I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the results of HP’s “You on You” video contest. The winners were announced yesterday and I immediately recognized the work of the first place winner. Here’s the winning entry:

First Place. Prize: $40,000

The guy in that video is named Lucas Ridley and he is a frickin’ genius. Frequent video contesters all seem to have their own favorite gimmicks and no one proves that better than Lucas Ridley. Not only is he a filmmaker, he’s a hang glider and he’s shot numerous video contest entries that feature himself hang gliding! According to his blog it looks like he’s entered at least 20 video contests and his hang glider is the main subject of most of his videos. Here are a few examples:

Post-it notes contest entry:

Taxslayer.com contest Entry

Excedrin Speed Challenge Entry

THAT EXCEDRIN VIDEO WON LUCAS $10,000 LAST FALL! Is that crazy or what!? After a 10K win I probably would have retired that particular gimmick but maybe that wouldn’t have been the best call. This dude has found the most perfect hook imaginable. Video contest organizers love videos that feature totally over-the-top stuff and what could be more over-the-top that some crazy guy using your product while hang gliding? And that taxslayer entry aside, usually this guy doesn’t just film himself hang gliding and call it an entry. He seems to have some serious post-production skills. His work in the HP video is really, really slick.

Ok, back to the HP contest. This one was huge. In all, $300,000 in prizes were up for grabs. Judges picked the finalists but the winners were picked by voters on youtube. Ug…youtube voters. It only takes like 60 seconds to set up a youtube account! It’d be so easy to cheat in a competition like that. Fortunately, I think one of the best finalists won. Here are some of the other winners:

Second place. Prize: $20,000

Third place. Prize: $15,000

In addition to those giant awards the first, second and third place videos also got a laptop and $2,500 as finalist prizes. In all, HP gave 100 laptops to the finalists! Too bad they didn’t give out 100 hang gliders. Watching all those hang gliding videos makes it seem really fun.

All of HP’s You on You winners and finalists can be seen here:  http://www.youtube.com/hp