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Sprint “Epic Contest” winner

Well, Michael Bay has spoken.  The epic director of Transformers and Armageddon was the sole judge in Sprint’s “Epic Contest” in which filmmakers were asked to submit their most epic short, short films.  The contest got some really entertaining entries but in the end, here’s the video that Mr. Bay deemed to be the most Epic of all:

Grand Prize Winner.  Prize: $25,000.

You know what, I liked it.  I watched the other finalists and that’s probably the one I would have picked too.

AND SPEAKING OF THINGS THAT ARE EPIC, I just wanted to make a quick mention of the fact that November turned out to be Videocontestnews.com’s biggest month ever!  Just before midnight on the 30th we got our 10,000th unique visitor of the month.  That’s crazy!  Obviously the huge spike in traffic came from people interested in the Crash the Super Bowl contest.  We got a simmilar (though not as epic) spike thanks to our Crash coverage last year and I’m happy to report that a lot readers stuck with us even during the CTSB off-season.  So I’m hoping 2011 turns out to be a big year for us. If you’re new to the site, thanks for checking us out.  We’ve been getting record numbers of comments lately and I think it really makes the site more entertaining and more informative so keep ‘em coming. And If you ever have some contest news you’d like to share or if you need help with a contest that’s being run un-fairly, please let us know at videocontestnews@gmail.com.

Vacation Time

Yo, Beardy’s heading on vacation this week so VCN’s going to be quiet for a little while.  We should be getting back to complaining about stuff sometime around July 1. Peace out, nerds.

Easiest. Contest. Ever.

If you have a camera, a piece of paper and 5 spare minutes you should probably go ahead and shoot an entry for the Infolinks “Double with a Bubble” video contest.  This video will tell you everything you need to know about entering:

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So that’s it.  Take some footage of yourself showing off a bubble or a sign that says the word “double” and you could win one of 61 prizes.  61 PRIZES!  Sure, 40 of those are t-shirts and tote bags but Infolinks is also giving away 10 video cameras and 10 ipods.  Plus the best video of them all gets $1,000.

The deadline to enter is January 1st and so far, only 10 entries have been submitted.  So if you’re a cheap bastard and you’re heading to a Christmas party next weekend, bring a camera and some bubble gum with you.  You can tell your friends that your present to them is that you will shoot, edit and upload a “Double with a Bubble” entry for them!

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Crash the Superbowl: When will we know the finalsts?

One of the Doritos flavors I fell in love while shooting my own Crash entry

Do yourself a favor. Try these.

The total number of entries in the Crash the Superbowl competition has inched up from 4047 to 4062.  Over on the contest forum there seemed to be a lot of frantic people who’s entries never appeared in the gallery.  So hopefully this means that all those folks have had their issues resolved and all entries that were submitted by the deadline are now up.

Officially, Doritos will be announcing their 6 finalists for the Crash the Superbowl Competition on January 5th. But from what I’ve read around the interwebs, they will start notifying those finalists in the middle of this month. So if you haven’t heard anything by Christmas you probably should make other plans for the Superbowl.

Recently we asked you guys to send us tips for what you thought were the best Crash entries submitted this year. We’ll be announcing our picks for our favorites next Wednesday. So check back to see if you’re a winner! (in our hearts) And if you have any other entries you want to bring to our attention, leave the links as a comment to this post.

Help Beardy find the best of the CTSB entries!

doritos crash the superbowl

Beardy is a dreamer of big dreams. And Beardy’s latest big dream was to watch all 4047 entries in this year’s crash the superbowl contest and list his predictions for which commercials would make it to the finals. But alas, this was a pipe dream. For if one were to actually sit down and watch every, single entry that was submitted to the Doritos contest this year they’d be stuck in front of a computer for almost three full days. Beardy still wants to compile a list of predictions, but he could use some help.

So, have you seen a spot that you thought was especially awesome? Did you see one that you know is destined to make it to the finals? Or did you create an amazing commercial that you think should be recognized? Or did you make a spot was just OK but you feel like doing some shameless self promotion? If you answered in the affirmative to any of these questions, let us know. Send us a link to your favorite CTSB entries at videocontestnews@gmail.com or just leave it in a comment. In the next few days, I’ll edit this post and insert links to some of the more interesting suggestions I’ve received.

Flavor Flaaaav!?

I thought I’d give the posts about the Crash the Superbowl contest a break for a while but Doritos just added a new batch of last minute uploads. That brings the total number of entries to 4023. Yeesssh. That’s a lot. I pretty much have given up on watching them all but I have been browsing. And in my browsing I saw this spot that features the real Flavor Flav!





Is that insane or what? It was just a matter of time before someone tried to make the finals using a “celebrity,” I guess. But the above commercial is a huge waste of Flavor Flav! He’s just sitting there. It’s not funny or interesting and the Doritos don’t even get more than a few seconds of screen time. I imagine it’ll be a real turn off to the judges since it’s pretty obvious that the folks behind this entry assumed that having Flav would be enough to propel them to the finals. But I think if Doritos wanted Flavor Flav as a sponsor, they would have gone out and hired him on their own.

Oh, the entry is listed as being submitted by “FlavorFlav.” However, someone in the comment section states that Flav did not write or direct the spot. He says that “two 25 year olds from Los Angeles, Matthew and Marthinus,” created the commercial. If Flavor Flav HAD actually made this entry himself it’d be many times more interesting to me.

UPDATE: The New York Post covered Flav’s entry into the CTSB contest and they imply that Flav himself created the commercial. They even got a response about the entry from someone at Doritos. Here’s the entire blurb from the Post:

Flavor Flav must be hard-up for cash. We hear the VH1 reality show star and erstwhile rapper is trying his hand as a TV commercial director as part of Doritos’ annual “Crash the Super Bowl” ad contest, in which users are asked to submit their own ads to compete for a $1 million prize. “He did this totally randomly and unprovoked,” says a source at the company. “And it’s actually pretty damn good.”

This is an interesting story and it’s just the type of thing that shows like TMZ would love to cover because it includes good video they can use. I wouldn’t be surprised if Flav’s entry was on TV a few times this week. That’d be great for Doritos but not so great for the team that made the spot. Dortitos will get lots of free advertising but the entry will get over-exposed. Who would consider a commercial to be the best of the Superbowl if they already saw it on the news in November? Maybe Doritos should just buy it right now and start airing it. It wouldn’t just be a commercial then, it’d be a story worthy of some news coverage. I also read today that Flavor Flav is more than $180,000 behind in his taxes. Man, imagine the story if Doritos paid Flav’s tax bill in exchange for that commercial!

Ripe for the plucking: Lending Tree Contest

lendingtree

Lending Tree is running a video contest to promote its new “You to the rescue” campaign on the contest site, Tongal.  The top prize in this one is 5 grand and you don’t even need to come up with your own idea!  Five approved concepts have already been posted and are just waiting for people to film them.  The deadline was originally supposed to be a few days ago but even though 20 entries had already been recived, the contest deadline was extended until Monday, November 2nd.

That might mean that none of the 20 submitted entries are good enough to take the top prize.  So you have three days to swoop in and win this one!  Cancel your Halloween party and get filming.

Ripe for the plucking: AntiHIVirus

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Whenever I see a contest that’s got really confusing instructions or is about a really unappealing subject I always seriously consider entering. Why? Because if I think the instructions are confusing and if I think that the topic is unappealing then probably 90% of filmmakers will feel the same way. If a contest is hard to enter, enter it. It might take a lot of time and research to get a strong concept together but if you do a half-way decent job the sponsor will be thrilled that they got at least one non-crappy entry.

I mention all this because for the last few days I have been trying to wrap my brain around a contest called AntiHIVirus. Yes…it’s a video contest about HIV. Specifically, the goal is for filmmakers to create PSAs about HIV prevention.

But here’s the catch; the ads are to be aimed at an international audience. Therefore, contestants are encouraged to use little or NO DIALOGUE.

This is a very, very attractive contest to enter. Here’s why:

  1. The winners are picked by judges
  2. There is no public voting
  3. There are three top prizes: $5K, $3K and $2K
  4. The subject matter and the no dialogue thing will discourage a lot of people from entering.

There is one big “con” to this contest though.  All entries are hidden until after the submission period ends.  So you don’t know if 2 people have entered or 200 people have entered.  But really, who the heck wants to make a dialogue-free spec PSA about HIV??  I shoot video contest entries for topics that I think will be fun to cover.  And this contest does not seem fun at all.

After days of trying to think of  a good concept for this one I’m throwing in the towel.  The deadline to enter is October 13th.  Can you come up with something by then?

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