Anyways, like I said, Ringo is cool.  And the video he made to announce the winner of his contest is pretty funny.  You can tell that someone probably just pulled him into his backyard to shoot this.  Then even though a incredibly loud plane flies right overhead, Ringo kept going.  So one take was all that Ringo had time for.  But he does say something pretty perfect at the end that saves the whole video:
 

 
And now here’s the music video that won the contest.  As you’ll hear/see, this was a really hard song to make a video for since there were long breaks where there weren’t any lyrics:
 

 
You can read the details of the contest or see more entries right here.  Peace and love, peace and love, peace and love.
 

 
Man, I really liked that one.  It was very well made and felt so genuine despite the absurd subject matter.  Actually, almost all of the 16 winners are pretty well done.  Some people really went all out and did incredibly elaborate submissions.  You can see all the winning videos right here.  But be warned: watching all 16 of these videos will probably make you want to eat some pringles as soon as possible.  Damn I wish I had  tube of Sour cream and onion right now.
 

Dole created the DOLE Fruit Flash Mob Video Contest to encourage students to make healthy meal choices as part of a healthy lifestyle. The contest incorporated fruit and fruit themes into the contemporary and fun entertainment of a flash mob performance (a spontaneous song and dance that erupts in an unsuspecting crowd). Contest rules required that both school foodservice staff and students participate in the video on location in school’s cafeteria/dining room.

The winners of the contest were determined by Dole.  Here’s the video they picked.  Skip to the middle for the singing and dancing action.
 
FIRST PLACE WINNER.  PRIZE:  $1,000 and 10 cases of fruit cups.

 
Maybe I’m too uptight but to me, that seemed kind of creepy.  For christsakes, a cafeteria full of kids had to get up and dance and sing for a thousand bucks and a few cases of fruit cups???  How much time and energy did they all have to put into learning that routine?  Yeah sure, the kids probably had fun but as an outside observer, this just feels wrong.  Do we really live in a country where little kids have to perform in mini-Hunger Games just to get some free fruit from a company that has revenues of about 7 Billion dollars a year? If Dole wanted to encourage kids to eat better, couldn’t they just GIVE AWAY a few dozen cases of fruit cups?  What good does it do to make little kids sing and dance and compete for such a meager prize?  Oh right….this flash mob video contest was about publicity and not about getting kids to eat better.  I’m guessing Dole will get a lot more than $1,000 of free advertising out of this whole thing.

And that’s the problem with contests like this.  Kids should NOT be participating in these types of contests because video contests are just another form of advertising.  Except in video contests, the kids actually become part of the ads.  I’m going to guess that the school didn’t get all the kids’ parents to sign consent and release forms. So most parents probably didn’t understand that their kids were going to be in a viral video promoting Dole. If I had kids and I found out that their school was making them participate in something like this I’d totally flip out.  I’ll say it as plainly as I can:  CHILDREN SHOULD NOT BE CORPORATE SHILLS. 

But hey, maybe I’m overreacting. Maybe next year Dole should run a contest where schools get one case of fruit cups for every student that agrees to wear a Dole t-shirt for a month straight.  The kids would get something to eat and Dole would get a bunch of tiny, walking billboards!  It’d be a win-win!
 

Like I said, click this image to view

Pretty awesome, no?  Good thing that wasn’t Lori from the Walking Dead driving that Volt otherwise she would have flipped the car after going like 40 feet down the road.  If you don’t get that joke you need to watch a lot more TV.
 

Eharmony’s First Place Winner. Prize: $8,000:

 
The winning filmmaker, Steven Huffaker actually shot two entries for this contest and his non-winning submission is so weird I had to post it too.  As a short film, I think it’s pretty good but as a video contest entry, it’s totally insane.  There is no panel of contest judges with balls big enough to put their company’s stamp of approval on a video that points out that Jesus’ death on the cross maybe wasn’t such a big sacrifice since he knew he was the son of God and that he’d be resurrected.  Yes…for serious.
 

 
UPDATE: Hey now, the director of these two videos left a comment last night and said that the he shot the Jesus ad just for fun. It wasn’t actually a submission. That actually makes me like that video even more than I already did since it was just a crazy short film and not a contest entry.

Fiddy's giving you the stink eye

My friends all know that I’m a video contest nut so every so often someone will hear about a contest and send me a link. A few weeks ago, I got a message from a friend telling me that 50 Cent was holding a video contest on facebook to promote some crappy energy drink company that he owns (what is it with celebrities starting energy product companies??) and that I should enter and try and win the $10,000 prize. So I checked out the rules and man….was I turned off by what I read. I’ve come to accept the fact that most big-money video contests involve public voting, but for some insane reason, people were allowed to vote up to 10 TIMES A DAY for the same video. So instead of begging friends for just one vote, contestants were expected to beg their friends to vote for them 10 times a day, every day for weeks. And to make matters even worse, the voting was happening during the submission period. That means that anyone who entered in the first few days would have an enormous advantage over everyone else in the contest. In fact, when I first learned about this contest I looked at some of the “most popular” submissions and some videos already had thousands and thousands of votes.

When all was said and done, 300 videos were submitted but over ONE MILLION votes were cast! According to my calculator, that’s 3,333 votes per entry. A million votes in a contest with a $10,000 prize is freaking ridiculous. Luckily, I didn’t waste my time and enter this train wreck of a contest. But I still feel bad for the 300 suckers that wasted their time (and their family and friends’ time) trying to win 50 Cent’s ten grand. My friend who told me about this contest is a pretty smart guy but even he didn’t bother to look into HOW a person was supposed to win the grand prize. Like most of the people who probably entered, he just heard that 50 Cent was holding a big video contest and got excited. So the lesson for today is look before you leap. I bet most of the people who entered the Street Kings contest shot entries and THEN read the fine print that explained what they needed to do to win.

Here’s the video that wound up receiving the most votes. It’s actually pretty decent. I’m guessing the guy who made this knew exactly what he was getting into when he decided to shoot a submission:

First Place Winner. Prize: $5,000 & trip to NYC to meet Mr. Cent:

 
Like I said, that was pretty good. But I’ve certainly never seen so much gun play in a video contest entry before. A lot of contests straight up prohibit the depiction of firearms or realistic violence but this contest was sponsored by 50 Cent’s company so I guess Fiddy obviously doesn’t really mind if people associate him or his “brand” with firearms.