Man, this is really, really weird. Check out this trailer for what looks to be a God-awful High School Musical/Step Up style movie called Standing Ovation. I think this is probably the first movie ever to feature a video-contest based plot. I’ve read a bit about the film and long story short, a bunch of teenagers want to shoot a music video to win a one million dollar video contest prize.

Yeah, like I said, it looks horrible. Apparently this movie actually played in hundreds of theaters in the US but I’ve never heard of it. I’m guessing all the advertising was done online and aimed at sites that tweens frequent. The movie opened on July 16th and was dropped by most of its theaters by the next weekend. Here’s a bit of a pretty rough review of the film from the Chicago-area’s Daily Herald:

“Standing Ovation” is a spiritually bankrupt, morally reckless, ethically unhinged and emotionally vacant musical comedy about a group of tweenies who can’t act, sing or convincingly lip-sync.

This film deals in gay stereotypes. It traffics in token black characters. It advocates cheating. It condones revenge. It pushes the idea that money not only can buy happiness, money is happiness.

How this movie ever got into production will go down as one of the great mysteries of the world, along with where Jimmy Hoffa went.

You can read the full review here: http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=394376

So anyway, the movie sucked I guess. But in a weird way I think it’s kind of cool that online video contests have become so mainstream that the dude who wrote Mannequin 2 would write a script about them (seriously, it was written by the guy who wrote Mannequin 2.) I’m tempted to netflix it just to see far off from reality it is. The Daily Herald review mentions that the film seems to encourage cheating. Wonder if the video contest in the movie picked its winners via a public vote. It’d be really bizarre to see a movie that includes scenes about vote-fraud in video contests.

A VCN reader sent me a link yesterday to a really eye-opening Adage.com article about the big “user-generated” Godaddy video contest. Turns out that the commercial that came in third was created by a NYC based ad firm called The Night Agency. Their entry was entitled “Get Online Rap” and for winning third place they won $25,000. What’s weird about that ad is that it looks like a very slick version of a typical video contest entry.  Were the people behind it actually trying to imitate the “user-generated” style we’ve all started to become familiar with? Back when I thought this ad was just made by some random guy, I liked it. But the fact that an entire team of professionals was behind this commercial is a real turn off. I mean, seriously…a cheesy rap song? That’s the best a hip, New York ad firm could come up with?

From their website, The Night Agency looks to be a pretty serious company and clients include MTV, Hanes, Kmart, Heineken, Macys, Yahoo and many, many more. They certainly don’t seem to be hurting for business. In fact, one of the creators of the ad makes it sound like they just plan to throw their $25K in winnings on to their ever-growing pile of money:

Our third-place finish netted us $25,000 that we’re happy to deposit in the agency bank account.

That bothers me. In fact, this whole thing bothers me. Is it cheating for a professional ad firm to use their money and resources to try and win a “user-generated” ad contest? Not really. Is it kind of a dick move? Yes…yes it is.  From where I’m sitting, it feels a little unethical for professionals to enter video contests because it goes against the spirit of these competitions.  These contests aren’t just about winning money; it’s about giving non-pros a shot at success.  Sure, the sponsor is looking for quality videos and commercials but if all they cared about was getting good content they’d skip the contest all together and just hire a firm like the Night Agency to shoot them a commercial. The point of the contest is to award filmmakers money and OPPORTUNITY. And the prize of opportunity is wasted on companies that are already successful.  Winning third place (and even winning 1st place) probably won’t change the lives of anyone at The Night Agency and I doubt it will get them any extra business. In fact, I imagine they won’t even show their Godaddy ad to potential clients since entering a video contest might come off as a little desperate.

So why did the Night Agency decide to try and compete with amateur filmmakers in the godaddy contest? Well, apparently, they did it as an experiment. The company has actually created and run several “user-generated campaigns” for various clients so they wanted to see what the experience was like from the “user” side of the campaign. Now, I respect their dedication to their work but if they were really doing this as an “experiment” they should have tried to create a real “user-generated” (i.e. amateur) video. But instead of trying to replicate the typical video contest experience, they made a professional version of an amateur commercial. The rapper in “Get Online Rap” is a well-known professional eater (for serious) named Badlands Booker. He’s not an A-lister but would 95% of the people that entered the godaddy contest be able to hire any “known” personality for a project that might not even pay off? Of course not. So even though “Get Online Rap” looked and felt like a “user-generated” ad I’m guessing it was probably one of the most expensive entries shot for the godaddy contest.

If the folks at The Night Agency had been serious about their “experiment” they should have had the nerve to try and replicate he entire video contest experience. By that I mean they should have put a cap of maybe $500 (and that’s being generous) on what they could spend and only use gear and talent available to low-budget filmmakers.  If they had done that though, they wouldn’t have won even third place.  Without professional production values, “Get online rap” would have just been another hacky rap entry.

The Adage article I’ve been mentioning is really, really worth reading. It will give you an insider’s view of user-generated contests and the author lists reasons why the Godaddy contest was so successful. Most interestingly though, the article ends with a word of warning to other professional marketing types that the “crowd” is coming and soon, the pros are going to have to start competing with them:

So did we feel threatened by the high-quality responses this contest generated? Not really, no. But it’s not something we’re prepared to ignore either — and neither should any agency that’s interested in maintaining its accounts.

As younger, savvier marketing executives start calling the shots at the best brands in the world, the “relationships” more traditional-minded agencies rely on for their daily bread will matter less and less, and the quality of work will be the determining factor in who gets paid.

The fact is, with the increasing sophistication of consumer-grade equipment and its relative affordability, more people now have the ability to produce broadcast-quality material. The technical barrier is breached; now all that remains is the creative hurdle. Creativity can come from anywhere. Contests like this and other crowd-sourcing efforts, if well-orchestrated and providing the proper incentives, can make the cream rise to the top. And that means all agencies must push themselves harder than ever to make sure their milk has not gone sour.

Seriously, read the whole article, it’s worth it: http://adage.com/agencynews/article?article_id=144332

Tony Stark unveils his new video contest voting system (I presume)

There are two big reasons to avoid video contests that let “the public” pick the winner.  The first is that registering for those contests is always an annoying time-suck.  You can only get your friends to go through that kind of hassle a few times before they come down with a serious case of voter-fatigue.  The other problem with vote-based video contests is that none of them are cheater-proof.  No matter how many legitimate votes you get there will always be some other contestant who is willing to stay up all night registering fake accounts and voting for himself over and over.  Those two problems lead to a kind of catch-22 scenario.  The easier it is to vote in a contest, the more cheating there will be.  And the more safeguards and ID checks there are, the harder it is for real people to cast legitimate votes.  This is a problem so complex that only one person could come up with a solution; Ironman!

The Tony Stark Innovation Video Challenge was created as a tie-in for the new Ironman movie and it has a neat concept.  Contestants were supposed to create videos that showed off an idea for an invention that could make the world a better place.  First place is $15,000 towards making your idea a reality.  The deadline to enter was yesterday though so if you have any world-changing ideas you might as well just forget them.

Friend of VCN and multi-contest winner HappyJoel entered this contest and e-mailed me his submission.  It’s quite good and features some very fancy, professionally made effects:

Voters don’t determine the winners for this contest but star-ratings do make up a percentage of a submission’s total score.  Joel’s video is currently in third place so if you’d like to help him out, click here to vote.

That link is worth clicking on just to see how The Tony Stark Innovation Challenge handles online voting.  Their system is quite ingenious.  Maybe you’ve heard a bunch of grumbling on the web about Facebook’s new privacy controls.  Facebook now lets websites access users accounts for a fee.  It sounds a little insidious but it’s mostly harmless.  You can opt out of this program by changing your facebook page’s privacy settings.  Anyway, the Tony Stark contest utilizes this new feature to register people to vote for their contest.

If you have a Facebook page and if you want to vote for a video you just have to click a button and poof, your facebook page is connected to the contest site.  Now you can rate videos once every 24 hours.  The once-a-day voting kind of thing is annoying but overall, the whole system is very impressive.  You register in one mouse click and its incredibly difficult to register fake accounts.  If you wanted to cheat in this contest you would have to:

1. Create a fake e-mail address
2. Create a fake Facebook account
3. Use a proxy server to disguise your IP address
4. Visit the contest site and cast your vote

That’s a ton of work.  And since votes only count for 20% of a video’s final score, it’s definitely not worth the trouble to cheat.  So if you see Robert Downey Jr, tell him he designed a really nice video contest voting system.  He won’t know what the hell you’re talking about but after playing Ironman he’s probably used to dealing with crazy nerds so I’m sure he’ll just smile and say thanks.

The deadline for Skinit.com’s big $50,000 video contest was Monday and it looks like they received at least 150 entries.  I say “at least” because filmmakers are still uploading videos 4 days after the deadline.  Skinit’s uploader is still active and it sends your video directly to the Skinit channel on youtube.  To Skinit’s credit, very few entries that were uploaded after the June 1st deadline have been approved and added to their official contest gallery.  But if you throw in the ineligible late entries, Skinit got about 175 submissions total.  That’s quite impressive and I hope it means Skinit will bring the contest back next year.  You can see all the videos that have thus far been uploaded here:  http://www.youtube.com/user/SkinitTV

Though I had been planning for months to enter the Skinit contest I sort of waited until the very last minute to get to work.  I finally settled on an idea about 2 weeks before the deadline which gave me just enough time to order and receive the skins I would need. If you remember, Skinit had 6 categories for this contest and one person in each category will win a $5,000 prize.  The categories were 60 and 30 second Consumer Electronics skin commercials, 60 and 30 second wall skin commercials and 60 and 30 second Tailgate Skins commercials.  I figured most people would enter the Consumer Electronics categories since those would be the cheapest and easiest ads to make.  So I decided to go for the tailgate category and I’m quiet proud of the final product.  All the actors I used are friends of mine and the shoot turned into an actual cookout.  Throw in a dancing horse-man and you have a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon.  I wound up getting so much footage that I was able to do a 30 second and a 60 second version of the entry.  Here’s the 30 second version of my submission:

Skinit judges ultimately pick the winners but a piece of every contestants final score is based on votes.  So if you have 30 seconds to spare, why not do your pal Beardy a solid and throw a couple 5 star votes his way.  I could certainly use them.  Jerks have already been giving me 1-star ratings to bring my score down.

60 second ad: http://challenge.skinit.com/pg/skinitvideo/1058/view

30 second ad: http://challenge.skinit.com/pg/skinitvideo/1056/view

So how about you?  Did you enter the Skinit.com contest?  I really like seeing what kind of entries our readers are doing so if you entered and would like a little help schilling for votes, e-mail me a link or leave it in a comment and I will add it to this post.

Here’s a very good entry from Shane F.  I think this one is going to be a serious contender:

To rate Shane’s video, click here: http://challenge.skinit.com/pg/skinitvideo/969/view

And here’s a funny musical entry from Johnathon M.  The chorus is quite catchy:

To rate Johnathon’s video, click here:  http://challenge.skinit.com/pg/skinitvideo/426/view

After winning the biggest video contest in the world, there’s no place to go but down.  So I got the impression from interviews (including the one I did myself with the brothers) that Joe and Dave Herbert were going to take themselves out of competition for good.  But even after  you’ve won a million bucks, 100 grand is hard to resist.  So the brothers are back with an entry in the Godaddy contest.  Here it is:

That’s pretty funny and super professional.  I was shocked at first because for the first 10 second or so I assumed the bearded guy in a white suit was Jesus partying down in a club in heaven.  (that’s actually how I prefer to picture Jesus)  If Godaddy thought their ads were controversial before, partying-Jesus would teach them what real controversy was like.  But the castaway twist was a nice surprise.  The bearded guy did an especially nice acting job too.  I hope he got to keep the suit because that look was really working for him.

If you’d like to vote for the Herbert bros’ ad, click here and give them stars: http://bit.ly/92snxn

The deadline to enter Godaddy’s commercial contest was last Friday and it looks like they received in the neighborhood of 530 entries! I say “in the neighborhood” because I counted all the entries myself and after scrolling for that I long my counting probably suffered some. 530 entries is a major accomplishment but what’s especially noteworthy is the QUALITY of those 530 entries. Sure, there are a ton of videos in that bunch that make you wonder “what were those people thinking?” but a significant percentage of entries were serious attempts to make a good, TV-quality commercial. I was amazed to see that most entries were shot in wide screen HD too. Yes, $100,000 is a lot of motivation but in Doritos’ Crash the Superbowl contest, millions were at stake. But the average quality of the Godaddy entries blows away the quality of the average Crash the Superbowl entry.

So, I think this really marks the start of a new era in video contests. Things have changed a lot in just the 7 months that have passed since the deadline for the last Doritos contest. More people are now able to make better quality videos with a new wave of cheap, easy to use cameras. The playing field has become very level, very fast. Even my own entry turned out better-looking than my past projects because I just bought a new SLR that also shoots HD video. I think it turned out well, so permit me to show it off. Watch in 1080p mode for the full effect:

If you watched a lot of the other Godaddy entries, you probably noticed that mine is kind of different from the typical submission. I was surprised that so many filmmakers went with the “hot godaddy girl does (blank) in a sexy way” angle.  There were some really good “sexy” entries but I figured that if Godaddy was going through all this trouble to get fresh material, maybe they are looking for something totally different. So I thought I’d feature a different kind of a godaddy girl in my ad; a girl who actually builds a website using godaddy.com.

I had a few other strategies for this contest. My plan was to jam as much interesting stuff into 30 seconds as possible to create a Rube Goldberg-esque story. Hopefully, the spot moves so quickly and is full of so many small gags that online viewers will automatically hit “replay” as soon as it ends and if it were on TV, viewers would pay attention when it popped up on their screens. And any ad that viewers want to watch more than once succeeds on at least one level.

But my big theory about my video was this: Everybody…hates…hipsters. Even hipsters hate hipsters! (one symptom of hipsterism is denial mixed with disdain for their own kind) Despite all the anti-hipster sentiments floating around the zeitgeist, I’ve never seen a commercial that captures those feelings.

Actually, this whole ad was loosely inspired by the blog Look at this Fucking Hipster. It’s a blog that posts nothing but shots of hipsters douching it up. That blog, like so may other popular blogs (Icanhascheezeburger, Cake Wrecks, post secret, etc) wound up getting a “blog-to-book-deal.” In fact, the trend has become so hot that there’s even an awesome parody blog out there called “Look at this fucking idea for a blog to book deal.” (http://fuckingbookdeal.com) If you have some time to kill and enjoy internet meta humor, check it out.

So what about you? Did you get your godaddy entry done in time? If you want to use VCN to hustle for some votes, just a post a link to your video in the comment section and I’ll move the link into the body of this post. (make sure you use the link godaddy provides when you click the “share this video” button under your entry.) I’ll get the ball rolling; if you like my video and dislike hipsters, why not do me a favor and rate my entry 5 stars?:

http://videos.godaddy.com/Super-Bowl-Video-Contest.aspx?vid=699

UPDATES:

1. Here’s a very, very well made ad by VCN reader Shane F. that’s certainly worth a 5 star vote:  http://bit.ly/bPlKhd

2. Reader Ilya just sent me this link to her very slick godaddy spot.  I really like how it uses sexy girls in a new, funny way:   http://bit.ly/bQcgx2

3.  And here’s a funny one from “Brotha Godaddy:”  http://bit.ly/bQRqTy

4.  Here’s a good serious entry from VCN regular, David R:  http://bit.ly/9k6NG4

MAY 5, 2010 UPDATE:  This morning, Taxslayer sent out e-mails to everyone who submitted videos for this year’s competition and announced that the contest was being CANCELED due to lack of submissions.  As you will see below, I found 18 video submissions for this year’s contest and some of them are very good.  I have been following and entering online video contests since 2007 and I have NEVER seen this kind of thing happen before.  It’s a total 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.

I can tell from my web-logs that a number of people have found this post after searching for reasons behind today’s the cancellation.  We will be doing a thorough post about this later this week but for now, if you entered the 2010 Taxslayer video contest please let us know at Videocontestnews@gmail.com.

2nd Update: We just put up a new post about the cancellation of the taxslayer contest.  You can find it here:  http://videocontestnews.com/2010/05/05/taxslayer-com-cancels-video-contest-20-days-after-the-submission-deadline/

Well yesterday was April 15^th: Tax Day.  If you won a lot of money in video contests last year, right about now you’re probably wishing you had saved some of that money to pay your tax bill.  But April 15^th was also the deadline for the third annual Taxslayer.com video contest.  For weeks I had been wrestling with several ideas for this one but I just couldn’t get them to work.  So eventually I  decided to just skip the contest this year.  But about 9 days ago, a fresh idea hit me and I figured I should to go for it.  I was even motivated to finally buy the HD camera I had been considering.

I photoshopped my props on Wednesday and I bought my camera on Thursday.  I spent a few hours trying to figure the thing out and then we filmed on Friday.  By Monday I had both my 30 second and 15 second versions (remember, you had to submit 2 versions for this one) edited and done.

So after all that work, I was totally burnt out by Monday.  Then…another idea hit me.  I figured I had spent so much money on my new camera that I should try and get some use out of it so I wrote, produced, shot and edited a second entry in record time…well, record time for me, anyway.

One of the rules of the taxslayer contest is that contestants must upload their entries to youtube and tag them “taxslayer2010.”  As far as I can tell, 18 pairs of videos were submitted.  And there are some pretty good ones in there.  Since taxslayer doesn’t post all the entries, I thought I’d embed the 30 second versions of all of them below.  These are in order by upload date from last to first.  Can you spot which two entries are mine?  I’ll reveal them at the bottom of the post.

So the two entries I did are “It’s Tax Time!” (The one with the people playing the board game) and “Use Taxslayerrrrr.com” (the one with the pirates and their booty.)  I’m pretty happy with the way they turned out.  I did forget one of the five required “Taxslayer.com” mentions in my pirate ad and had to use some creative editing to squeeze one more in though.

If I see any more entries, I will update this post.  But I think these are all of them.  If you have any thoughts about who will win first ($15,000) and second ($5,000) this year, post them in the comments.

In his e-mail, the guy said that Doritos initially rejected his video because it contained unauthorized music.  But he didn’t use any music, just chip bag sounds.  So he missed out on a week of exposure.  There are still 5 days left in the contest so if you want to help this guy in his quest for Viralocity, visit his page on the Doritos’ site and facebook and tweet him and link him and stuff:  http://bit.ly/bjjyT0

I also got an update from the guy who made the for-charity, Viralocity video. (check my last post for the full story)  He said his entry has started to creep up the rankings so if you want to support a good cause, go spread this video:  http://bit.ly/djGMqG

On Tuesday I blogged about Doritos’ odd, Canada-only video contest called Viralocity. Basically whoever can make their Doritos-naming video go the most viral, wins. Today, a filmmaker name Mark sent me a message. Here’s part of it:

“I created a video for the contest, but with the intention of donating all prize money to cancer and kids charities. Figured I’d rather give the money away than to some yahoo.” (Like the guy currently in first place- Beardy)

“I’m currently #26 out of around 1,200 entries and proud to say I’ve done it without spamming, proxy views or any other ways around the terribly designed scoring system Doritos has created.”

Feel free to check it out and help promote if you want – might be able to scoop some of the prize for a worthy endeavor…

http://www.doritosviralocity.ca/Gallery/VideoDetails.aspx?v=6435

Being #26 out of 1200 is pretty good. Since this is for a good cause I thought I’d increase the video’s viral-ness by posting it here. If you want to help Mark win won of the top prizes, you can start by watching his video below. If you want to really help him, visit the link above and get links to spread the videos on facebook, twitter, etc, etc, etc.

Good luck to Mark.  We’ll let you know how he does.

Image from the Sacramento Bee website

Yesterday I explained that on Wednesday night, CBS seemed to reveal 2 of the 3 winners of the Crash the Superbowl contest in their special “The Superbowl’s Greatest commercials.”  Near the end of the show they featured a montage of new commercials explaining it was a “sneak peek” of ads that were going to air during the big game on Sunday.  Two of the commercials in the montage were Crash the Superbowl finalists: Snack Attack Samurai and Kids These Days.

One of the most interesting things about the Doritos contest is that no one, not even the finalists are supposed to know who won until the three winning ads appear on TV during the Superbowl.  However, the 6 videos that made it to the finals were also supposed to be kept secret but USA Today revealed one finalist (“Casket”) early in a story about Superbowl ad sales.  So it seems that Doritos may be trying to milk the CTSB contest for all its worth by seizing every media opportunity that is presented to them, even if they have to share a few secrets to ensure coverage.

Possible case in point, I saw this really weird article from of all places, the Sacramento Bee.  The piece is about a local actor and in the article they repeatedly assert that Casket WILL be airing on Superbowl Sunday.  They even go so far as to say when “Casket” will air.  Here’s some of the piece:

“Rocklin High School grad and actor Nick Armstrong has a lot riding on Sunday’s Super Bowl.

The Sacramento native will appear in a Doritos commercial that’s scheduled to air sometime before the halftime show. It’s one of three Doritos commercials competing in the chip company’s “Crash the Super Bowl” contest, and the most popular will win $1 million.

Four thousand commercials were submitted to Doritos, and three of them – including “Casket,” which features Armstrong – will be broadcast Sunday. USA Today’s Super Bowl Ad Meter – a survey of television ads conducted as a live poll during the telecast – will determine the most popular.

Besides the $1 million for first place, Doritos will pay the second-place finisher $600,000 and the third-place finisher $400,000.”

Notice what was missing from that article?  The “ifs,” and “maybes.”  The paper wrote about “Casket” like it was a done deal.  So does the Sacramento Bee know something we don’t?  Ehhh, maybe not.  This article does have one red flag in it; the author seems to imply that the 3 Doritos commercials that air will receive a cash prize even if they don’t make the Top 3 on the USA Today ad meter.  It seems like they got their facts mixed up.  So maybe they got the rest of the facts mixed up too?  It’s a tough call, the author really makes it sounds like he’s privy to some inside information.

You can check out the rest of the Bee’s article here:  http://www.sacbee.com/ourregion/story/2511957.html