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.

On Friday, Fidelity Investments announced the 5 finalists in their “Be the Green Line” video contest.  The idea for this one was quite unique; people were supposed to pretend to be an actual green line and then give someone advice or guidance.  It’s a play on Fidelity’s current ad campaign where financial advisers help investors plan out their future via a “Green Line” to their goals.

Anyways, guess what?  Your pal Beardy is one of the 5 finalists and I could use some help. If you have  a youtube account, I’d greatly appreciate it if you could view my entry and then rate it 5 stars (or give it a “like” if you’re using youtube’s new layout)  Instead of playing the green line myself, I created an odd, muppet-style green line puppet that ran around giving tips to random strangers.  Here’s my video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wD1IGGFKZwU

Now if you’re a regular reader of VCN you’ll know that I usually advise against entering contests that involve online voting.  But the Fidelity contest is a very rare example of how to incorporate voting into a contest without rewarding cheaters.  According to the “Be the Green Line” rules, Fidelity could have picked as many as 10 finalists and then after a public voting period, judges would pick the winner out of the 5 videos with the highest scores.  But Fidelity saved all of us finalists a ton of grief by only picking 5 videos for this round!  So there won’t be a big ugly fight to make it to the top 5.  And mercifully, the voting period is only a week long which is just right if you ask me.

The rules say that the judges may or may not take youtube ratings into account when picking their winner.  So I feel compelled to do a little campaigning.  Plus, it looks like one or more contestants are having their friends down-vote my video!  So now I have to try and get my score up as a matter of principle.

If you are so inclined, you can check out all 5 finalist videos here: http://www.youtube.com/user/BeTheGreenLine

Thanks in advance for any 5-star ratings you wish to bestow up on my puppet opus!

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.