Poptent recently announced the results of two assignments; TurboTax and Top Flight. And when I say “recently” I mean they announced them last month. If you haven’t seen them yet, here they are:
Purchased by Turbo Tax. Price: $4,000
Several other videos won editor’s awards of $1,000 and $500. You can see those (one of them has a bikini girl in it!) here:
Incidentally, Poptent has four big assignments open right now; Becks Beer, Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream, 42 Below Vodka and Fed-Ex. The deadline for the Fed-Ex assignment is only 9 days away and only 23 videos have submitted. So this might be your chance to swoop in and get a big pay day. But…and this is going to sound crazy…I heard that the assignment pages for Becks Beer and 42 Below vodka are haunted!! I heard that when you click the “Accept Assignment button” a ghost flies out of your computer and tries to eat your face! That’s some scary stuff right there man. And I’m not just saying all this because I’m shooting submissions for Becks and 42 Below this weekend and I want to discourage you from submitting. I’m telling you because I know you love your face and are scared of ghosts.
The results for Application Service’s “Database security Video Smackdown!” were announced back in December but I just saw the winning video today and it’s super weird so I thought I’d post it. Contestants were supposed to shoot videos about what else, Database security. The grand prize was only $1,500 but the winners also got a trophy which is kinda weird. The winning video is unique because it’s about the contest itself and the trophy actually makes an appearance. Though…it sort of looks like a baseball trophy. Anyway, here’s the winner. It sorta reminds me of that comedy central show, Stella. Oh, don’t watch this if you have an aversion to seeing blurred out man-asses.
First place. Prize: $1,500 and a trophy
If I could, I’d give those guys a trophy for “funniest fart joke in a video contest entry.” Three other videos also won 500 bucks each and you can see them here:
The deadline for the Louisiana Hot Sauce video contest was on my calendar for probably 3 months but I never got around to shooting an entry. Probably for the best since the winners were announced yesterday and I don’t think I could have topped two of them. The second place winner is just ok but the first and third place winning videos are great. I’ll post all three below.
The best video contest entries are those that include a quick moment of magic that makes the viewer want to watch the video again as soon as it’s over. As I was watching the first place winner I was thinking “oh this is neat, and it’s making me hungry…very effective…I can see….whoa!….HOW DID THEY DO THAT!?!” Watch the first place winner and you’ll know the “whoa!” moment as soon as it happens. Very nice work.
First place. Prize: $5,000
Second Place. Prize: $2,500
Third Place. Prize: $500
Special congratulations to friend of VCN, Danny Winn for taking third place. That song is good enough to be Louisiana Hot Sauce’s actual jingle!
Looks like Louisiana Hot Sauce got around 80 entries for this contest. That’s a pretty good number for a contest of this size. If you’re interested, you can see all the other entries on the company’s youtube channel.
One thing I love about video contests is that a lot of them have really bizarre premises. Take for example the “Are you an Avodisic?” contest sponsored by Mexican Avocados. First, it’s always a little funny when PR people try and promote basic food items like pork or Wisconsin cheese. But this contest gets even weirder when you read the details. They were looking for people to make short films about avocados that portrayed them as being sexy, sensual “love fruits.” The promo video for the contest literally featured a talking avacado wearing a garter belt that moaned orgasmically as “she” explained the official rules. (sadly, that video seems to have been taken down.) UPDATE: One of the “PR people” behind this contest apparently has a very good sense of humor. He wrote me today and mentioned the orgasmic avocado video could be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IOhGX_IYRQ. The video is safe-for-work but the audio isn’t!
The contest ended recently and it looks like a lot of people entered. As you can guess, most of the entries were really, f&*%ing, weird. There were three categories in the contest; Best Recipe, Most Entertaining and Most Original. One winner in each category was selected and those winner each got $2,000. You can see all the winners here:
I’m amazed at the amount of work some filmmakers put into their contest entries. The guy who made that video explained on youtube that the entry is made up of more than 500 still photos. Check out this making-of video to see just how this guy managed to pull of such an awesome entry:
Since the dawn of man, pistachios have been just these tasty little nuts that always happened to be around exactly when you were craving them. No one ever planned ahead of time to buy Pistachios, they just appeared when they were needed. But last year, a brand called “Wonderful Pistachios” decided this had gone on long enough so they started putting Pistachios in pretty bags and then marketed the f&*% out of them with commercials featuring Z-list celebrities like Levi Johnston.
One tier of the company’s marketing campaign was a commercial contest. Wonderful Pistachios picked 10 finalist videos and then let “the public” decide the best one. First place was good for $25,000. The people have spoken and here’s the winner:
First Place. Prize: $25,000
Some of the finalists were pretty lame so I’m kind of surprised the public vote yielded a decent winner. The video’s got nice production values, fancy editing, good music and lots of nut shots (you know, shots of nuts.) So it’s a job well done. But I think the guy that made THIS entry got robbed:
Runner up. Prize: $500. Prize declined by filmmaker
Apparently, the director of that entry thinks he was robbed too. His name is Michael Boudin and he’s won more that $60K in various video contests. I know that because a few weeks ago, Films4Prizes.com did a video Q&A with him. You can see it here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXT77SZHU3s
After the winner was picked, Michael was offered a $500 runner-up prize. He turned it down though. I’ll cash just about any check that comes my way but I think he made the right call. As Michael explains on youtube, he believes in his concept and plans to re-shoot the idea for a different contest. If he had accepted the 500 bucks, Wonderful Pistachios would have been able to do whatever they wanted with the video, concept and script. Basically they offered to buy it for a few hundred bucks and said “no deal.”
So think about that the next time you see a bunch of legal mumbo jumbo in a contest’s official rules that state that all entries become the property of the sponsor once you submit them. That’s total B.S. Your work is yours until you SIGN over your rights of ownership. You always have a right to say, “No thanks” and you shouldn’t accept just any amount a company offers if you don’t think it’s a fair price for your work.
If you’ve never heard of Mofilm, it’s….well, it’s hard to describe. If a film festival and an online video contest could have a baby, it’d look like Mofilm. It’s a website/organization that runs big online video contests in conjunction with top tier, international film festivals. But unlike a typical video contest, sometimes the sponsors want to see creative entries that have nothing to do with their products. But then again, some sponsors are looking for straight up commercials or shorts that incorporate their stuff in unique ways.
The Barcelona Film Festival competition is the perfect example of a Mofilm contest. It was made up of two parts; one was the Pepsi “60 seconds to Refresh Your World” Movie Competition and the other was the Barcelona 2010: Make An Ad Video Competition.
Entries for the Pepsi contest were supposed to have nothing to do with Pepsi. Filmmakers were instructed to make awesome short films that were relevant to the themes of the contest. 700 videos from 112 countries (what!?) were submitted and it’s no wonder. Five 1st place winners each won trips to the 2010 Barcelona Film Fest. I can’t embed videos from Mofilm so click here to view the Pepsi winners:
I recommend “GPS” and “No Vegetables.” At the Barcelona fest, one entry will be selected as the Grand Prize winner. The filmmaker will receive $10,000 and $20,000 to shoot a commercial that Pepsi will air on TV.
The other half of the contest was the more familiar, Make an Ad competition. Five brads: Best Buy, AT&T, Yoplait, Chevy and Samsung all participated and gave out more trips to Barcelona and other big prizes. You can see the winner for each of the brands here:
I recommend “Changing Lives” shot for Samsung. It starts out slow but gets very creative as it goes on.
The funny thing about Mofilm is that if you win a trip to one of their sponsor film festivals you don’t get much notice. The Barcelona winners were just told on Monday that they had won. But the Barcelona film fest starts on February 15th! Hope the winners all had passports already or they’re outta luck.
Super Bowl XLIV just ended and that means that the 2010 installment of Doritos’ Crash the Super Bowl contest is finally over too. All three winning commercials aired in the first quarter but SURPRISE!…Doritos snuck one more Crash the Superbowl finalist in during the 4th quarter. And holy crap, the USA Today Ad Meter results have just come in and SURPRISE again! One of the Crash the Superbowl ads cracked the top 3! I’ll post all the numbers below but first here are the official winners in the order they ran. From what I’ve read, the order that the commercials aired reflect which entries got the most, second most and third most votes last month.
1. Underdog. Created by Nick Dimondi/Joshua Svoboda
2. House Rules. Created by Joelle de Jesus
3. Casket. Created by Kevin T. Willson
SURPRISE BONUS AD. Snack Attack Samurai. Created by Ben Krueger
A few days ago I explained here and here that it looked like Doritos had already revealed the names of the Crash the Super Bowl entries that were going to air tonight. The finalist entries that were publicly identified as destined for air last week were Snack Attack Samurai, Kids These Days and Casket. Looks like those predictions were off by one. But hey, way back in December, before the finalists were even announced, we predicted in this post that “Underdog” would go all the way this year. So hurray for us!
UPDATE: Oh snap!!!! The Ad Meter results are in and UNDERDOG was rated the second best commercial of the entire game right after the Betty White/Snickers spot! That means the makers of Underdog, 5 Points Productions will be receiving a $600,000 bonus from Doritos. As for the other three Crash the Super Bowl entries that aired tonight….well, they didn’t fare so well. None of them even cracked the top 10. Here are the numbers.
1. Underdog. Ad Meter Score: 8.27. Ad Meter Rank: #2
2. House Rules. Ad Meter Score: 7.12. Ad Meter Rank: #11
3. Casket. Ad Meter Score: 7.00. Ad Meter Rank: #14
4. Snack Attack Samurai. Ad Meter Score: 6.79. Rank: #17
Now even though none of the other ads made the top 3, the scores are still quite impressive. After all, there were 60 commercials ranked by the ad meter. Plus since Snack Attack Samurai aired so late in the game I bet its score suffered because the focus groups in the Ad Meter polling were probably a little burnt out by then. You can see the full list of ad meter results here: USA Today Ad Meter.
So what did we learn tonight? Well, we learned that Beardy is a genius! We totally called this one. Over the last few weeks we’ve repeatedly claimed that “Underdog” was going to make it to the top three and not only that, we predicted that it was the only one of the six finalists that had a chance of doing so.
Seriously though, now that the dust is settling it’s clear that the big winner of the 2010 installment of the CTSB contest is 5 Points Productions. Though the Crash the Super Bowl contest has only been run three times, that plucky team of filmmakers from North Carolina have now won the competition TWICE! The 5 Points entry “Live the Flavor” won the first installment of the CTSB contest and aired during the 2007 Super Bowl. Now their entry “Underdog” has also came out on top. Plus they were the first filmmakers ever to get TWO entries in the finals in one year!! (The other was Kids These Days) That’s three unbelievable achievements so it looks like Doritos should get ready to crown them as the new, “Kings of the Crash.” They’ve earned it.
It seems like this contest started taking entries forever ago, but the “Life’s Good” HD film fest sponsored by LG has finally announced their grand prize winner. Contestants were supposed to submit films that were shot in HD and followed the theme of “Life’s Good.” There were several categories (sports, fashion etc) but it was a narrative film that took the top prize of $100,000.
The LG winner is called Nuit Blanche and was directed by Arev Manoukian. Here’s the official description:
“Nuit Blanche explores an experience many of us have lived before – a fleeting yet powerful connection with a perfect stranger. Set in a dark cobblestone street in the 1950’s, a man catches the gaze of a woman in a cafe across the street. This split-second moment becomes suspended in time, as the two gravitate towards each other in a hyper real fantasy where nothing can hold them back.”
I just watched all 3 minutes and 22 seconds of the short film and all I can say is “F*CK YES!” I have seen some amazing video contest entries before but this is hands down the most impressive one I’ve ever come across. It starts off slow but then gets awesome and finishes beautifully.
Grand Prize Winner. Prize: $100,000
That’s outrageous, isn’t it? My only grievance is that it seems like this was a pre-existing short film and that it wasn’t shot specifically for the contest like so many of the entries were. The credits say that the short was “made in part with the support of the National Film Board of Canada’s filmmaker assistance program.” In fact, it looks like the short was produced by the very successful production company, Spy Films. Oh well, it’s still fantastic. I mean, did you notice that the guy blew a piece of glass out of his way there at the end? All those fancy effects and expensive production values and that little moment is what made the short for me. It just goes to show that even in the CGI era we live in, the best films are those that use effects to express fundamentally human and universal ideas and emotions.
If you want to see just how much post-production work actually went into this short, click here to watch a video about the Making of Nuit Blance.
The BBQ restaurant chain and sauce maker Famous Dave’s just announced the winners of their first “Famous Fan Film Festival.” BBQ lovers were supposed to shoot a short movie parody that incorporated Famous Dave’s in some interesting way. The grand prize was only $1,000 but I was amazed by the amount of love that went into some of the 30 entries that were received. Here’s the first place winner:
First Place. Prize: $1,000
That was neat. But I the second place entry cracked me up:
Second Place. Prize: $300 in cash and gift cards
I wish I could grill you! The guy who delivered the long monologue deserves an extra gift card just for remembering all his lines. You know what, I think I’ll post the third place entry too. It’s worth watching simply because the girl playing Mrs. Robinson is hotter than…hold on, let me check the famous dave’s website for a metaphor….Got it, she’s hotter than a full bottle of Devil’s Spit!
Third Place. $250 in cash and gift cards.
Like I said, even though the prizes in this contest were small, the contestants went all out. Check out this Top Gun parody that got an honorable mention. It was disqualified because videos were supposed to parody a single scene and they did like a whole crazy trailer. But they, and everyone who entered, got some Famous Dave’s gift cards as a thank you. So why did so many people put so much work into their entries when only a thousand bucks was at stake? From the looks of the videos, no pros entered this contest; only real, hardcore Famous Dave’s fans. Plus the theme of the contest was a great one and probably inspired a lot of people. Hopefully famous Dave’s will see this contest as a successful test run and do something bigger down the road.
Hey, do you remember the OTHER Superbowl commercial contest that was looking for entries last year? You know, the weirdly named, “Hire My Tv Ad” contest sponsored by Careerbuilder? For that one you were supposed to film an idea for a commercial and Careerbuilder would pick one they liked, re-shoot it professionally and then air it during the Superbowl. Guess they didn’t have enough faith in we non-pros to promise to put something we shot in front of 100 million people. Of course, they only offered one, $100,000 prize compared to the Doritos contest which offered a potential, max prize of 2 million bucks. So filmmakers didn’t go “all-in” for this contest like they did for Crash the Superbowl.
“Hire my TV Ad” was a very strangely run contest. After what seemed like forever, Careerbuilder announced they had picked THREE winners. But I get the impression that only the ad that airs during the Superbowl will receive the cash. The re-shot versions of the selected entries have just appeared on line. Here are the three winning entries and their three professional remakes:
CASUAL FRIDAY: Original
CASUAL FRIDAY: Remake
JOB FAIRY: Original
JOB FAIRY: Remake
Exactly which ad is supposed to air on Superbowl Sunday is supposed to be a mystery. But the contest site explains that the third ad has been deemed “Too Hot For TV.”
WORST SEAT: Original
WORST SEAT: Remake
All I can say is, Damn you Janet Jackson! You and your wayward nipple have made the networks way to anal about what they show. A flaming fart is PG-13 at worst.
Anyway, these are all kinda “meh.” Just like the re-shot Taxlsayer commercial I wrote about on Wednesday, the original versions all have more heart that the slick re-makes. The flaming fart one is actually FUNNIER than the remake and it looks nice enough to air.
The Hire My TV ad contest has a lot of potential and I hope Careerbuilder brings it back next year. But I’d suggest they raise the prize and offer to air the winning ad as-is. This re-shoot business is kind of a buzz kill.
If there’s one thing I love, it’s candy. And I’d say my 5th favorite candy bar out there is the Snickers bar. Two weeks ago I would have ranked it my 7th favorite candy bar (after Hershey’s Symphony bar but before the Heath bar) but Snickers earned itself a bump in my candy ranking last week when they purchased $15,000 worth of commercials (3) that were made by Poptent users. Here’s my favorite of the three selected ads:
Purchased by Snickers. Price: $5,000
Heh heh. Nice. And if you read the “creative brief” that Snickers worked up for this assignment, you’ll see that the team who made the above video really nailed the “guys being guys” theme Snickers was looking for. You can see the other two ads that Snickers purchased for $5K a piece here.
But that ain’t all. Last week, Bounce also bought $10,000 worth of ads for their Bounce Dryer bars (2) created by Poptent users. The deadline for the Snickers assignment was in December but the Bounce deadline was way back in September. Man, what the heck took them so long to pick 2 videos? That procrastination is one reason the Bounce Dryer bar doesn’t even crack my top 10 favorite candy bars. Also, they taste like lint. Here’s one of the selected Bounce ads:
Purchased by Bounce. Price: $5,000
You can see the other ad that Bounce purchased for $5K as well as several amusing editor’s choice winners here.
As I said yesterday, if Crash the Superbowl was your first video contest experience, it shouldn’t be your last. Giant piles of money are just sitting out there on the web waiting to be claimed by any filmmaker willing to put in a little time and effort. I was stunned by the level of quality I saw in some of this year’s Doritos entries. If many of the filmmakers who participated in The Crash were to recycle their Doritos ideas for other video contests they’d walk away with plenty of big prizes.
Smaller money contests are definitely worth your time and energy because they are way, way easier to WIN than the big-money, high-profile competitions. Recently, a company called AMC technology held a video contest to promote their “Solutions for the Call Center” services. Because the company required that a lot of specific, technical info be included in the entries, only about 7 people entered. But AMC gave out three prizes: $2,500, 1,500 and $1,000. So anyone who entered at almost a 50% chance of winning some cash.
The theme of the contest was to show how AMC could help a business during the hectic holiday season. Here’s the winner:
First Place. Prize: $2,500.
Heh, heh. Guess what? That was my entry! Last year me and a friend went to a pub crawl called “SantaCon” where everyone dressed as Santas. So I had access to several santa suits. I bought one more, paid a few extras 30 bucks each to put the suits on and march around an office and kerblamo….2,500 bucks. The writing was tough because of all the tech-talk but the shoot only took about 2 hours. Editing probably took three. Max I put 15 hours into this. Tally all that up and I made $166 per hour (pre-tax.) Not to shabby. About a week and a half ago, I found out I won 3,500 in another contest so 2010 is only 8 days old and I’ve already got 6 Grand in checks coming to me thanks to video-contesting. So if you’re one of the 4,000 people who didn’t make it to the Crash the superbowl finals, quick feeling sorry for yourselves and making anti-Doritos facebook pages. Grab your camera and find a contest that is a little easier to win.
Well it’s finally D (for Doritos) day. Last night, at midnight central time, Doritos revealed the Top 6 finalists for their 2010 installment of the Crash the Superbowl commercial contest. The prize for making it to this round is $25,000 and a trip to the big game for each filmmaker.
Voting is now open and the public will decide which three of these submissions make it to the Superbowl. The finalists are:
“Underdog” AKA “Animal Cruelty” by jwsvoboda. Video #5584.
“The Smackout” by bhayword. Video #5511
“Casket” AKA “The Casket” by ms. Video #4374
“Snack Attack Samurai” by CBer. Video #1786
“House Rules” by Dejesus_77. Video #3713
“Kids These Days” by Blackmariastudios. Video #5427
I had figured that when the finalists were announced I would post the results and share my impressions but….I have no idea what to say here. There are two spots that I prefer but the rest are just…baffling. I know that I recommended that Doritos consider some entries for the top 6 that were rough around the edges but I never thought they’d choose entries that had actual technical flaws.
I am also feeling pretty burned about “The Casket” making the finals. As I’ve mentioned, my entry for the Crash the Superbowl contest, “Rest in Chips” was also about a guy who faked his death and in accordance with his fake last wish was buried in a casket full of Doritos that gets knocked over. As I explained in yesterday’s post and this post from November 19th, I suspect that I might be the victim of plagiarism. If you watch both entries and ignore the superficial aesthetic elements (camera quality, location, actors, costumes) and compare the concept and story elements (fake funeral, a final wish, a casket of doritos, knocked over casket etc) it’s hard to deny that both videos MAY have both based on my original concept (which anyone could have seen in a storyboard I posted to youtube in October.) But even if I wasn’t plagiarized, my video was posted first. I never expected to make it to the finals but a major part of each entry’s score was “Originality.” And I believe that I read that if two similar ideas were posted, the originality score of the video that was uploaded second would take a hit. I even e-mailed Doritos and told them about my plagiarism concerns and so I can’t believe that “The Casket” still made it. The conspiracy theorist in me thinks that they almost are hoping for controversy.
Since I’m sort of at a loss for words right now, how about I turn the discussion over to you? What do you guys think of the finalists? Let us know in the comment section…..
UPDATE: SWEET JUMPING JESUS!!! It turns out that TWO of the entries in the top 6 were created by the same people! They are posted under different names but both “Kids these Days” and “Underdog” are products of a company called 5 Point Productions. That blows my mind!! People are going to flip the F#$% out when they hear about this. I think “Underdog” is great but the other entry is just ok. Doritos couldn’t spread the wealth around a little? In no way do I blame the 5 Point Productions people for this. Good for them for kicking so much ass. They couldn’t find ONE more decent spot among the 4067 that were posted!?
UPDATE: We blew it! Looks like Beardy got taken by some bad “insider” info. Two of our three “finalist” scoops turned out to be wrong! We are really sorry about that folks. We have removed the incorrect info from this site.
We were correct about one finalist though. “The Casket” was the only of the 6 finalist videos to leak before the official announcement at 12AM Central time today. So the portions of this post that pertain to “The Casket” will remain up.
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Tonight at 11PM Eastern time, voting begins in the 2010 installment of Doritos’ Crash the Superbowl video contest. From the looks of the CTSB website, the 6 finalists won’t be revealed until voting begins. So you’ll have to wait until then to see which entries made the cut. Or you could just continue reading and see three of those six videos right now.
Like I said, the Crash the Superbowl finalists won’t officially be announced until later tonight. But I can say with 95% certainty that these three ads have made the top six. WARNING: Two of these three videos are on this list because they are educated guesses based on very, very strong information. If you actually made any of these videos and you have not heard from Doritos, that means you didn’t make the finals! In that unlikely scenario, I apologize for getting your hopes up. Again, these 3 are 95% for sure.
INCORRECT VIDEO #1 REMOVED
INCORRECT VIDEO #2 REMOVED
“The Casket” by ms. Video #3006
“The Casket” is the only entry I am certain made the final cut because it was mentioned in an article about superbowl commercial sales on usatoday.com today. This….is not good. As some of you frequent readers may know, I was worried “The Casket” might get to the finals because I suspect that the makers of that entry may have plagiarized my own work. Here is MY casket-full-of-doritos entry, video #1983, “Rest in Chips.”
This is my video and NOT a finalist:
Both videos feature a dead man’s last wish to be buried in a casket full of Doritos, a funeral for that guy that turns out to be fake, a big, framed photo of the “dead” guy enjoying a bag of Doritos next to the casket, shots of that guy in his casket buried up to his face in chips and a climax in which the “dead” guy gets his comeuppance when the casket of chips is knocked over. So many of the same key elements appear in both spots that it’s hard to chalk the whole thing up to coincidence.
A month before I shot “Rest in Chips,” I created a (crude) animated storyboard so that I could plan out the timing of the shoot. I uploaded the storyboard to youtube the first week of October so that my actors and crew could get a better idea of what I had in mind. I named it something like “Doritos storyboard.” That means any potential Doritos contestants could have seen it while searching youtube to see last year’s winners. In fact, it would have been one of the top results since it was a recent upload. After maybe a week I realized this and pulled the video. Then I re-uploaded it with a generic name so it would not appear in Doritos-related searches. Here it is. If you watch it on youtube you’ll see that its upload date is October 12th. Play my youtube storyboard and “The Casket” at the same time and they almost seem to line up shot for shot. And for the record, I did some googling and “The Casket” was shot on November 1st. By November 1st I already had rough cuts of my entry posted to my youtube page.
I really never expected to make it to the finals and I’m not upset because I didn’t win. But I am upset that someone who may have plagiarized my work is going to be rewarded for their actions. Because “The Casket” was so slickly produced, I knew it would be a contender for the final six. So several weeks ago I e-mailed Doritos, sent them my links and told them about my suspicions. They told me they would send the information to their legal team. But I never heard from anyone from Doritos again.
Originally, I posted (at length) about my plagiarism worries on November 19th. Since then, my suspicions have only increased. The usatoday.com article mentions the name of the producer of “The Casket” and explains that he works at the church that appears in that video. They even mention the church by name. Based on this new info, I dug through my site logs and it seems very, very likely that the producer of “The Casket” found my post about his entry last week and read it over and over.
So think about that for a second. Imagine you just found out that you made the final 6 in the CTSB contest. Then imagine that you google “Doritos casket” (according to my weblogs, that’s how the person found my post) and see that the number one search result for that phrase was a blog post by another filmmaker suggesting that your entry might have been a rip-off of his idea. What would you do? I know what I’d do. If I didn’t steal the idea, I’d immediately e-mail the blogger or leave a comment and explain my side of the story. But no message ever came.
And now that I know that the producer of “The Casket” works at the church featured in their entry, I think I have a pretty good idea what happened. The producer or the director of the entry went to youtube after the Crash the Superbowl contest was announced and searched for “doritos” so they could see what the 2009 finalist videos looked like. “The Casket” was shot with a very expensive camera called a “RED Camera.” Any filmmaker who watches last year’s finalists would recognize that all but one of them were shot with RED cameras. So the producers of “The Casket” clearly did their homework. And I suspect that while they were doing their homework, they saw my storyboard. The idea in the storyboard seems kind of outrageous and un-film-able….unless you happen to have free and total access to an amazingly beautiful church. My theory is that they saw my storyboard and figured no one would be crazy enough to get a casket and dig a giant hole in the ground. I think they assumed the idea would never be shot so they took it and adapted the idea to fit the location they had at their disposal.
For the record, I have no concrete proof of any unethical behavior and if my theories are proven to be incorrect I will wipe all mention of them from this site and apologize to everyone involved. But the circumstantial evidence is pretty strong I think. I have a reputation of my own to think about and I’d never share these ideas in public if my gut didn’t tell me I was on to something.
I really have no idea what I’m going to do about all this but to quote The Dude; “This aggression will not stand, man.” If anybody has any suggestions about how I should proceed I’d love to hear ‘em.
Have you seen those Coors Light commercials where a bunch of “average” dudes ask football coaches goofy questions during post-game press conferences? Yes? Ok, well Coors wanted 6 more coach spots that they could air on Tivo so they turned to poptent. Coors provided the coach footage and interested filmmakers had to go out and shoot their own press conference scenes.
Today Poptent announced that Coors Light would be purchasing 6 user-created ads for $3,500 a piece. And guess what, one of those ads just happened to be made by your pal Beardy. Boosh! Here’s my spot “Blue Mountains” followed by two other selected submissions that I especially liked:
All the filmmakers whose ads were purchased really went all out. I can tell you from experience that getting a bunch of extras, some still cameras and several believable TV cameras together into a room that looks like it could be used for a post-game press conference isn’t easy. I shot my submission (and two other spots that didn’t get picked) in the TV studio of my old college. A few friends played extras but almost everyone on camera were actors hired via craigslist. Oh, but I recycled the Yeti from my non-winning careerbuilder entry! Glad he finally got his moment of glory.
NOTE: This post has inspired a pretty interesting discussion about payment amounts for video contests. So check out the comments to read the opinions of a variety of past contest winners.
Man, T-Pain is a damn genius. He not only helped make Auto-tuning popular but he’s been smart enough to attach himself to the trend. Basically he’s been able to brand auto-tuning as a T-Pain thing. And now you too can get auto-tuned with the “I Am T-Pain” iphone app. It’s got music and lyrics so you can sing along (auto-tuned style of course) to your favorite T-Pain tracks. Sweet.
Now, another example of T-Pain’s brilliance is his participation in Lonley Island’s “I’m on a Boat” music video. He scored major points in my book with that one. The song is awesome and hilarious and a dash a of T-Pain put it over the top. If you’ve never seen it, click here and thank me later. That song and video are so good that even though it was a “comedy” song it just got nominated for a grammy for best hip-hop song of the year.
Anyway, to promote the “I Am T-Pain” iphone app, the company behind it held an “I’m on a blank” music video contest. Whoever could make the best parody of “I’m on a Boat” would score themselves 5 grand and a “bigg ass chain.”. Here’s the winning video which is pretty great. I especially like it since it may be the first video contest entry I’ve ever seen that was filled with profanity. So be aware, it is NSFW.
Grand Prize: Prize: $5,000 and a Big Ass Chain
By the way, if you don’t know what Auto-tuning, iphones apps, T-pain, Lonely Island or “NSFW” are then you need to spend less time reading books and more time on the internetz, grandpa.
Seems like every marketing guy and their momma is trying to entice us Joe Handycams into shooting ads for their company these days. There’s a lot of cash and a ton of prizes waiting to be won in online video contests and if you have even a smidge of writing, shooting or editing skills, all that awesome stuff could be yours. So you guys focus on winning ‘em and we’ll cover the aftermath of your glorious victories and/or pathetic defeats!
Video contests can get pretty ugly. Organizers do not always want to play by their own rules, other contestants flagrantly cheat and poorly run competitions cause frustrations for everyone. Wish you could bring a problem to the attention of a contest’s organizers but you’re worried that you might be branded a no-good troublemaker? We can help. Let us know about your problem and we’ll try and kick a little ass on your behalf. E-mail us at Videocontestnews@gmail.com.
