the taxslayer post all day long…as if hey were waiting to see if Droid Guy’s comment was going to be made public.  Rhodes guy stopped checking the site at about 5pm but Droid Guy checked it once or twice Tuesday night…like you know, maybe the person at Rhodes went home for the day and didn’t want me to know his home IP address so he checked the site from his phone.  First thing this morning though, the Rhodes visitor was back like crazy and has already visited the site a bunch of times today to see what comments have been posted.  The Droid guy seems to be gone though.  This is really suspicious because haters don’t just check the site 3 or 4 times and go away.  They act more like the visitor from Rhodes and check the site compulsively.

Taxslayer HQ: Someone in this building is obsessed with this website

Taxslayer HQ: Someone in this building is obsessed with this website

There’s one other big reason that I suspect that Daniel Eubanks is our anonymous hater; As far as I can see, the Droid Guy never visited VCN before yesterday yet he knew an awful lot about the videos I submitted to the taxslayer contest.  He said my entry was “awful” and that I wouldn’t have won anyway.  I didn’t provide links to my entries in my 2 recent blog entries about the cancellation of the contest.  So when could Droid guy have seen my videos?  I know that he never visited VCN before Tuesday so he must have watched my entry on another computer at another time.   And how did he know that I wouldn’t have won?  It almost sounds like Droid Guy had seen ALL the entries.

Like I said, I want to respond to a few of the points that “Sam” made.  So here’s his comment again:

Author : Sam Jenkins

Comment:

Dude…get over it. You are right, as you proved, it is nearly impossible to create a quality commercial in 9 days. Your entry was awful. You would have lost anyways. Grow up, you should be ashamed of yourself. On another note I wouldn’t be surprised if this guy and his company slap a slander suit on you so fast your head spins.

And now, my humble responses:

1.  It was not my intention to make a tv-quality entry.  I thought I was supposed to focus on IDEAS and not production values.  Taxslayer made it sound like they planned to re-shoot the winning ad, just like they did last year.

2.  Why should I be ashamed of myself?  Because I have the nerve to stand up for myself and not let people get away with wasting my time and my money?

3.  How do you know I would have lost?  Did you see ALL of the entries?  If so, where?  Like I said, according to my calculations, I had a 1 in 4.5 chance of winning 1st or 2nd place.  Seems like I had a really decent shot of winning.

4. I actually would have been totally fine with not winning.  I also would have accepted the fact that the contest had to be canceled if Mr. Eubanks hadn’t told me that the contest would NOT be canceled.  Losing is just part of the video contest game.  I entered the contest because Mr. Eubanks promised me a CHANCE of winning.  The only thing I was entitled to was that CHANCE but Taxslayer chose not to fulfill their employee’s guarantee to me so I’m going to fight to be compensated for my time and expenses.  We had an agreement and taxslayer refused to hold up their end of that agreement.  That’s why I’m upset.  It doesn’t matter who would have won, what matters is that NO ONE won.

5.  Regarding your prediction that Taxslayer will slap a “slander suit on me so fast my head spins;” you should invest in a dictionary because you have no idea what “slander” is.  First of all, Slander is the spoken form of defamation, Libel is the written one.  That mix-up aside, you still don’t understand the general principle.  Or maybe you do and you’re just trying to scare me into shutting up.  But just so you know, for something to be libelous it has to be both negative and UNTRUE.  If you want to start suing people for saying negative but true things you might as well just rip up the constitution.

Everything I have said in my Taxslayer posts have been true.  And when I was posting THEORIES about what I thought happened I never portrayed those theories as facts.  I have a constitutionally protected first amendment right to criticize, share theories and publish my opinions.  For example, my OPINION is that “Sam Jenkins” is really Daniel Eubanks and if I’m right, he better not dare try and intimidate me with empty legal threats again.

A few hours ago I e-mailed Mr. Eubanks and told him that I suspected that he was the one who left the angry “Sam Jenkins” comment from a Droid phone.  I told him that if he wanted to deny the allegation, he should let me know it wasn’t him.  So far, I haven’t heard back from him.

If I DO find any credible evidence that there is no connection between Droid Guy, “Sam Jenkins” and Daniel Eubanks I will immediately pull this post and make a public apology and correction.  Who knows?  Maybe it will turn out that Mr. Eubanks was sitting in his office reading my taxslayer posts and he called a co-worker in to see what some stupid blogger was saying about him.  And then maybe the co-worker got so mad that he decided to stick up for his colleague and so he whipped out his smart phone, went straight to my website, banged out an angry response and then left the site.  Then he stood over Mr. Eubanks should for then next 20 minutes as he waited for his comment to appear on the office computer’s screen.  Of course, that theory doesn’t really explain the earlier visits from Droid Guy but hey, I’m just brainstorming here.

If you’ve actually managed to read this entire, complicated story, you’re probably wondering why I would go through so much trouble just to try and prove that some random guy is a jerk.  Well the thing is, Daniel Eubanks isn’t just some random internet hater.  He was the man in charge of what WAS one of the biggest and best known video contests on the web.  I’m a filmmaker that entered that contest and I’m even a paying customer of Taxslayer.com.  If Mr. Eubanks did leave the “Sam Jenkins” commment, it’s a really disturbing development.  Assuming Mr. Eubanks is “Sam Jenkins,” here is a list of things he has done to me, a contestant in the contest he ran:

1.  He twice told me, in writing, that the 2010 taxslayer contest would “NOT” be canceled but then canceled the contest anyway.

2.  He refuses to acknowledge that he actually told me the contest was not going to be canceled.

3.  He refuses to answer my questions about the cancellation of the contest.

4. He gave me his phone # so we could talk but he refuses to pick up when I call.

5.  He has been ignoring my e-mails and voicemails since last week.

6.  The one time I called him from an anonymous # he picked up.  I told him who I was and he hung up on me.

7.  He (allegedly) tried to harass and intimidate me using a fake name.

8.  He (alegedly) mocked my entries and told me they were “awful.”

9.  He (allegedly) told me to “Grow Up” and that I should be ashamed of myself (for telling people he sucks at running contests, I guess)

10. He (allegedly) tried to get me to shut up by warning me that he and his company might file an unconstitutional law suit against me.

When you see all that stuff listed out like that you have to wonder how Taxslayer could possibly keep this guy employed after this.  This guy seems to have gone way, way over the line here.  He took what should have been a business matter and made it personal and now he seems tobe attacking me just for telling the truth.  But is it my fault that he gave me a written and signed guarantee about the contest?  Is it my fault he lied when he told me the contest wouldn’t be canceled?  Is it my fault that the guy didn’t even care enough to TRY and talk to me?  Should I just have shrugged my shoulders, said “oh well, I got screwed” and walked away from this?  For God’s sake, the guy has known that  I run a Video Contest blog since the first time we talked.  What the hell did he think would happen if he treated me like crap!?  Did he expect me NOT to mention it on the site?

Again, I don’t want to be sued so for the record, if ANYONE sees something in any of my posts that they feel is untrue they should e-mail me and if the concern is valid I will remove the information toot sweet.

MAY 18th UPDATE:  It’s been about 6 days since I e-mailed a link to this post to the head of the taxslayer contest, Daniel Eubanks.  I told him that I believed the comment in question came from him but that if I was wrong, he should let me know and I would set the record straight.  I told him that if he did not deny that he made the comment, I would take that to mean that he is the person behind it.  My web stats tell me that I’m still getting hits from Taxslayer HQ all the time, but so far Daniel Eubanks has not denied leaving the “sam jenkins” comment.

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Taxslayer.com lies to filmmakers, cancels video contest 20 days after submission deadline

Posted by Beardy on May 11th, 2010

taxslayer

Note: This is an updated and expanded version of our first taxslayer post from May 5th.

Despite giving at least one filmmaker a written and signed guarantee that the 2010 Taxslayer.com video contest would not be canceled due to a lack of entries, Taxslayer shocked the poor suckers who wasted their time creating submissions for them this year when they announced that the contest was indeed being canceled…due to lack of entries.  (From my count, they got at least 18 submissions which seems like plenty, doesn’t it?) The cancellation announcement came on May 5th; almost three weeks after the submission deadline had passed.  Oh…and the filmmaker they gave that written and signed guarantee to was me.  On their word that the contest would go on no matter how many entries were recived, I went out and spent approximately 50 hours and $400 writing, shooting and editing two entries for this year’s taxslayer contest.  In total, I created 90 seconds of video content because the “taxslayer team” assured me that my efforts could be worth as much as $20,000 in prize money.  I have tried repeatedly to talk to someone from taxslayer about why they lied to me and let me waste so much time and money on a contest that they knew was probably going to wind up being canceled.  But so far, I’ve been met with nothing but mind-blowing levels of rudeness.

For three years, the annual Taxslayer.com commercial contest has been one of the highest profile and best known video contests on the web. In 2008, this video was selected as the winner of the contest. The filmmaker received $25,000 and the ad went on to air on national TV during the 2009 Tax season. In 2009, this video won the second annual competition and again, the filmmaker behind it was paid $25,000. Except this time (much to the surprise of many contestants) Taxslayer announced they were going to re-shoot the ad before airing it. Here’s the result.  This re-shoot concept was never mentioned in the rules and many contests who created tv-quality entries were furious that taxslayer let them waste so much of their time and money when apparently, all they were after were ideas they could have a production company re-shoot.

What's under that helmet? A liar.

The Taxslayer; he will smite you with his mighty lies

In January, Taxslayer brought the contest back for 2010 but it came with some odd changes. For one, the prize for first place was reduced to $15,000 and a second place prize of $5,000 was added. But what was really bizarre were the strict submission guidelines. Filmmakers were required to submit both a 15 second and a 30 second version of their ads.  So taxslayer was paying less money for more work.  On top of the changes, Taxslayer would not confirm whether they wanted ads that could air on TV as-is or if filmmakers should just shoot something simple that taxslayer could remake later.

The complicated and unclear rules scared most filmmakers away but I entered and lost this contest in 2009 (my first loss ever!) and I had spent a whole year thinking of ideas I could shoot if it was was brought back. The taxslayer rules required that filmmakers upload their videos to youtube and then tag them “taxslayer2010.”  So two weeks before the hard-to-forget submission deadline of April 15th, I checked youtube.  The submission period had been open for 2 1/2 months but I found just ONE, SINGLE ENTRY!

Normally, seeing just one entry would make this a must-enter contest.  But I remembered seeing something in the rules that said that taxslayer could cancel the contest if they didn’t get enough submissions. Entering a contest that is probably going to be canceled would be a pretty stupid waste of time. So on March 30th I sent an e-mail to Taxslayer.com. Here’s a piece of it:

I run a video contest blog called “The Video Contest news” and we’ve done a few posts about this year’s taxslayer contest. I, and many of my readers would like to enter the contest but I have a feeling that it is going to be canceled this year due to lack of entries. Is there a chance the contest will be canceled? If the contest is on for sure, and if I announced that guarantee on my blog, you for sure would get lots of new entries from our readers.

An hour later, I got this response. (The all-caps bit included)

The contest will NOT be cancelled. We regularly receive the bulk of our entries in early April.

Thanks!

A few seconds later, I got a second response from Taxslayer. This time it came directly from the head of the contest, Daniel Eubanks. Mr. Eubanks is the Assistant Director of the “Growth Division” at Taxslayer’s parent company, Rhodes Financial Services in Augusta, Georgia. I know all that because his electronic business card was attached to the e-mail. Here’s what he said:

Dan,

I hope I didn’t sound rude in my previous email, I just wanted to make sure you knew we definitely won’t cancel the contest. Let me know if I can help with anything else.

Thanks!

Daniel Eubanks
Assistant Director of Growth
TaxSlayer.com

After getting such a positive response I wrote Mr. Eubanks back and said I wanted to do a post on VCN about the contest and try and clarify some of the confusing parts of the rules.  Here’s a piece of my e-mail:

The filmmakers who read my website kind of make up the unofficial core of the video contest community.  These are the people who regularly enter video contests and usually turn in some of the highest quality entries.  After I posted about this year’s taxslayer contest I heard from a number of people who were confused by the new rules.  I’ve read the rules from top to bottom and I’m still not 100% sure what is required.  Would you be willing to answer a few questions and clarify a few things?  If I posted these clarifications on my site, I think you would definitely see a jump in high-quality entries.  The reason I asked if the contest was going to be cancelled is because from talking to other filmmakers, I get the feeling that many are going to skip this contest and instead focus on one of the other big contests that are running right now.

I then asked six questions for the article.  To my surprise, Mr. Eubanks never responded.  The rules implied that no questions about the contest could be answered so I took Mr. Eubanks’ silence to mean that he had already said too much and that I shouldn’t do the post.

Still, I now had personal guarantee from the head of the contest so I immediately started planning an entry. How could I not?  Not only did I have inside information that the contest would not be canceled no matter how many entries were received, (and it looked like they weren’t going to get many) I had a written and electronically signed agreement to that fact from the head of the contest!  That’s a legally binding contract right there, my friend!  Mr. Eubanks knew that his guarantee would result in me and possibly my readers (I e-mailed a few of them about the guarantee and I know of 2 for sure that did entries) creating entries for the contest so it would be ethically and legally irresponsible as well as just plan dumb to cancel the contest after entering into such an agreement….right?

I was so excited about my inside information that after I finished my first entry (consisting of a 30 second and 15 second version, remember) I started thinking that maybe I had enough time to do a second entry. Like a sign from above, just as I was about to upload my first submission, I got another e-mail from Daniel Eubanks at Taxslayer.com on April 6th. Here it is.  Presumably, everyone who entered the contest last year got this same message.

We are quickly approaching the April 15th deadline for the 2010 TaxSlayer.com video contest. We noticed that you submitted an entry last year but have not done so yet this year. We value all of our submissions and hope to receive one from you this year. If you have any questions at all about the contest please let us know. If you are already working on an entry and plan to submit it soon please reply to this email and let us know so that we can be on the lookout for your submission. Thanks for your help and we look forward to hearing from you soon.

-The TaxSlayer Team

They were begging for entries!  Looking back, that e-mail really infuriates me since Taxslayer probably knew that the contest was going to be canceled when they sent out their last minute call for entries.  I’m guessing the head of the contest decided he should at least make it look like he tried to get more people to submit.  But how many people can really pull together a TV-quality production in just 9 days??  I can’t help but suspect that they knew that anyone entering the contest at that point would just be wasting their time and money.

Taxslayer spends a fortune sponsoring race cars but I guess paying out video contest winnings would break the bank

Taxslayer spends a fortune sponsoring race cars but I guess paying out video contest winnings would break the bank

Of course, I wasn’t thinking so negatively at the time.  But I was worried I might knock myself out shooting another submission only to find out that the deadline was being extended. So I e-mailed Mr. Eubanks again and he said “At this time it doesn’t look like the contest will be extended.”

I just about lost my mind. This was an unbelievable opportunity and I was probably the only filmmaker who knew about it.  I wrote a second script and put up a call for actors on craisglist that very day. By April 15th, I had created two complete entries for the taxslayer contest consisting of 4 videos total. The day after the deadline I checked youtube and found 18 entries for the 2010 contest and posted them all here on VCN. My odds of winning at least $5,000 was 1 in 4.5. As you can guess, my hopes were high.

So I was completely flabbergasted/crushed/befuddled/pissed when on may 5th, Taxslayer.com sent out an e-mail to everyone who submitted videos for this year’s commercial contest and announced that the 2010 competition was being CANCELED due to lack of submissions. Again, this announcement came almost 3 weeks after the April 15th cut off for submissions and just about 2 weeks before they should have announced the winners.

I have been following and entering online video contests since 2007 and I have NEVER seen this kind of thing happen before. I have seen one or two small contests disappear before any entries were recived but I think canceling a video contest after the deadline might be totally unprecedented. It’s a huge shock and major disappointment that one of the most established and best known contests would do this to all the people who spent precious time, money and resources making videos for them. Among those 18 entries I found on youtube, I saw several that I thought would make great winners. Some were professionally produced and ready for TV.  I guess taxslayer didn’t feel the same way though. Here’s the e-mail they sent out:

Dear Contest Participant,

First we would like to thank you for your entry into the 2010 TaxSlayer.com Commercial Contest. We received some great submissions and are very thankful for your efforts. Regrettably we did not receive the required number of entries for the contest. Pursuant to section four of the Official Contest Rules, “If a minimum (number of)… entries are not received by the end of the contest period…the contest will be void and no prizes will be awarded.” With this in mind, the contest will be voided effective immediately. Once again we would like to thank you for your participation. Please know that as a result of this, you are released of all of your duties and obligations pursuant to the official rules.

Sincerely,

The TaxSlayer Team

What really bothers me about this message is that the “Taxslayer Team” implies that they had no choice but to cancel the contest if a minimum number of entries were not received. This however, is not true. This is the statement from the above e-mail:

“Pursuant to section four of the Official Contest Rules, “If a minimum (number of)… entries are not received by the end of the contest period…the contest will be void and no prizes will be awarded.” With this in mind, the contest will be voided effective immediately.”

And this is what “section four of the official contest rules” actually say:

“If a minimum twenty five (25) (submitted by separate individuals) entries are not received by the end of the contest period, at the sole discretion of the sponsor, the contest will be void and no prizes will be awarded.”

As you can see, those ellipses replaced some crucial details. Taxslayer.com was not legally required to cancel their contest if they didn’t get more than 25 entries. The contest could be voided AT THE DISCRETION OF THE SPONSOR. Translation; we don’t have to cancel it if we don’t want to.  Yet taxslayer intentionally omitted that fact from their letter to contestants and made it sound like the rules forced them to void the contest.  That was a really scummy move.

I’m guessing that Taxslayer has gotten a lot of angry e-mails in the last few days. Sadly, they don’t even respect contestants enough to answer these messages individually. I contacted Taxslayer and asked a number of questions. They ignored my questions and e-mailed me the same form-letter response they apparently sent to everyone. Here it is:

Dear —,

First let me apologize on a personal note for the cancellation of the contest. I apologize if there was any confusion as to whether or not the contest would be canceled. We understand that everyone who participated committed valuable time and resources and for that we are grateful. Please note that this is our third video contest and we have never had to cancel before. In years past we have received well over the required number of submissions. Please know that we never anticipated coming up short this year. In many cases we have worked with more contestants than just the winner. That being said the number of submissions wasn’t enough to work with this year. All of the videos will remain on our radar as we plan our marketing for next tax season. If there is a video or idea that we feel would work well with our plans we will be sure to contact that contestant on an individual basis and they will in turn be compensated accordingly. Please be assured that your submissions will not be disregarded just because the contest has been cancelled.

Sincerely,

Daniel Eubanks

Wait a second Mr. Eubanks…you “never anticipated coming up short this year?”  Well that’s just a lie.  You and I discussed that very possibility via e-mail! And you “apologize if there was any confusion as to whether or not the contest would be canceled????  I’m not confused…I was lied to!  If I was confused it’s only because you confused me.

I’m sure there was a lot of pressure on Mr. Eubanks as head of the contest to get as many entries submitted as possible.  But did Taxslayer really want him to go so far as to trick people into entering?  After I got the canned complaint response, I wrote Mr. Eubanks again and said that his form letter did not answer any of my questions.  I did hear back from him and he seemed amazed that I still cared about this dumb, ole’ contest.  He gave me his number and said if I could call him if I wanted.  I said I would, but first, I thought he should have this:

Click to embiggen

Click to embiggen

That’s an invoice for my time and expenses for the projects that Mr. Eubanks greenlit.  The letter with the invoice explains why he’s legally obligated to compensate me for the work I did.  The guy works for a “financial services” company though so I’m sure he knows full well that he screwed up and got me to enter the taxslayer contest under false pretenses. Just for the record, that invoice accurately reflects that amount of time I spent on my taxslayer videos and the amounts are based on my rates for production work.  For two 30 second ads and two 15 second ads I expect to be paid $4,447.00.  Trust me, that is a hell of a bargain. If I wanted to be unreasonable about this I’d also bill them for the $1,200 in new production gear I bought to shoot my entries.

Anyways, anyone care to guess how Mr. Eubanks reacted to the invoice?  If you guessed “like a total jerk” you guessed correctly.  My e-mails to Mr. Eubanks have all been ignored.  I’ve called him several times and he never picked up.  I left several messages and he never called back.  Today, I finally called him from an anonymous number and he picked up.  I told him who I was and guess what he did…

He hung up on me.

I wasn’t too surprised though.  Earlier that day I called Rhodes Financial Services and talked to the operator.  I asked for the name of the director of the “Growth division” (that would be Mr. Eubank’s boss)  Can you guess what the operator did?

She hung up on me too!

I called back and she sounded pissed.  I got the guy’s name though so if this Daniel Eubanks guy is not enough of a professional to deal with the mess he made, I’ll try his boss.  And if anyone reading this entered the taxslayer contest this year and would like Mr. Eubanks’ boss’ contact info, just let me know.

I started this blog nine months because simply put, I love video contests.  They’re fun, they’re great ways to get experience and best of all, you can make a lot of money with them.  But in the last 9 months I’ve watched filmmakers get screwed every which way you could think of in these contests.  9 times out of 10 there’s nothing you can do about it.  But this time, the person who got screwed is me and I just happen to have the law on my side in this matter.  Mr. Eubanks knew that if he lied to me I would go out and create entries for the taxslayer contest and he knew that if he told me the truth (that the contest could have been canceled) he knew I would NOT have created any entries.  I understand that the rules said that the contest MAY be canceled if fewer than 25 entries were submitted and the other people who entered this contest accepted the risk that the contest could be canceled under certain conditions.  But n my case, Mr. Eubanks’ personal, written guarantee to me as a representative of taxslayer.com supersedes the generic terms of the contest rules.  Why did the guy lie to me to get me to enter the contest?  I don’t know…but he did.  And now he and his company need to step up and fulfill their obligations.  In the real world, you don’t just get to waste people’s time and money and then shrug your shoulders and walk away. You can’t just lie to people and then hang up on them when they call looking for answers.  That’s not how you treat your customers.  Oh yeah…that’s what really sucks about this.  I’m a paying customer of taxslayer.com!  I used them to file my taxes this year because I wanted to support a company that supported video contests!  From here on out though, I’m a Turbo-Tax man.

UPDATE:  Oh snap.  We seem to have gotten the attention of someone at taxslayer.com.  It looks like someone at taxslayer’s parent company, Rhodes Financial Services tried to leave this angry comment in response to this post:

Dude…get over it. You are right, as you proved, it is nearly impossible to create a quality commercial in 9 days. Your entry was awful. You would have lost anyways. Grow up, you should be ashamed of yourself. On another note I wouldn’t be surprised if this guy and his company slap a slander suit on you so fast your head spins.

That comment was made by someone using a fake name and a fake e-mail address.  But I checked my web stats and it’s pretty clear that this comment was made by someone at the Rhodes Financial offices in Augusta, GA.  Presumably it was the head of the contest, Daniel Eubanks since he knows I run this site and that I have been blogging about the cancellation of the contest.  For a full explanation of how I could tell where the above comment came from, click here: http://videocontestnews.com/2010/05/12/did-this-angry-comment-come-from-the-head-of-the-taxslayer-contest/

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Taxslayer.com cancels video contest 20 days after the submission deadline

Posted by Beardy on May 5th, 2010

This morning, Taxslayer.com sent out an e-mail to everyone who submitted videos for this year’s Taxslayer commercial contest and announced that the 2010 competition was being CANCELED due to lack of submissions.  This announcement comes almost 3 weeks after the April 15th cut off for submissions.

I have been following and entering online video contests since 2007 and I have NEVER seen this kind of thing happen before.  I have seen one or two small contests disappear before any entries were recived but I think canceling a video contest after the deadline might be totally unprecedented.  It’s a huge shock and major disappointment that one of the most established and best known contests would do this to all the people who spent precious time, money and resources making videos for them.  A few weeks ago, I posted every 2010 Taxslayer entry I could find right here.  I found 18 entries…and two of them were mine.  Among those 18 entries I saw several that I thought would make great winners.  I guess taxslayer didn’t feel the same way.  Here’s the e-mail I got this morning:

Dear Contest Participant,

First we would like to thank you for your entry into the 2010 TaxSlayer.com Commercial Contest. We received some great submissions and are very thankful for your efforts. Regrettably we did not receive the required number of entries for the contest. Pursuant to section four of the Official Contest Rules, “If a minimum (number of)… entries are not received by the end of the contest period…the contest will be void and no prizes will be awarded.” With this in mind, the contest will be voided effective immediately. Once again we would like to thank you for your participation. Please know that as a result of this, you are released of all of your duties and obligations pursuant to the official rules.

Sincerely,

The TaxSlayer Team

What really bothers me about this message is that the “Taxslayer Team” implies that they had no choice but to cancel the contest if a minimum number of entries were not received.  This however, is not true.  This is the statement from this morning’s e-mail:

“Pursuant to section four of the Official Contest Rules, “If a minimum (number of)… entries are not received by the end of the contest period…the contest will be void and no prizes will be awarded.” With this in mind, the contest will be voided effective immediately.”

And this is what “section four of the official contest rules” actually say:

“If a minimum twenty five (25) (submitted by separate individuals) entries are not received by the end of the contest period, at the sole discretion of the sponsor, the contest will be void and no prizes will be awarded.”

As you can see, those ellipses replaced some crucial details.  Taxslayer.com was not legally required to cancel their contest if they didn’t get more than 25 entries.  The contest could be voided AT THE DISCRETION OF THE SPONSOR.  Translation; we don’t have to cancel it if we don’t want to.

I’m guessing that Taxslayer got a lot of angry e-mails today.  Sadly, they don’t even respect contestants enough to answer these messages individually.  I contacted Taxslayer and asked a number of questions.  They ignored my questions and e-mailed me the same form-letter response they apparently sent to everyone.  Here it is:

Dear —,

First let me apologize on a personal note for the cancellation of the contest. I apologize if there was any confusion as to whether or not the contest would be canceled. We understand that everyone who participated committed valuable time and resources and for that we are grateful. Please note that this is our third video contest and we have never had to cancel before. In years past we have received well over the required number of submissions. Please know that we never anticipated coming up short this year. In many cases we have worked with more contestants than just the winner. That being said the number of submissions wasn’t enough to work with this year. All of the videos will remain on our radar as we plan our marketing for next tax season. If there is a video or idea that we feel would work well with our plans we will be sure to contact that contestant on an individual basis and they will in turn be compensated accordingly. Please be assured that your submissions will not be disregarded just because the contest has been cancelled.

Sincerely,

Daniel Eubanks

I have a lot more I want to say about this but I’m going to cut things off here, for now.  I have some interesting information that I’m not ready to share yet but I’ll probably get into it later this week.  In the meantime, if you entered this year’s taxslayer contest, we want to hear from you.  Please leave a comment or e-mail us at Videocontestnews@gmail.com.

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Doritos’ OTHER video contest headed for a bad end

Posted by Beardy on March 23rd, 2010

viralocity

Poor Canada.  Those chip-loving hosers weren’t eligible to participate in Dorito’s Crash the Superbowl commercial contest.  But now that CTSB is over, Fritolay decided that our neighbors to the north deserved a contest of their own.  So they launched a new video contest, “Doritos Viralocity,” just for them.

The premise of “Viralocity” is pretty neat but the execution is just….whoa, kinda nuts.  Doritos released a new, un-named flavor of chips in Canada and asked the public to name it.  Entrants were supposed to shoot a video that shows why the new flavor should get their suggested name.  Like I said, it’s a cool idea.

If I were eligible to enter, I'd have called them "Beardy's Choice"

But considering how well-executed the Crash the Superbowl contest was, “Viralocity” is just plain crazy and confusing.  The winner of the contest and the recipient of the $100,000 (CD) grand prize will be the video that goes the most viral.  Doritos has a whole system of points set up to measure viralness.  For example, every time a Canadian views an entry, that entry gets 5 points.  But if someone outside Canada watches an entry, it gets 100 points.  And each time it gets facebooked or tweeted or Dugg, different points are awarded.  Some accomplishments can get you as many as 1,000 points.  If you’re interested in the specifics, click here to see the full breakdown.

So what’s wrong with this system?  Well for one, it’s basically just a giant online free-for-all.  There’s no way Doritos could ever track all those views and clicks and posts so if someone really wanted to inflate their video’s score, it’d be very easy.

But worse than that though, it seems like the contest was almost intentionally designed to pick a terrible, horrible winner.  Anyone who knows how the internet works could tell you that this contest is going to be won by some annoying guy with an idiotic show on youtube that’s super-popular with tweens and his video would some how be related to something those tweens really, really love.  Like, I dunno…Twilight or something.  There are still 10 days to go before the final scores are tallied but right now, it looks like this video, with a score of 1,852,667 points will probably wind up being the winner:

I knew the most “popular” video wouldn’t be very good but I never expected it to be straight up racist!  Yeah the guy in the video is asian but that doesn’t mean it’s no big deal if he runs around mocking Chinese people.  If that video wins, is Doritos really going to want to associate themselves with such an offensive caricature?

As expected, this dude who made that video has a very, very, very popular youtube channel and his “show” is just one big joke about negative Asian stereotypes.  In fact, this guy’s channel is so popular that his other entry in the contest is now ranked #3.  If his videos were awesome this wouldn’t bother me but both entries are lame and the flavor names he picked have no relation to the videos.  And it sorta seemed like that was the point of the contest.  The only reason this dude is going to win is because he has a big social network.  That means that every single filmmaker that actually tried to make a decent entry for this contest wasted their time.

Doritos should have seen this coming a mile away.  When you let the internet decide what’s popular, you’re gonna wind up with some pretty lame, offensive, lowest-common-denominator type stuff.

And trust me, this guy IS probably going to win.  The Viralocity website is set-up in such a way that you can see the most-popular videos.  Since the Asian-bashing Twilight spoof is ranked #1, everyone is going to click it out of curiosity….and that of course keeps jacking the video’s score higher and higher.

It looks like Doritos managed to get a whopping 1,200 entries for this contest.  If you’d like to sort through them, here’s the video gallery:  http://www.doritosviralocity.ca/Gallery.aspx

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Shenanigans in the LG “Life’s Good” HD contest?

Posted by Beardy on February 11th, 2010

LG

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?

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Dueling Caskets (full of Doritos!)

Posted by Dan on February 8th, 2010
Image from one of Doritos' Crash the Super Bowl winners; Casket

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:

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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:”

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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:

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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"

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"

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"

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"

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. From "Rest in Chips"

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"

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.

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Avoid like the plague: DocSniper.com

Posted by Beardy on November 27th, 2009
docsniper

NOTE:  Our traffic has gone up a good bit thanks to the Crash the Superbowl posts.  So if you’re new to the site, thanks for visiting.  If you’re looking for a place to promote your Doritos commercial, scroll down to the next post.  But if you feel like reading some non-CTSB video contest news, scroll your eyes down to the next paragraph.

There are lot of reasons NOT to enter certain video contests.  If the winner is picked by a public vote, you should probably stay out of that fight.  If the prize is really small that means the company is cheap and might not even pay up if you win.  But the most offensive red flag is a contest that charges you an entry fee.  All I can say about that is Fuuuuu*k that noise.  Finally, I try to avoid contests that are run by non-U.S. based companies.  For one, those contests are usually open to everyone, everywhere which means that your competition is THE ENTIRE FREAKING WORLD.  But more importantly, if you have a problem with that contest, what are you going to do?  Fly over to their home country and sue them?

So those are what I consider to be deal-breaking red flags.  That said, I think I have officially discovered the WORST video contest I have ever seen.  Somehow they managed to pull off the rare, 4-red-flagger contest here.  It’s “Doc Sniper’s Make Some Noise Video contest” and it immediately comes off as suspicious because the point of the contest is incredibly vague.  Check out this description:

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That’s it?  Make a video with music in it?  What the heck is the point of that?  Ohhh..I know.  The point is that to enter the contest, you have to pay a $10 ENTRY FEE!  Pretty much any filmmaker will already have some kind of project that includes music in it.  So maybe a ton of them will decide to take a shot, pay the 10 bucks and enter to win the massive $500 jackpot!

This just has “scam” written all over it.  The winner of the $500 prize is picked by the “Doc Sniper” community.  So think about that; you have to PAY to enter the contest and then if you want the prize, you have to get a bunch of people to register to the site to vote for you.  I repeat, Fuuuuuuu*k that noise.

I kind of feel bad for ripping on DocSniper.com because after looking through the site, it seems to be the passion project of some young entrepreneurs hoping to build a new social networking site.  I don’t think they actually want to rip people off but based on the business model they are presenting, I think that it’s inevitable that people are going to get screwed.  Basically it looks like they are trying to build a pyramid scheme for video contests; if 100 people each pay 10 bucks to enter the contest then 50% of that money goes to the “winner” and 50% goes to Doc Sniper.  According to the site, it is their goal to do one contest like this every month.  But so far, just 3 people have entered the “music” contest.  Are they still going to pay out the 500 bucks if they only take in $30 in entries fees?

The final red flag here is a little weird but there are several videos on the site from “Doc Sniper” himself in which he explains certain aspects of the site.  Click right here to visit the site and watch one of these videos.  (best example is on the front page in the upper right hand corner)  Something is weird about Doc Sniper.  It took me a second to catch on but the guy in the video is doing a fake American Accent.  I kept poking through the site and in the forum, someone mentions that Doc Sniper is based in Australia.  So there you go, the final red flag.  And this red flag is so scary it has a picture of an even redder flag on it!  The people behind this site are going out of their way to make it appear like they are based in the US (besides the accent, they seem to really drive home the fact that prizes are paid in US dollars.)

Like I said, I feel bad for coming down so hard on this site.  Despite the weird fake accent, “Doc Sniper” even seems like a nice guy.  So Doc, if you have a google alert set for your name and you see this, I recommend that you drop the entry fee idea ASAP.  There are just way, way too many free video contests out there for the concept ever to catch on.

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A tale of two caskets (full of doritos)

Posted by Dan on November 19th, 2009

FEBRUARY 8th, 2010 UPDATE: In the post below I explain that I suspect that my Casket-full-of-Doritos idea for the Crash the Superbowl contest might have been stolen by another team of filmmakers.  Well, the suspicious entry, “Casket” went on to score a spot in the finals and last night it aired during the Superbowl.  Since I first wrote this post I’ve learned a lot about the other entry and I am more convinced than ever that I was plagiarized.  For a more up to date version of this story, click here:  http://videocontestnews.com/2010/02/08/dueling-caskets-full-of-doritos/

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Beardy is camping out to buy tickets for tonight’s 12:01AM screening of Twilight so while he’s away I thought I’d step in and do a little self-promotion. I also wanted to share my Doritos hard luck story. Like pretty much anybody reading this site, I submitted an entry for this year’s Crash the Superbowl contest. And here is that very entry now!


Be honest, it’s the greatest thing you’ve ever seen right? I’m super proud of my submission but I know that the competition out there is tough. And I was totally ok with the fact that with thousands of entries coming in, 6 teams of professional filmmakers with deep pockets and Red cameras and fancy dollies would probably come along and take all the finalist spots. And like I said, I was totally cool with that. But then….I saw this:

Ahhhhh! Some team of professional filmmakers with deep pockets and a Red camera and a fancy dolly came along and filmed an idea a whole lot like mine! Man, that’s a bummer. The coincidences between that spot and mine are just crazy, aren’t they? When 4000 people each try and come up with an idea for a commercial for the same product there’s obviously going to be some overlap, but damn, there’s a lot of overlap here. Of course, I’ve seen a lot of CTSB entries that have really similar ideas. (For instance, how many Doritos-as-a-paper-football and dorito-loving-zombies spots have you watched in the last few weeks?) But of the 2200 or so Crash entries I’ve watched, I don’t think there are two of them that share more common elements than these two casket-full-of-doritos entries. I mean, it’s not just that both videos are funeral scenes. It’s that both videos include:

1. A dead man’s last wish to be buried in a casket full of Doritos
2. A funeral for that guy that turns out to be fake
3. A big, framed photo of the “dead” guy enjoying a bag of Doritos next to the casket
4. Shots of that guy in his casket buried up to his face in chips
5. A climax in which the “dead” guy gets his comeuppance when the casket of chips is knocked over

That’s sort of a lot of similarities to squeeze into 30 seconds, isn’t it? I have to wonder, what the heck happened here? Is this just a case of really bad luck or is the CIA monitoring my brainwaves as part of some kind of scheme to control the masses via secret messages hidden in a superbowl commercial? There’s no chance that another team of filmmakers were somehow (gulp) inspired by my entry, is there?

My entry, Rest in Chips was uploaded on Friday, November 6th and the other video, The Casket, appeared online a few days later. I might be paranoid but I’m not crazy enough to think that the makers of the other entry saw Rest In Chips and then ran out the next day and rented a church so they could make their own version of my spot. So I was left with only one conclusion; this was just a giant coincidence…nothing more.

But then it finally hit me; I am an idiot. After I wrote my script I created and animated storyboard so I could see if I could fit my entire idea into 30 seconds. On October 6th, I uploaded that storyboard animation on to youtube. Then I sent the link to a few people and asked for ideas and feedback. During that time, the video was set to “public” and could be seen by anyone. One of my friends even said to me “why did you put that on youtube? What if someone steals your idea!?” And I laughed and laughed at that notion. And then I stopped laughing because I realized I had made a very stupid mistake. I named the video “Doritos Storyboard.” Because the word “Doritos” was in the title, any CTSB contestant who went to youtube to study last year’s winning entries or actual Doritos commercials could have found and watched my storyboard.

I’ve been burned by plagiarism before so I went back to youtube and deleted the storyboard. But by then it had already been up for like a week. A few days later, I changed some of the dialogue in my script and created a slightly tweaked version of the animated storyboard. On October 12th I uploaded that video to youtube except I named this one simply “dortest” so that it would be hidden from youtube’s search engine. It’s still online. Here it is:

I hate to think the worst of people like this but if you think I’m going overboard, try a little experiment. Open The Casket in one window and my storyboard video in the other. Then hit “Play” on them as fast as you can so you can watch them simultaneously. The shots line up better than Dark Side of the Moon and The Wizard of Oz. I can maybe understand that two separate filmmakers could come up with the same ideas, but what are the odds they’d use the same site gags at the same moments??

I really have no idea what to think about this. I know it’s just speculation on my part but I think I might have declare shenanigans on the makers of The Casket. At the very least, I think it’s plausible that somewhere out there, another filmmaker who was planning on entering the CTSB contest went on to youtube and searched for “Dortios” related videos. If they “Sorted by date,” my storyboard would have been right up in their face. The storyboard seems too crazy to ever shoot (seriously, what kind of a nut would get a real casket and have a real grave dug?) so maybe they assumed it would never really be filmed and so the concept was fair game.

Or maybe it was the CIA. I dunno. At this point I’m pretty open to any possibilities.

1/6/2010 UPDATE: Well, Doritos announced their Top 6 finalists on Monday and I was extremely disappointed to see that “The Casket” made the cut. For making the top 6 they receive $25,000, a trip to the superbowl and a chance to see their ad air during the game. If their ad does air, they could win a bonus of up to 2 million dollars.

After writing this blog post I contacted Doritos and informed them of my plagiarism concerns and explained the situation. I received a response saying that the Doritos legal team would look into the matter.

So even though the company’s lawyers knew there might be a chance the idea was stolen the judges decided to choose it anyway. Since 40% of a video’s score was based on “originality” I cannot understand how “The Casket” could have gotten a high enough score to make the Top 6. There were 4000 entries. Common sense tells you that a fair judging system would yield many videos that were just fractions of a point away from making the top 6. So a serious deduction in any category should theoretically sink any videos chances.

Now that Doritos has chosen “Casket” as a finalist, a new and even bigger problem has presented itself. Even if the idea was not stolen from me, “Casket” should have been disqualified because it infringes on my copyright. Copyright infringement can happen on accident but that does not give the infringer a free pass to benefit from their actions. Unintentional copyright infringement is still copyright infringement. My storyboard animation for “Rest in Chips” was first posted to the web the first week in October. The version that is on youtube now was uploaded October 12th. On October 29th I posted the first rough cut of my entry to my youtube channel. It, and several other rough cuts are still there. That first rough cut was on line 4 days before “Casket” was even filmed. And finally, my entry was uploaded to the contest site well before “Casket” was.

This all means that I am the owner and creator of the “Dead man has his last wish to be buried in chips fulfilled but during the funeral he is revealed to be alive inside the casket full of chips that gets knocked over” story idea. If a commercial was running on TV right now that was as similar to “Casket” as my entry, storyboard and rough cuts are, the judges would never have been able to select “Casket” as a finalist because Doritos would be sued for IP theft and copyright infringement regardless of whether or not the concept was intentionally stolen. My rights as an independent filmmaker are the same as a multi-million dollar corporation. Just because my storyboard or entry have not aired on TV, it does not mean my Intellectual Property rights don’t count.

Since Doritos knew that I was concerned about plagiarism and since they knew that I have proof that I was the first person to publicly release this idea, I feel personally offended that they chose to ignore my rights and concerns. Back in the newspaper days, they used to say “never pick a fight with a guy who buys ink buy the barrel.” Let’s update that statement for the modern age and say that you should “never pick a fight with a filmmaker who has a blog and nothing to lose.”

More details about these new developments here: http://videocontestnews.com/2010/01/04/one-of-the-crash-the-superbowl-finalists-revealed-early/ and here: http://videocontestnews.com/2010/01/05/doritos-2010-crash-the-superbowl-finalists/

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Dude with a lot of free time wins Horror contest

Posted by Beardy on October 28th, 2009

homerunn8

A few weeks back I blogged about the Home Run Inn Halloween Video Challenge. I love the concept (make a horror film featuring a Home Run Inn Pizza) but hated the execution (the winner of the $2,500 grand prize will be determined by web votes.) This week, Home Run Inn announced the winner of the contest. So…here’s the type of winning video you get when you let “the public” decide the results. The actual video was annoying to embed so click on the image to view.

homerunn9

First Place winner. Prize: $2,500

That is easily one of the worst videos I have ever seen win a contest. So how did this one win?  That’s easy to explain actually….the guy who made it apparently just stayed up every night voting for himself over and over again.  And what’s amazing is that technically, this wasn’t even cheating!  Home Run Inn made it very, very easy for contestants to stuff their own ballot boxes.  To vote, users had to register an e-mail address and then they could cast up to 15 VOTES A DAY for the video of their choice.  And the rules say absolutely nothing about not creating fake accounts.  So technically, the winner of this contest actually played by the rules…the stupid, crappy rules.  In the end, the winning video received more than 40,000 votes. Could 2,500 bucks really be worth all that work???

I wasn’t following the voting on this contest but the other contestants were. The comment box that went with the winning video is pretty ugly. People are not happy with the way things went down at all. Some contestants did keep track of the voting and the winner, “Foreseen Voices” would go up by thousands of votes in the middle of the night. And then, whenever someone would post a critical comment, a dozen, clearly fake comments (consisting of mostly random words) would appear so that the negative comment would be pushed off the page. Here are some of the more interesting comments that they tried to bury:

lyricopera2 says:

This is a lousy video in every way. Obvious duplicate accounts, and just a sad overall video. Nothing about this video is original, funny, slick, creative, or good in almost anyway. It is sad that this video is going to represent the entire contest. How about a contest based on creativity and execution rather than I’ll make 5 million accounts and carpal tunnel myself voting for it in my mom’s basement.

dpmotu3 says:

How come every time somone leaves a negative comment anther person obviuosly supporting the video comes on and leaves a stupid one line comment just enough times to get it off the front page??

mmsedm says:

People have viewed this video almost 15,000 times?!?
It has more votes in this short time span than it did in the longer Round 1 voting. What a joke this contest is! (If you can call it a contest.)

libnotice1 says:

why are people leaving bad comments? Maybe it is because no one understand how this video can get votes like crazy in the middle of the night. Maybe it is also because no one likes entering a contest you can’t win because no one can keep up with a video that is somehow getting 6000 votes a day.

Kirk LaSalle says:

This video had over 8000 votes in the fist 24 hours.. LOL when the votes get audited…(and they DO get audited)

LOL he’ll be in for surprise! LOL

“Kirk Lasalle” was wrong. There was no audit because the rules technically allowed all the activities that everyone was complaining about.  And these guys weren’t the only repeat voters by the way. The vote counts of many of the top 10 finalist videos are ludicrously high and there were plenty of accusations thrown at other filmmakers. So the whole thing was one big ClusterF#$&.

If you look at the contest website it’s immediately clear that Home Run Inn realizes they screwed up. They actually post a sort of apology NEXT TO the picture of the contest winner. It really comes off as a sort of diss against the guy. It’s like saying “ok, we screwed up and here’s the guy that wrecked the contest for everyone else by staying up all night voting for his own video over and over.”  Here’s the text of the announcement:

Thank you to everyone who participated and voted in this year’s Video Challenge. We appreciate everyone’s comments regarding how the contest should be judged in the future years. This is only our second year, so we take all comments/concerns into consideration. We are already talking about ways to make this contest better for next year and would like you to know that your feedback has definitely helped us! Something we are considering is adding in judge’s picks to the finalist round so that all videos, even those entered late in the contest, have a fair chance.

This was a really fun idea for a video contest and if judges had been in charge of picking the winner I would have entered in a second. So hopefully a new, improved version of the contest will be back next year.

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Cheaters CAN prosper!

Posted by Beardy on October 8th, 2009

twirl

Temptation, thy name is TwirlTV. For the last few days I have been wrestling with an ethical dilemma. To force myself to do the right thing I’ll blog about my mildly-evil plan rather than carry it out.

I don’t know what Twirl TV is. Some type of Hulu thing maybe? Who cares? Point is they’re holding a video contest that seems designed to reward cheaters. The idea is that you make a 15 or 30 second promo for, or a 3 minute parody of, your favorite TV show. Then you upload the thing to youtube and forward the link to Twirl TV within 6 hours of the upload time so they can keep track of it.

Now, here’s the BS part: Whichever video has the highest VIEW COUNT by October 16th wins $1,000.

Can you believe that? What is the friggin’ point!? It is so easy to increase your view count on youtube it’s embarrassing. Obviously you can just sit at your computer hitting the play button over and over but with the help of a very basic add-on to your internet browser you can race to the top of any “highest view count wins” contest in no time at all. Because I couldn’t believe the rules of this contest I wrote the organizers. Here is the e-mail I sent them:

“I have a question about the Twirl TV video contest. I wanted to enter but I saw that the winning video will be the one with the highest view count on youtube. Getting a high view count on youtube is very, very easy. You just need to know a few super easy computer tricks and you can automatically rack up views. How are you guys going to ensure that a cheater doesn’t win the contest? I’d hate to spend my time shooting a video only to find out some guy with an auto-refresher won by a landslide.”

And here is the actual response I got from Twirl TV:

“Thank you for you interest in our contest. We understand the possible use of automatic refreshers and developed a judging prize that is equal in value. The judging panel will consist of a TV producer and two of our top two Twirl TV users. We look forward to seeing your video and i will gladly answer any additional questions.”

-contest@twirltv.com

Translation: We know and we don’t care. The people behind this contest understand that this “view count” race is going to be won by a cheater. They’re also giving away a $1,000 video camera to the video they like best so who cares about the view count contest? I do, that’s who. This is just total and complete laziness on the part of the organizers of this contest. Oh, laziness and stupidity.  A “highest view count wins” contest could only be dreamed up by people who have no clue how the internet works these days. These type of people keep hearing about Twitter and yotube and Digg and facebook and they feel the need to jump on the viral video/social networking bandwagon even though they don’t know where the bandwagon is going or why.

At some point, the marketing people who came up with this contest had to explain it to the tech people who were supposed to set it up. I’m a tech guy and I’ve had to deal with marketing people before and some of them can be really thick-headed. They are “idea people” who get tunnel vision when they think they have an ingenious plan. Maybe some IT nerd tried to speak up and suggest how easy it would be for someone to get an artificially high view count. But the marketing people didn’t care. As long as it LOOKED like a lot of people had watched these promos then they could tell their bosses that the contest was a huge success. “We’re happy to report that the video contest entries had a combined view count of over 200,000!” they’ll say. “That means we exposed our brand to 200,000 people and only spent $2,000. Look how awesome at marking we are!”

After I got the e-mail back from Twirl TV I honestly thought good and hard about entering and then doing the things it would take for me to ensure a win. There are still 8 days to go in the contest and right now the most viewed video in the competition only has 1,700 views. Pffffft. I could shoot and upload a video today and have 1,700 “views” by midnight. But I’ve decided that $1,000 just isn’t worth the guilt I’d feel.

However….that guilt wouldn’t extend beyond my own head.  If I were to upload a video for this contest and then auto-refresh myself to a view count victory I would technically not be cheating.  BECAUSE THE RULES OF THE CONTEST DO NOT PROHIBIT SUCH ACTIVITY.  There’s no way that Twirl TV could ever track which IP addresses your video’s views came from but even if they could, replaying your own video over and over is not against the rules.  So if you’re in the mood to make an easy $1,000 go knock your self out.

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How to screw up a great idea for a video contest

Posted by Beardy on September 30th, 2009
homeruninnpizza2

In the last week I’ve gotten a few facebook messages from friends about Home Run Inn Pizza’s “Halloween Video Contest.”  This is happening because my friends all know that if there’s anything I love more than video contests it’s Pizza and Halloween

The idea for this contest is one of the best I’ve ever heard; make a horror film that includes a Home Run Inn Pizza.  Now….take a second to think about that.  You already have 3 great ideas you can film, don’t you?  How about Night of the Living Pizzas!?  Or Pizzaface the serial killer that wears a mask made of pizza!?  Or maybe a giant Pizza the Hutt type pizza blob starts getting some payback for all the pizza we’ve been eating and starts eating people!?

It’s great to see a contest that actually has a unique concept and isn’t just “shoot a commercial for us so we don’t have to pay an ad firm to do it.”  Even the contest website is one the absolute nicest I’ve ever seen; cool layout, easy to use and filled with cute monsters and pictures of delicious pizza.

No, how about I eat YOUR face!?

No, how about I eat YOUR face!?

There is only one grand prize in this competition.  First place will get you $2,500 but ten runners-up will each get 12 free pizzas (and Home Run Inn is like the best frozen pizza out there) and a flip video camera.

Even though there aren’t a bunch of big prizes, I was ready to start shooting just because I know me and my friends would have a ton of fun making a pizza-based horror film.  I bet you would too.  But don’t start charging up your camera battery yet.  The way this contest is being run is screwed up that no one should even bother to enter.

Here’s how the winner is selected:

  1. The submission period runs from 9/21/09 to 10/19/09
  2. The submission period is also the voting period.  Viewers cast a vote for their favorite video during this time.
  3. At the end of the submission/voting period the 10 videos with the most votes become the finalists.  Their scores are then reset.
  4. “Round two” starts and runs until 10/26.  During that time, viewers again vote for their favorite video.
  5. Finally the video with the most votes, wins.

SCREW….THAT……NOISE.  That sucks!  Any contest that lets viewers pick the winners sucks already but this plan seems like it was designed to make sure a really crappy video winds up the winner.

Google "pizza zombie" and you'll get some strange results

Google "pizza zombie" and you'll get some strange results

The biggest problem is that voting is happening during the submission period.  Right now, the video in First Place has 1,422 Votes!  The deadline is still 20 days away but anyone who entered right at the start of the contest has a gigantic advantage over people who submit later.  How is anyone who uploads a video today going to be able to catch up to 1,422 votes?  And to make things worse, all you have to do to vote for a video is register your e-mail address.  In the end, the winner will be whoever feels like registering the most accounts and voting for themselves over and over.

So this is a contest that you should stay a million miles away from because it will only break your heart.  What a fricking bummer.  You know what though?  It’s a pretty effective marketing campaign.  I seriously need some Home Run Inn Pizza now.

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The ugly side of video contests

Posted by Beardy on September 26th, 2009

I really enjoy entering video contests. Each contest I enter is a new creative challenge that requires a different solution. Thanks to the contests I’ve entered I’ve become a much sharper filmmaker so it’s a great way to improve your skills. And of course, I also really like winning and getting big checks in the mail for my work.

But there’s a lot about video contests that frustrate me.  Contest organizers sometimes don’t play by their own rules and sometimes contestants just flat out cheat in an effort to win. And that’s why I started this blog. My hope is that if someone shines a little light on the negative aspects of video contests, people will be forced to do better and play fair.

I think the thing that bothers me most about video contests is the lack of civility and good sportsmanship. Greed, jealousy and desperation can make people go a little crazy.  Throw in the anonymity that the internet provides and you’ve got a recipe for sabotage and trash talk.  For example, in a score-based competition, how many times have you seen your star rating drop mysteriously in a very short amount of time? How many times have you gotten ugly, anonymous comments about one of your videos? Do other contestants really think that the judges will see that youtube user “rudeboy742” thinks your entry “sucks goat ass” and then think to themselves, “yeah! This video does suck goat ass!?”

A few days ago I wrote about suspicious voting activity in the Butterfinger contest. The next day, someone going by the name “Douche Pumper” (yes, that’s what he called himself) left a very angry, very depressing comment on that blog post. Here it is:

"Douche Pumper" turned out to be Dallas filmmaker Justin S*****

"Douche Pumper" turned out to be Dallas filmmaker Justin S.

Wow. Talk about someone who is bitter about being fat and having a small ding-dong. You think anyone really wants to listen to some fat, red-bearded turd ramble on about how disgruntled he is over video contests? They don’t. Loser.

Get a life and get a job, you lazy f—. And, better yet, why don’t you make your own videos and actually compete in these contests. Then someone might actually care about what you have to say. Until then, have fun watching your website float off into the ether of Internet sites never visited.

It’s always the fat guys with little ding-dongs who start sites like this. Like Harry Knowles.

Anonymous Coward. <—That means you. Not my signature.
It’s obvious what has happened here, right?  One of the contestants in the Butterfinger contest saw that I was questioning the suspicious voting activity and are pissed that I suggested that they may have been doing something less than ethical to win that contest.

Except….that’s not what happened. Though the comment was left anonymously it was pretty easy to figure out where it came from.  I added a fancy piece of code to this wordpress blog that tells me where visitors are from and how they got here.  I checked the program logs and saw that the comment came from a visitor from Dallas, TX who arrived at the site via a google search for the name “Justin S*****.”

A few weeks ago I did a blog post about a Dallas filmmaker named Justin S***** who flagrantly plagiarized the work of frequent video contest winner, Jared Cicon. Justin copied Jared’s 2008 winning Taxlsayer.com video for a contest held by ForRent.com. He not only plagiarized the concept he even copied the tone and pacing and locations of Jared’s video. I wouldn’t have even mentioned it on the site except that Justin’s rip-off actually won first place and 10 grand from ForRent.com. Jared graciously said he didn’t mind the plagiarism but Justin S. never bothered to get his OK until other people called him out on his theft.  All around it was just a very uncool thing to do.  To see Jared Cicon’s original Taxslayer video, click here and to watch Justin S*****’s ForRent.com video, click here.  To read the blog post that got Justin S***** so angry, click here.

So it looks like Justin S. found the post about him while googling himself. He got angry and needed to unleash his venom (he also unleashed in a rather ugly way on the people on the ForRent site who also accused him of plagiarism.) But if Justin left a comment on my post about him then everyone would realize it was he who was obsessed with the size of my “ding-dong.” So he left the comment on the Butterfinger post to make it look like someone from that contest was the anonymous jerk. And that’s the part that really bothers me. Not only did he say a bunch of ugly (and wildly incorrect BTW) stuff, he also tried to frame one of the butterfinger finalists.

If Justin thought that what I said about his ForRent.com winning video was incorrect or unfair, he could have just e-mailed me and said so. I would have even been happy to post some kind of rebuttal from him or maybe even take down the original post. But instead, her spewed out a bunch of weird bile.  Just for fun, I’ll address some of Justin’s points:

“Wow. Talk about someone who is bitter about being fat and having a small ding-dong. You think anyone really wants to listen to some fat, red-bearded turd ramble on about how disgruntled he is over video contests? They don’t. Loser.”

Not actually a photo. Not pictured, a cartoon ding-dong

Not actually a photo.

Do you see what’s going on in this guy’s head? He doesn’t seem to realize that the mascot of this website isn’t an actual photo of me. I don’t look anything like that guy. I just thought it was a funny piece of clip art so I picked “beardy” as The Video Contest News’ mascot. The thing that really speaks volume’s about this person’s maturity level is his obsession with “ding dong” size. Why is Justin S***** so hung up on penis size? I’m no psychiatrist but I’ve seen enough episodes of Frasier to make an educated guess.  Also, I am not disgruntled.  I am totally gruntled with video contests!  I don’t want to give an exact number but I have won A LOT of money thanks to video contests in the last two years.  Also, Beardy’s beard is really more brown than red, isn’t it?

“And, better yet, why don’t you make your own videos and actually compete in these contests. Then someone might actually care about what you have to say..”

Why would someone be into video contests enough to start a blog devoted to them and yet never shoot entries themselves? For the record, I shoot maybe 3 contest entries a month and as I said, I do win….a lot.

It’s always the fat guys with little ding-dongs who start sites like this. Like Harry Knowles.

How does Justin S***** know how big Harry Knowles’ penis is?  I don’t know and I don’t want to know.  Wait a second, they are both from Texas.  Maybe…um, never mind.

At the end of Justin’s comment he slams me for writing this blog anonymously….and then signs off anonymously with the name “Douche Pumper.”  (Why would he call himself Douche Pumper??)

Ok….so, I understand that the irony here is getting pretty deep.  I write a blog under a pseudonym where I call out cheaters, bad sports and crappy contests and Justin S***** criticizes me for doing that and then tries to make it look like some innocent contestant from the Butterfinger contest did it.

This is a good time for me to explain why I do things the way I do here on VCN.  I’m very, very proud of my video work and it’s been very tempting to post about my latest wins here. This site could also be a great tool for building a personal fan base and for getting votes for videos when I need them.  But I’ve decided that I should keep my work out of this blog, at least for now. The reason? I am worried about retribution from people like Justin S*****. Like I said, I want to see video contests cleaned up and so I’m going to be bringing attention to people who are making video contests less fun for the rest of us. Now imagine if my name and a list of my work was available on this site. Many video contests are basically popularity contests. If a guy like Justin S***** is so bitter and angry that he has to make fun of a cartoon mascot’s beard and penis size then it’s not a giant leap to assume that he might also try and sabotage a stranger’s contest entries in retribution for them pointing out his inappropriate actions.  Long story short, if you act like a jerk I am going to call you out on it. But I refuse to give bad people the tools to wreck my chances in whatever contests I’m currently in.

Video contests are awesome but guys like Justin S***** make them less awesome.  These are the guys that aren’t just satisfied with getting their friends to vote for their entries, they also have to get their friends to give bad scores to their competition.  These are the guys that create fake youtube accounts so they can make it look like “the people” all agree that your work sucks.  These are the guys start fights in the comments sections of a contest’s website.  These are the guys that make us all look bad and these are the guys that convince companies that video contests are just not worth all the hassle.  Guys like Justin S***** are the ones that want to wreck a good thing.  But you don’t need to let these angry people get away with it.  If someone is harassing you in a contest, let us know and we’ll try and give them some of the attention they obviously crave so badly.

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Conan’s car contest: Something is rotten in the state of California

Posted by Beardy on September 18th, 2009

I had planned to just do a short little post about this but the more I look into it the more suspicious this whole thing gets. Something shady seems to have happened with the “Conan, please blow up my car” video contest. Let me start from the beginning before I lay out the case….

Shortly after taking over the Tonight Show, Conan O’Brian decided that there had to be a more interesting way to dispose of a “clunker” than just trading it to the government for some cash. So he announced the “Conan, please blow up my car” video contest. If you had a really crappy car you were supposed to create an interesting, creative video explaining why your car sucked and why you deserved to have it blown up and replaced by Conan with a brand new Lexus.

Since this contest was promoted on the Tonight Show for a few weeks they got a flood of entries. In all, 951 videos were submitted. Earlier this month, this video was selected as the winner:

Grand Prize Winner. Prize: A new Lexus Hybrid

Sure that’s a really crappy car but the video is as simple as can be. The rules of the contest encouraged participants to create over the top videos though. Judging was supposed to break down the score like this: Originality (50%) and Creativity (50%).

So was that video original and creative? No…not one bit. It was just a guy talking about his suspiciously crappy car. Commenters on the Tonight Show’s website are pretty upset that this video was chosen as the winner. Some even charge that some kind of fix was in. And you know what, as much as I love Conan I have to admit that I think something shady did occur. Consider these points made by commenters on the Tonight Show web site:

1. One poster points out that the entry should have been ineligible because the video features a business’ logo (A “Pizza Pirates” logo on the hood of the car and on the guy’s shirt) and that was prohibited by the rules.

2. Another mentions that he car is also totally illegal to drive because the seat-belts don’t work and apparently the car had to be a drivable clunker.

3. Yet another poster asks a question so brilliant it would make Columbo proud: “If this guy drives with one lft arm holding the door (oh pity me, could of said you used bungies mr. wizard). Can you imagine the right arm making gear changes and turning the steering wheel at same time. People this whole thing was preplanned to appear as a clunker. Aha!!!” (While that move might be tough it would at the very least make the car illegal to drive.)

4. The most astute observation came from a poster that suggested that this particular car was chosen because it was so wrecked that its make and model are a complete mystery. In the video, the owner of the car refers to it only as a “1980.” So instead of blowing up a crappy Ford or Toyota or whatever, Conan got to keep the car companies happy by destroying a completely anonymous car.

The damage to the car also seems kinda suspicious too. As the guy says, he intentionally cut the roof off because it would get hot while he was making his Pizza deliveries.  But who wants to eat a pizza that’s been wind-cooled by a ride in a homemade convertible?  Near the end of the video the guy shows of a bunch of mysterious dents in his driver’s side door. He said that one day at work someone threw eggs at his car and shot paintballs at it.  But look at those dents! Were those eggs shot out of a 44 Magnum? And listen, I have played paintball before and I don’t think they could do that to a car door. If paintballs really could dent metal, would it be legal to shoot them at fleshy human beings?  Most suspicious of all though is the guy’s front license plate.  It looks like someone took a hammer to that plate. And even if he didn’t, how can it be legal to drive around with a license plate that is so bent that it can’t be read?

But forget all that stuff. Here is the biggest red flag of all; The guy in the video says he delivers Pizzas for a place called Pizza Pirates. I googled Pizza pirates and guess what? They have several locations but the guy with the clunker works in Ontario, California…..a mere 52 minute drive from the Universal Studios lot where the car was blown up by Conan.  The winner lives in Chino, CA which is basically a suburb of Los Angeles.

Wow, how convienient

Wow, how convenient

I hate to do this but I officially call “shenanigans” on Conan O’brian. Can you imagine how much money NBC would have had to spend if the winner of this contest was from New York or Florida? By picking a guy who lived in the LA area they probably saved at least $10,000. Besides paying for a trip for two and a hotel room for the winner, NBC would have had to get the clunker to LA! NBC lawyers would never let someone drive the winning “clunker” to the west coast so the chosen vehicle would have had to have been shipped inside a big ass truck. That would have cost thousands of dollars if the winner was from the East coast. Oh! And then NBC would have had to get a new Lexus Hybrid to that guy! The actual car that the guy won was presented to him at the Universal Studios lot after his car was exploded. If the guy lived 2,000 miles from LA would he have had to drive the Lexus all the way home? Of course not. NBC probably got 1 free car in exchange for all the publicity and they again would have had to ship it to the guy’s house. After all, how many Lexus Hybrid dealerships do you think there are in the middle or Georgia or Montana? Not many I’m guessing so they couldn’t just make arrangements with a local dealer if the winner lived outside of the LA area.  Because the winner lives in Chino he would have been able to drive that car right home after the taping.

While googling I found the Pizza Pirate’s Facebook page and they seem very proud of their employee and the death trap he drove while working for them. Several “fans” of Pizza Pirates have commented on the company’s wall that they have seen that beat up car driving around Ontario, CA many times. One girl says….

“haha dude that’s awsome. my school is like right by there and we use to walk by and see that car all the time,lol. so when we heard in was going to be blown up on tv we were like omg..haha.”

Kids say “dude,” “OMG” and “LOL” in every internet comment they make….right? That might be a little suspicious but like I said, a number of people on facebook have said that they will miss seeing that crappy car drive around town. So it probably was a real car at least.

So what’s the final verdict? After looking at all the evidence I believe that:

1. The car that won the contest was real and was a total mess.

2. The winner of the contest might have done a few things to the car to make it look even crappier.

3. The winning video should have been deemed ineligible to win because the car was not legally drivable and because it featured a company logo. (Pizza Pirates isn’t just one store, it’s a small chain with 3 locations.)

4. The judges of the contest that picked this clunker totally disregarded the judging (Originality/creativity) criteria outlined in the rules and picked this car as the winner because:

a. It was funny looking
b. No potential advertisers would be offended that one of their cars were being called a “clunker” since only an expert could decipher its make and model.
c. NBC would be able to save thousands in transport costs because the winner and his car were located just across town from the studio.

In conclusion, here’s what I think happened: The contest was announced and someone at the Tonight Show remembered seeing this beat up Pizza Pirates car driving around the LA suburbs. The car was easy to track down of course and someone contacted Pizza Pirates and the owner of the vehicle got a discreet call. Someone from the Tonight Show encouraged the owner of the car to create an entry so that they could pick a local winner with a really funny-looking car. Conclusion: Shenanigans abound!

To add insult to injury, the actual blowing up of the winning car was really lame! It didn’t EXPLODE at all. It just kid of popped and then was engulfed in flames. Here’s the video of the “Explosion:

For the record I should probably mention that I am not a disgruntled contest entrant. I did not enter a video into the Conan Contest and I have no stake in this unsavory affair.

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