Posts Tagged ‘money’

eHarmony “Viral Video” contest winner

Posted by Beardy on March 18th, 2012

Man, I must be slipping.  EHarmony’s Viral Video contest is just the sort of contest I like to enter.  They wanted wacky short films about eHamorny rather than traditional ads. But somehow, I totally missed this one.  Judges picked four finalists and then the public chose the ultimate winner.  The video that won the popular vote is amusing and pretty well done.

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.

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One Million votes cast in the Street King video contest

Posted by Beardy on March 12th, 2012

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.
 

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How to apply for one of MOFILM’s production grants

Posted by Guest Author on February 17th, 2012

Beardy’s Note:  Today I’m happy to bring you folks a very special guest post that was written by a longtime friend of VCN; MOFILM’s director of social media, Kerry Gaffney.  Kerry’s going to let you you know how you can apply with Mofilm to get cash to pay for your Mofilm video contest entries.  It sort of sounds to good to be true but it’s legit; Mofilm is now paying out production grants to filmmakers left and right.  Need some money to hire actors or rent a nicer camera or build some outrageous prop or buy a new piece of editing software? Mofilm wants to help make any and all of that happen. Here’s how you can get a slice of their sweet, production grant pie:

______________________________

 
There are lots of reasons why people like to enter video contests.  And there are also lots of reasons why they don’t enter; usually it’s because they run out of time or because they don’t have the money to do their idea justice.  MOFILM can’t help with the time element but we’re now doing our best to help with the money side with the introduction of Production Grants.

When we were running the Chevrolet Super Bowl contest last year, we really encouraged filmmakers to make their entries as big and bold as possible.  The winning spot had the chance of being aired during the telecast of the Super Bowl LXVI.  So we wanted to make sure that all the entries were great enough to stand shoulder to shoulder with, or be even better than, the big agency ads. That’s why we launched the MOFILM Production Grant program.  Open to any filmmaker from anywhere around the world, all they had to do was apply; sharing their concepts and giving as much supporting material as they felt like.  We gave out over $100,000 last fall and the scheme was so successful we decided to include production grants for as many of our contests as we possible could.

So far in 2012 we’ve approved over $140,000 in grants for 14 different contests to over 100 filmmakers. That’s not a typo, just in January we’ve approved almost $150,000.  That’s in addition to the $300,000 in prizes across our Sydney, Barcelona and Texas contests.

So how does it work?  It’s easy; go check out the open contests on MOFILM and pick a brand.  If there are production grants available there will be a link to the application form right from that page.  You need to be quick though, the grants go fast so the sooner you get your application in the better.

For the application we want to know who you are, what your concept is, how much money you’d like (there’s usually a guide as to what’s available on the form) and what you plan to spend the money on.  A member of the MOFILM team will then review the applications and decides who gets what.  Anyone can apply but your odds of being successful are increased if you have a great idea (natch), have some supporting material like a script or a storyboard, and examples of previous work either with MOFILM or in a link to your showreel on your MOFILM profile.

Once you’ve been told you’ve been successful, you’ll be sent an approval form to fill in and sign.  Then you can get on and create. You can bounce ideas off the account manager or ask for advice and feedback.  Although, any filmmaker entering one of our contests can do that by asking on or with an email to .  Once you’re ready, and before the deadline, upload your video and all the relevant release forms.  One of the MOFILM team will then be in touch to ask for receipts and bank details. Once we have that we’re good to make payment and we’ll reimburse your approved expenses.  After that, all you have to do is wait to find out if you won!!
 

—- Guest Post by Kerry Gaffney.  Follow Kerry on Twitter   —-

 

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Enter this! Spendster’s Reality Check Challenge

Posted by Beardy on May 2nd, 2011

I almost never promote new video contests because sites like OVC and Film the Next already do a great job listing them as soon as they’re announced.  But the new video contest being run by Spendster.org is so good that I just had to mention it.  Plus it turns out I’m ineligible to enter because I won a prize in Spendster’s last contest.  So you guys are going to have to go out and win this one for the Beardster.

The contest is incredibly easy to enter.  All you do is shoot a simple video that’s under 60 seconds long where you talk about something you wasted a bunch of money on.  That’s it.  Quality doesn’t matter at all.  The winners are picked by an on-going, public vote.

And man, are there going to be a lot of winners in this contest.  The prizes aren’t huge, not at all.  But Spendster is giving away so MANY small prizes that if you shoot a video you’ll probably wind up winning something.  First place will get you $1,000, second will get you $750 and third will get you $500.  And after that, FIFTY people will each win a $100 visa  gift card as a runner-up prize.  FIFTY PEOPLE!

I recommend you don’t even try to get enough votes to land in the top 3.  Just shoot for winning one of the runner-up prizes.  Sure, 100 bucks isn’t much money but it’s certainly better than a punch in the face.  And if you’re new to video contests and have never won a prize before this is an easy way to bust your cherry. Or maybe you’ve won a few contests already but you just love free money.  Or hey, since the $100 prize comes on a visa gift card you could just save it for when you need a last minute present for somebody.  Or keep it paper-clipped to your drivers license for the next time you want to try and get out of a speeding ticket!

Normally I avoid contests where the winners are picked solely by a public vote.  But in the case of this Spendster contest, the voting is what really makes this contest so attractive.  You see, the voting is already going on and is open until May 25th.  And people can vote once per IP address, PER DAY.  So if you shoot an entry right away and if you remember to vote for yourself once a day, you should have a pretty decent chance of landing in the top 53.

Like I said, I won a prize in Spendster’s last video contest so I can tell you first hand this isn’t some kind of weird scam.  Actually last time the contest was even bigger.  97 people each won $250 and I was of the runners up.  It took me all of 15 minutes to shoot my entry, plus maybe another 45 to edit it (it was just one shot) and upload it to youtube.

So if making $100 per hour sounds good to you, head here to enter the contest:  http://spendster.org/ And if you win a prize, be sure to let me know….I promise I won’t demand a cut of your winnings.

UPDATE: I just heard from one reader who shot an entry for this and needs votes.  Follow this link and click on the vote button to help him out.  It’ll take ‘ya 6 seconds!  SHANE’S ENTRY.

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