Doritos: Larger Than Life

It’s been about a week now since the submission period for the 2012 Crash the Super Bowl contest closed and in total it looks like Doritos recived 4,829 entries.  That’s an all time record.  Sure, some of those submissions are duplicates but not many.  This year the Doritos team did a great job of keeping the repeat submissions out of the contest gallery.  In fact, I’d estimate that only 1% of this year’s ads are duplicates.   If we ignore the fact that a few of the entries are repeats, a little math tells us that your odds of making the Top Five are 1 in 965.  That makes this year’s Crash the Super Bowl the most difficult video contest to win, EVER.  So if you entered this year and if you have friends that are really psyched about your chances, you might want to mention the “1 in 965″ odds to them so they won’t be too crushed if you don’t make the finals.

As I explained in my previous post, this year I’m trying to watch (at least a few seconds of) every, single CTSB entry.  My goal is to compile a list of all the best submissions.  (If you made an awesome entry and want to be considered for the list, leave your link in a comment to my last post.)  While scrolling through the contest gallery, every once in a while I’ll come across a commercial that has a recognizable face or two in it.  Over the years, a few “celebrities” have appeared in Crash the Super Bowl entries but using known actors seems to be a big trend this year.

But personally, I think using celebrities in a CTSB entry is a really awful idea for everyone involved.  Before I get into “why” it’s a bad idea, take a minute and check out this Crash the SuperBowl entry featuring Jenny McCarthy.  I can’t embed CTSB videos so you’ll have to click on the image to view it on the contest site:

click to view.

That was seriously a pretty good entry.  The production values where top notch, the premise was funny, the women all looked very nice and it ended with a strong punchline.  I actually think it would be a major contender if it did NOT feature a celebrity.  As it is, there’s just something off-putting about this submission.  It causes the viewer to wonder, “Why the hell is Jenny McCarthy in a Crash the Super Bowl entry?”  And that question leads to more questions like “Is she broke?”  “Does she really need the $25,000 finalist prize that badly?  “Or does she just want the attention of being in a Super Bowl ad?”  But here’s the most relevant question; if Jenny McCarthy wants to do commercials, why doesn’t she just do some?  Is she un-castable or something these days? (NOTE: The answers to all these questions have been answered by one of the directors of this spot! Scroll down for the full story.)

So you see, if you’re a recognizable actor, doing a Crash the Super Bowl entry is is a huge gamble.  Like I said, there’s only a 1 in 965 chance of making the finals.  But there’s a 100% chance that people will wonder why the heck you would stoop to entering a video contest. Ok…maybe some celebrities enter the contest just for the fun of it.  But if a famous person wanted to make a goofy video for fun, they could just do a FunnyorDie sketch for free.  So most of them enter for the obvious reason; the prizes for winning are money and exposure.  But looking desperate for either of those things is not good for an actor’s image.

And I also think it’s a mistake for filmmakers to feature major or minor celebrities in their Doritos ads.  In a way, it goes against the entire point and premise of the Crash the Super Bowl contest.  Doritos runs The Crash every year because they want to find something they can’t get from Hollywood or from a big, Madison Avenue ad firm.  They want quirky, crazy, outside-of-the-box ideas.   In short, they want “User Generated Content.”

The description for Jenny McCarthy’s ad lists two directors.  I googled them and it turns out one of them is her ex-husband.  And he’s also an known actor.  He’s done a lot of TV directing too.  So this entry is the exact OPPOSITE of user-generated content.  Actually, it’s hollywood’s take on user-generated content.  And that is the thing that bothers me most about these “celebrity” entries.  They have an air of hubris to them.  It’s like an NBA player walking onto a basketball court in a big city, public park thinking he’s going to blow everyone’s minds just because he’s a pro.  But no one likes it when a pro chooses to compete against amateurs simply because they’ll be easier to beat. Before I make another weird analogy, check out this other CTSB entry that features boy-banders Lance Bass and AJ Mclean:

Again, click to view.

Now that ad wasn’t so great.  The only thing it has going for it is that it has two famous people in it.  But right now, the people that produced this ad are probably patting themselves on the back for being smart enough/rich enough/well connected enough to cast Lance Bass and AJ Mclean. They didn’t have to waste time writing a stronger script because two celebrities trump great writing any day…right?

Let’s be honest; the vast majority of Crash the Super Bowl entries are awful.  It’s very hard for an “average joe” to make a tight, professional looking 30 second commercial for no money.  And that’s why I think celebrities agree to be in CTSB ads.  Some friend or nephew or ex-husband finds the contest and thinks, “wow, these commercials all suck! If I spent a few grand and hired a real crew and got my pal, insert-celebrity’s name here to be in my video I would win easy!”  But these folks don’t “get” the contest.  Presumably they think that their celebrity entry will be much more desirable than the thousands of entries that just feature regular jerk-offs from Nowheresville, USA.  If Doritos has to choose between a commercial that features Jenny McCarthy and a commercial that features a bunch of nobodies, Doritos will obviously pick the Jenny McCarthy ad…right?

Wrong.  Because if Doritos wanted to air a commercial featuring Jenny McCarthy in a bikini, they would just hire Jenny McCarthy and stick he in a bikini.  They wouldn’t bother to run a 10 million dollar “consumer generated” commercial contest if they wanted a  typical, “hollywood” ad.  So I don’t think we’ll ever see a “celebrity” entry make the CTSB finals.  If we did, it would probably mark the end of the entire contest.  Because if Doritos tells us that to win, an entry should have a celebrity in it, why would us regular jerk-offs from Nowheresville even bother to compete?

The entries that have recognizable actors in them are pretty interesting though.  Some of them are pretty good and some of them are a little lame.  Some where clearly made by pros with deep pockets who were able to hire known actors, while other entries seem like maybe they were made by the celebrity’s nephew and the actor is appearing as a favor.  Here are the 2011 celebrity ads I’ve been able to find so far.  If you see any other ones, leave a link in the comments.

The Eric Roberts Show: Featuring Eric Roberts:

I always liked Eric Roberts. And he's actually pretty funny in this.

Tasty as Charged: Featuring Jerry Adler:

You might not recognize the name but this guy has been in a billion TV shows and movies

Eyes Teeth: Featuring Sam Lloyd:

It's Ted from Scrubs! And he's in a weirdly hilarious CTSB entry!

Party Time:  Featuring Blake Clark and Peter Dante:

Wait a second...both of these guys have been in a ton of Adam Sandler movies. I wonder who made this spot.

Despite my bitching, some of those were pretty good.  But nothing can top the epicness of this celebrity Pepsi Max entry from Last year’s Crash the Super Bowl contest:

Pretty damn crazy, right?  But that spot did not make the finals last year.  So If an entry that features a rampaging Ernest Borgnine couldn’t win this contest, I don’t think this year’s crop of celebrity entries stand much chance either.

11/29/2011 UPDATE: The mystery of the Jenny McCarthy ad has been solved! One of the directors actually found this article and he was good enough to explain how the ad came to be. Here’s his full comment:

Hey Beardy

Jenny McCarthy is doing this in the hopes to help http://www.generationrescue.org/. When we got the news from your site ( “The Lonely Island guys are kind of IN the Crash the Super Bowl contest. By that I mean that they will be competing for the 1st place spot on the ad meter and if they get it, they will win the million dollar bonus!” ) We thought we would give it a shot too. Fair is fair..

Thanks for checking out the spot!

John A.

p.s. your site rocks!

Well now, do I feel like an asshole or what??  Not only did Jenny McCarthy and her team shoot an entry as a way to raise money to combat autism, they found out about the details of the Doritos contest from this website!  Though to be fair, the lonely Island guys were hired by doritos to shoot a super bowl ad this year.  They’re not actually competing against the little guys for a slot in the finals.  Their commercial is guaranteed to air.  But still, it’s nice to hear that this was for a not for profit endeavor.  So, good for them!

John, his producing partner Craig Bass and his family and friends were left in shock.  At no point had Chevy or Mofilm ever mentioned that something like this might happen. But sure enough, their ad played right in the middle of one of the biggest sporting events of the year. Here is is:

2nd Place winner, Mofilm’s Tribeca Competition. Prize: $4,000

It’s really an excellent short film and I can’t believe it didn’t take first place. But John and Craig have done several fantastic video contest entries in the last year and a half. Maybe you remember this ad they created for last year’s big Godaddy contest. It won an honorable mention spot, $15,000 and also aired on TV:

And the duo also won a 2nd Honorable mention in the 2nd installment of Godaddy’s contest with this commercial. Except the prize for that one was $25,000! And yes…this ad also ran on TV for a while.

So that’s three national commercials in about 18 months. That’s pretty damn impressive. I saw those 2 Godaddy ads run a bunch of times on cable. And this year, 11 Million people watched the MLB Allstar game! If you want to learn more about how these guys operate, here’s a neat (but long) news story about John and Craig’s video contest adventures. Watch it if you like to feel jealous!

http://lagrange.patch.com/articles/video-meet-the-guys-who-got-la-grange-on-national-tv

———————-

Beardy is camping out to buy tickets for tonight’s 12:01AM screening of Twilight so while he’s away I thought I’d step in and do a little self-promotion. I also wanted to share my Doritos hard luck story. Like pretty much anybody reading this site, I submitted an entry for this year’s Crash the Superbowl contest. And here is that very entry now!

Be honest, it’s the greatest thing you’ve ever seen right? I’m super proud of my submission but I know that the competition out there is tough. And I was totally ok with the fact that with thousands of entries coming in, 6 teams of professional filmmakers with deep pockets and Red cameras and fancy dollies would probably come along and take all the finalist spots. And like I said, I was totally cool with that. But then….I saw this:

Ahhhhh! Some team of professional filmmakers with deep pockets and a Red camera and a fancy dolly came along and filmed an idea a whole lot like mine! Man, that’s a bummer. The coincidences between that spot and mine are just crazy, aren’t they? When 4000 people each try and come up with an idea for a commercial for the same product there’s obviously going to be some overlap, but damn, there’s a lot of overlap here. Of course, I’ve seen a lot of CTSB entries that have really similar ideas. (For instance, how many Doritos-as-a-paper-football and dorito-loving-zombies spots have you watched in the last few weeks?) But of the 2200 or so Crash entries I’ve watched, I don’t think there are two of them that share more common elements than these two casket-full-of-doritos entries. I mean, it’s not just that both videos are funeral scenes. It’s that both videos include:

1. A dead man’s last wish to be buried in a casket full of Doritos
2. A funeral for that guy that turns out to be fake
3. A big, framed photo of the “dead” guy enjoying a bag of Doritos next to the casket
4. Shots of that guy in his casket buried up to his face in chips
5. A climax in which the “dead” guy gets his comeuppance when the casket of chips is knocked over

That’s sort of a lot of similarities to squeeze into 30 seconds, isn’t it? I have to wonder, what the heck happened here? Is this just a case of really bad luck or is the CIA monitoring my brainwaves as part of some kind of scheme to control the masses via secret messages hidden in a superbowl commercial? There’s no chance that another team of filmmakers were somehow (gulp) inspired by my entry, is there?

My entry, Rest in Chips was uploaded on Friday, November 6th and the other video, The Casket, appeared online a few days later. I might be paranoid but I’m not crazy enough to think that the makers of the other entry saw Rest In Chips and then ran out the next day and rented a church so they could make their own version of my spot. So I was left with only one conclusion; this was just a giant coincidence…nothing more.

But then it finally hit me; I am an idiot. After I wrote my script I created and animated storyboard so I could see if I could fit my entire idea into 30 seconds. On October 6th, I uploaded that storyboard animation on to youtube. Then I sent the link to a few people and asked for ideas and feedback. During that time, the video was set to “public” and could be seen by anyone. One of my friends even said to me “why did you put that on youtube? What if someone steals your idea!?” And I laughed and laughed at that notion. And then I stopped laughing because I realized I had made a very stupid mistake. I named the video “Doritos Storyboard.” Because the word “Doritos” was in the title, any CTSB contestant who went to youtube to study last year’s winning entries or actual Doritos commercials could have found and watched my storyboard.

I’ve been burned by plagiarism before so I went back to youtube and deleted the storyboard. But by then it had already been up for like a week. A few days later, I changed some of the dialogue in my script and created a slightly tweaked version of the animated storyboard. On October 12th I uploaded that video to youtube except I named this one simply “dortest” so that it would be hidden from youtube’s search engine. It’s still online. Here it is:

I hate to think the worst of people like this but if you think I’m going overboard, try a little experiment. Open The Casket in one window and my storyboard video in the other. Then hit “Play” on them as fast as you can so you can watch them simultaneously. The shots line up better than Dark Side of the Moon and The Wizard of Oz. I can maybe understand that two separate filmmakers could come up with the same ideas, but what are the odds they’d use the same site gags at the same moments??

I really have no idea what to think about this. I know it’s just speculation on my part but I think I might have declare shenanigans on the makers of The Casket. At the very least, I think it’s plausible that somewhere out there, another filmmaker who was planning on entering the CTSB contest went on to youtube and searched for “Dortios” related videos. If they “Sorted by date,” my storyboard would have been right up in their face. The storyboard seems too crazy to ever shoot (seriously, what kind of a nut would get a real casket and have a real grave dug?) so maybe they assumed it would never really be filmed and so the concept was fair game.

Or maybe it was the CIA. I dunno. At this point I’m pretty open to any possibilities.

1/6/2010 UPDATE: Well, Doritos announced their Top 6 finalists on Monday and I was extremely disappointed to see that “The Casket” made the cut. For making the top 6 they receive $25,000, a trip to the superbowl and a chance to see their ad air during the game. If their ad does air, they could win a bonus of up to 2 million dollars.

After writing this blog post I contacted Doritos and informed them of my plagiarism concerns and explained the situation. I received a response saying that the Doritos legal team would look into the matter.

So even though the company’s lawyers knew there might be a chance the idea was stolen the judges decided to choose it anyway. Since 40% of a video’s score was based on “originality” I cannot understand how “The Casket” could have gotten a high enough score to make the Top 6. There were 4000 entries. Common sense tells you that a fair judging system would yield many videos that were just fractions of a point away from making the top 6. So a serious deduction in any category should theoretically sink any videos chances.

Now that Doritos has chosen “Casket” as a finalist, a new and even bigger problem has presented itself. Even if the idea was not stolen from me, “Casket” should have been disqualified because it infringes on my copyright. Copyright infringement can happen on accident but that does not give the infringer a free pass to benefit from their actions. Unintentional copyright infringement is still copyright infringement. My storyboard animation for “Rest in Chips” was first posted to the web the first week in October. The version that is on youtube now was uploaded October 12th. On October 29th I posted the first rough cut of my entry to my youtube channel. It, and several other rough cuts are still there. That first rough cut was on line 4 days before “Casket” was even filmed. And finally, my entry was uploaded to the contest site well before “Casket” was.

This all means that I am the owner and creator of the “Dead man has his last wish to be buried in chips fulfilled but during the funeral he is revealed to be alive inside the casket full of chips that gets knocked over” story idea. If a commercial was running on TV right now that was as similar to “Casket” as my entry, storyboard and rough cuts are, the judges would never have been able to select “Casket” as a finalist because Doritos would be sued for IP theft and copyright infringement regardless of whether or not the concept was intentionally stolen. My rights as an independent filmmaker are the same as a multi-million dollar corporation. Just because my storyboard or entry have not aired on TV, it does not mean my Intellectual Property rights don’t count.

Since Doritos knew that I was concerned about plagiarism and since they knew that I have proof that I was the first person to publicly release this idea, I feel personally offended that they chose to ignore my rights and concerns. Back in the newspaper days, they used to say “never pick a fight with a guy who buys ink buy the barrel.” Let’s update that statement for the modern age and say that you should “never pick a fight with a filmmaker who has a blog and nothing to lose.”

More details about these new developments here: http://videocontestnews.com/2010/01/04/one-of-the-crash-the-superbowl-finalists-revealed-early/ and here: http://videocontestnews.com/2010/01/05/doritos-2010-crash-the-superbowl-finalists/