The Skittles Rabbit

I watch thousands of video contest entries every year and surprisingly I see very few obvious cases of plagiarism.  I’m not sure if this means that most video contest filmmakers respect other people’s content or if it means that they’re just smart enough not to rip-off anything that’s recognizable.

But every so often I do see contestants trying to pass off stolen ideas as their own.  And when I do see possible acts of plagiarism, I usually post it.  Why? Because ripping off another filmmaker is wrong…but ripping off another filmmaker in an attempt to make money is despicable.  It’s also straight up dumb.  If you win, eventually someone will probably realize what you’ve done.

Obviously, there are different degrees of plagiarism and the line between “inspiration” and “theft” are different for every one.  While I might not see flat out plagiarism much in video contests I do see a lot of low-grade copying.  By that I mean that non-professional actors will sometimes copy well-known characters or new writers will sometimes use lines they’ve heard somewhere before, (e.g., “That’s gonna leave a mark!”)  That kind of stuff doesn’t bother me because almost all viewers will realize those bits were copied from well known works.  Non-malicious copying is just something you can expect to see in videos created by young or new filmmakers.

But what does bother me is when professional (or aspiring professional) filmmakers consciously take ideas other people created, change them in the hopes that no one will recognize those ideas and then present a new work as if it was 100% original.  And that brings me to the point of this post.  The other day a reader sent me a link to a Doritos commercial that was submitted to the Crash the Super Bowl contest.  He said he thought the idea was a rip-off of a Skittles commercial from a few years ago.  I think he’s totally right.  The entry in question is called “The Soprano Dorito.”  It’s a pretty good ad and more than one person sent it to me and said they thought it was good enough for the finals.  Here it is:

And now here’s a Skittles commercial from 2006:

Yeah, both of those ads feature a lot of big differences.  But big differences don’t mean that the Doritos ad isn’t a rip off.  I can maybe see how two filmmakers could independently come up with commercial ideas about a guy who finds/gets an opera singing creature that he soon gets sick of and has to think about getting rid of.  But it’s the rainstorm scene in the Doritos video that seals the deal for me.  It’s like an artistic artifact from the original work that survived the adaptation process.  I guess it was just too perfect to leave out.  In my opinion, the fact that regret-during-a-rainstorm scenes appear in the middle of both ads reveals that the person who created this CTSB entry didn’t just steal an idea, they copied the mood, pacing and story arc of the skittles ad.

The Soprano Dorito is an incredibly well made entry.  It really does have a serious shot at making the CTSB finals.  It looks amazing, the acting is good and the CGI is funny (in a good way.)  On the CTSB site, the entry is credited to someone named Douglas Jessup.  I googled him and according to his website, Jessup is about to graduate from USC with a masters in film production.  Why do I bring that up?  Because a guy like that should know better.

I can understand how some might think I’m over-reacting by outing a complete stranger like this but idea-thieves always deserve to be called on their actions.  Because if they get away with it once, they’ll probably try again.  If you ever come across a video contest entry that you believe plagiarizes another work, let me know at videocontestnews@gmail.com.  Now if you’ll permit me a moment to cover my ass legally I’d like to point out that I have no direct proof that the makers of The Soprano Dorito plagiarized the skittles Singing Rabbit ad.  The points made in this post are just conjecture.  For all I know, the similarities in both ads could just be coincidences.

But one thing I do know for sure, that Dorito is a tenor, not a soprano.

12/1/10 UPDATE: A few people have left comments on the CTSB page for The Soprano Dorito saying they thought the entry was too similar to the Skittles Singing Rabbit ad.  The director left this comment as a response:

“DouglasJessup:  I wasn’t going to respond to the Skittles comments, but here: search “one froggy evening” – it’s an old WB cartoon. This was my inspiration…”

Frankly, I don’t buy that explanation.  The Doritos entry contains too many important elements that appeared in the skittles ad but didn’t appear in One Froggy Evening.  For example, in One Froggy Evening, the main character’s problem is that he can’t get the frog to sing when he wants it to.  But in the Skittles ad, the main character’s problem is that the rabbit won’t STOP singing ever.  The main character in The Soprano Dorito has the same problem as the main character in the Skittles ad.  The Opera-singing Dorito, like the Opera-singing Skittles rabbit won’t STOP singing.  The main character in One Froggy Evening tries to get rid of the frog because it won’t sing enough.  The main characters in the Skittles and Doritos ads try and get rid of their creatures because they are being driven crazy by the non-stop singing.

One more thing; a reader said that I must have written this post because I was “feeling the heat” of a competing video.  Just for the record, I did not enter the Doritos contest this year. So I have no dog in this fight.  I’m just an observer who thinks filmmakers should respect other people’s ideas and content.

12/3/10 Update: Doug Jessup, the creator of The Soprano Dorito left a comment to this post and provided a link to a blog entry explaining why he thinks I’m an idiot (check the comments for the link.)  If you ignore all the weird insults aimed at me, Jessup’s post kind of reads like a film school paper on how all great filmmakers copy ideas from one another.  Jessup also goes to great lengths to IMPLY that he didn’t copy ideas from the skittles ad but he never actually comes out and says he did NOT use it as a source of “inspiration.”

A reader named Scott posted a handy definition of what Plagiarism is in the comments.  To qualify as plagerism an artist must “steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one’s own,” “use (another’s production) without crediting the source,” and “present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source.”

After Jessup left his comment I left one of my own and asked him point blank, Yes or no, did he get any of the ideas for The Soprano Dorito from the Skittles Singing Rabbit ad.  I can tell from my my web traffic logs that Jessup has checked the comments for this post many, many times in the last few days but he has not responded to my question.  I think it is obvious that Jessup took ideas from the Singing Rabbit ad and because he is refusing to credit the ad as his source material and because he has gone to tremendous lengths to avoid citing his sources (creating a blog that implies he didn’t steal ideas from the Skittles ad without literally making that claim) I think this incident definitely qualifies as plagiarism.

Click image to view

Yeah that was cute. Too bad it was a word for word rip off of a pre-existing viral video. Here is the much, much better original:

I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a blatant and despicable act of plagiarism in my life. But please, hold your hatred to the end because this story is about to get weird.

As soon as “Forest Chump” was announced as one of the winners in this contest, some keen viewer contacted the creator of the original Forest Gump in 60 seconds video (Will Tribble) and told him he had been ripped off. He (and lots of other Mofilm users) complained and to their credit, Mofilm reacted quickly. Here is the official statement they put out:

MOFILM would like to issue a direct apology to community involved with the recent Nokia MiniMo contest and Will Tribble.

It has come to our attention that the Critics Award winner “Forrest Chump” was not an original creation, as required by the terms and conditions of the competition but had been copied from Will’s Tribble’s “Forrest Gump in One Minute, in One Take“  This issue should have been dealt with as soon as it was flagged however it was not. We will be holding a full review of the administration of this competition.

We would like apologise unreservedly once more for this error. We didn’t realise that the film that we chose was a copy, we would have instantly removed the submission from the competition if we had. As it stands, the original winner has now had their prizes revoked and we will be announcing a new winner soon.

Will Tribble has also been invited to the London Film Festival as the guest of MOFILM and the One Minute One Take film will be shown during the MOFILM London Film Festival ceremony.

Though Mofilm said that Ms. Lyon’s prize had been “revoked,” it seems that they may have made this announcement AFTER she already got her free trip to Cannes. So did she get to go on the trip or didn’t she? I’ve done some checking at it looks like Ms. Lyon was in Cannes when Mofilm/Nokia decided to revoke her prizes. They then made that girl get on a plane and go home early. Damn….that’s cold.

But that girl is a despicable little plagiarist, right! So she got what she deserved! Well, maybe not. Check out this statement that Ms. Lyon sent to the website Adrants (among others) after they covered this whole debacle:

“I would like to make a statement regarding the alleged plagiarism accusations from the Nokia Minimo movie competition.

I was approached by a Nokia representative who asked me to remake any video in under two minutes for his Nokia assignment. I was unaware that this was a competition at the time and did not receive a brief. The representative also promised to give me a mobile phone in exchange for assisting him with his project. I never received the phone.

The Nokia representative was present during the filming of my video and after being asked several times if the film was OK to submit he insisted it was and persisted to show the actors the original video to direct them where to stand and what to do. At no point did the representative inform any of the people involved that the film was breaching the terms and conditions and I was led to believe that the entry was valid.

Further to this, Nokia became aware that my entry was based on another video three days prior to sending me on the trip to Cannes, but they still sent me on the trip and refused to act until the public outcry.

My name has been tarnished by this event. I have been branded a cheater amongst many other things too awful to write and I have yet to be informed of how Nokia aim to rectify this. I aspire to pursue a career in the creative media industry and this libel is a great hindrance to my progress to achieving the career I want. My efforts to expose the truth have been greatly subdued by Nokia and the rule of law seems not to apply to large powerful corporations in certain instances.

In conclusion, I would like to reiterate that basing my video on Mr Tribble’s creative work was done in ignorance. I was not aware that I was breaking any rules and the Nokia representative never informed me that I was doing so. I previously had no interest in submitting an entry but I was misled into thinking that I was merely helping the Nokia representative, he has since personally apologised to me for the way I have been treated.

Nokia has allowed my name to be dragged through the mud by shrouding the situation with half truths and even some out right lies in order to save their own reputation.”

If you’re a regular reader of this website you’ll know that when it comes to video contests, there is nothing I find more reprehensible than plagiarism. But this girl gets a pass. I believe what she said in her statement. If it wasn’t for a rep from Nokia egging her on I don’t think she would have copied the original video or even submitted it to the contest. Nokia has even confirmed that one of their employees was involved in the creation of “Forest Chump.”

Having continued to investigate the original minimo Critics Choice Award, it appears that one of our student team assisted in the making of the video, including offering their Nokia handset to shoot the short film and suggesting that the film was okay to submit to the competition. We are obviously very disappointed to discover that this has happened. While we believe that the original winner did not intentionally break the terms and conditions of the competition, the submission remains disqualified.

I have seen this “student team” member also referred to as being a member of a Nokia Street team. So…what exactly do we have here? A case of plagiarism? Yes, of course. But the big question is this; WHY WAS A REPRESENTATIVE OF NOKIA HELPING A FILMMAKER CREATE A SUBMISSION FOR THEIR VIDEO CONTEST? Did Nokia/Mofilm feel like there weren’t enough entries being submitted so they sent out a “street team” of students to encourage their friends to make entries? If these student reps were under pressure to increase the number of entries, is it any wonder that something like this happened?  In fact the plagiarized film, Forest Gump in One Minute in One Take fits the concept of this contest (remake a film in under 2 minutes) so well that it almost seems like it could have been the inspiration for the whole competition!  At the very least, Nokia/Mofilm had to have known about it since it seems they may have sent it to their street team members as an example of what their ideal entry would be like.

I’ve seen some contest sponsors try and pull some shady shit before but secretly helping filmmakers create entries, encouraging and ignoring a hardcore act of plagiarism and then passing all the blame and shame on to a seemingly innocent young filmmaker might just take the cake.

Image from one of Doritos' Crash the Super Bowl winners; Casket

Back in October, I wrote, directed and edited an entry for Doritos’ annual Crash the Superbowl contest entitled, “Rest in Chips.”  My commercial was about a dead guy who’s last wish was to be buried in a casket full of Doritos but to the surprise of everyone at his funeral, it turns out he faked his death and is alive inside the casket of chips that eventually gets knocked over.  Sound familiar?  It might if you watched the Super Bowl last night.  Because during the first quarter of the big game, Doritos aired the three winners of the Crash the Super Bowl contest and the third winning ad they showed just happened to be about a dead guy who’s last wish was to be buried in a casket full of Doritos but to the surprise of everyone at his funeral, it turns out he faked his death and is alive inside the casket of chips that eventually gets knocked over!

Unfortunately, it wasn’t MY fake-funeral/Casket-full-of-Doritos-that-gets-knocked-over entry.  It was another entry called “Casket” and it was created by a team of filmmakers from a “non-denominational megachurch” in LA called Mosaic that’s popular with aspiring filmmakers and actors. The church is headed by a well known author, producer and self-professed leader named Erwin Mcmanus and he funded the production of “Casket.”  (you can read about Mosaic and their Crash the Superbowl aspirations here)  Here’s their ad:

I’m sorry to say it but I suspect that the team that made “Casket” may have stolen several of their ideas from me.  How can that be?  Well first, here is the entry that I created for the Crash the Super Bowl contest, “Rest in Chips:”

Sure, they’re not on the same level technically, but there are so many similarities between the stories of “Casket” and “Rest in Chips” that I’ve had a hard time accepting that they’re just coincidences.  If you ignore the aesthetic differences between the two entries (camera quality, location, music) you’ll see that they share many common key elements.  (The kind of stuff you’d see in the scripts for each spot)  Really, the only significant difference in the two stories is WHY the two “dead” guys each decide to fake their deaths.  Other than that, in just 30 seconds, both ads manage to feature:

1. A dead man’s last wish to be buried in a casket full of Doritos

2. A “dead” man who turns out to actually be alive

3. A fake funeral orchestrated by the “dead” man as part of a nefarious scheme

4. A framed photo of the “dead” guy enjoying a bag of Doritos next to the casket

5. Shots of that guy in his casket buried up to his face in chips

6. Unsuspecting mourners who scream/gasp in surprise when the hoax is revealed

7. A climax in which the “dead” guy gets his comeuppance when the casket of chips is knocked over

That’s a lot for just 30 seconds, isn’t it!?  Well, the coincidences don’t stop there.  As it turns out, all of those elements can also be found in this crude animated storyboard that I made weeks before I went out and shot my entry:

Yeah…see where I’m going with this?  I created that storyboard as a test to see if I could fit all the dialogue and action into 30 seconds.  Then I posted it to youtube so that I could send the link to friends so they could give feedback on the idea.  The above version was posted to youtube on October 12^th, 2009.  But that is actually the second version.  I posted the first version of the storyboard video on October 6^th and named it “Doritos Storyboard.”  After about a week, a friend actually said to me, “aren’t you worried that another contestant could see that and steal your idea?”  I realized he was right and that I had made a dumb mistake.  Because the video was named “Doritos Storyboard,” any prospective Crash the Superbowl contestant who went to youtube to watch last year’s winning entries or other Doritos-related videos for inspiration could have seen my storyboard.  In fact, it would have appeared at the top of the page if the results were “sorted by date.”  So I pulled the original version and replaced it with the generically named “Dortest” version around October 12^th.

The funeral photo used in "Casket"

A week or so after the submission period for the Crash the Superbowl contest closed, I saw “Casket” and I was flabbergasted.  I remembered the storyboard on youtube and immediately suspected that I had been ripped off.  I had to do something about it so I did what any self-respecting dork would do.  I blogged about it. I first compared the two ads in this blog post from November 19^th:  A Tale of Two Caskets (full of Doritos.) Since “Casket” was so slickly produced, I was worried right from the start that it might make it to the finals.  So while Doritos was still evaluating all 4,000+ entries they received, I e-mailed them my concerns on December 9^th.  They responded to my e-mail and said the company’s “legal team” would look into it.

Since the official rules said that Doritos judges were supposed to assign each entry a score, and since 40% of that score was supposed to be based on “originality and creativity,” I assumed that even if there wasn’t plagiarism, I uploaded my casket-full-of-doritos entry to the contest site first, so logically, that would impact “Casket’s” originality score.  And in a competition with 4,000+ submissions, the Top 6 videos would probably be decided by just fractions of a point.  So losing even a few originality points would end an entry’s chances of winning, right?

Boy was I wrong about that one.  On January 5^th, 2010, “Casket” was announced as one of Doritos’ 6 CTSB finalists.  And man, let me tell you, I flipped the F%^& out.  I wasn’t just mad because a team of filmmakers that may have ripped me off had just won $25,000 and a trip to the Super Bowl, though.  In a way, I was much more upset with Doritos.  They knew that somewhere out there a filmmaker suspected that the “Casket” team had plagiarized his entry/storyboard.  There were tons and tons of awesome videos submitted to this year’s competition. Why did they have to pick the one video that they knew would drive some poor guy crazy and maybe even get them into legal trouble!?

The funeral photo used in "Rest in Chips"

A single question has been on my mind since I first saw “Casket” back in November.  “When did they come up with that idea?”  Obviously the entry was a very elaborate production.  Maybe they had spent months working on the thing.  If it turned out that the team came up with the concept for their entry prior to say, the start of October, then there was no chance they could have stolen the concept from me….unless they were mind readers.

I’m not insane and I’m not some jerk who likes ruining other people’s moments of glory.  I absolutely, positively do not want to paint anyone as plagiarists if they’re totally innocent.  I also really do not want to put my life on hold while I engage in a copyright battle with a megachurch and a multinational corporation if I don’t have to.  In the last few weeks I have exchanged many e-mails with FritoLay and the lawyer for the “Casket” team (yes…they already got a lawyer and it seems like he was hired just to deal with this issue.) I have asked them over and over and over and over to PLEASE, send me some kind of documents, materials or other proof that “Casket” was an independent creation that wasn’t wrongfully derived from my works.  My sincere hope has been that someone would want to provide me some kind of evidence that would put me, and my family and friends who support me, at ease.  I would have been happy just to see some copies of some e-mails that showed that their idea pre-dated the creation of my script for “Rest in Chips.”  If they could prove they were innocent, or even just offer a credible explanation, then I could apologize, drop the whole thing and move on with my life.

The beautifully drawn funeral photo from the storyboard video for "Rest in Chips"

But even though the filmmakers behind “Casket” have known for weeks, and probably even months that some crackpot out in the suburbs of Chicago was accusing them of plagiarism they have not done one thing to counter my claims.  I have asked repeatedly for some shred of proof that they weren’t guilty of ripping me off.  But according to their lawyer, they don’t want to give me ammunition in case I sue them.

Let’s cut the BS here.  If there was some A%&hole running around the Internet, endangering my commercial’s chances of airing during the Superbowl and telling Doritos and the rest of the world that I might have stolen some of their ideas, you know what I’d do?  I’d shut that guy down immediately with a big facefull of proof.  I’d e-mail the guy and tell him he was full of s%^&.  I’d write my own blog posts and fill them with proof that my works were independent creations.  For God’s sakes, I’d offer to take a lie detector test if the guy wanted me to!  I would immediately do whatever it took to shut down a false accusation of plagiarism against me.

Now what I wouldn’t do is hire a lawyer if I had nothing to hide and I certainly wouldn’t keep my “proof” hidden from the world.  I think the thing that most makes me believe that I was ripped off is the fact that none of these people have ever contacted me to simply say “You’re wrong, and here’s why….”

The other thing that makes me think I was ripped off are the cold, hard, dirty facts.

Alive in a casket full of Doritos. From "Casket"

Here are my facts:  I wrote my script for “Rest in Chips” around October 1^st.  I created an awesome-looking animated storyboard based on my script and first uploaded it to youtube on October 6^th. That video could have been seen by anyone searching for Doritos-related videos up until about October 12^th.  I shot my entry on October 25^th, I posted my first rough cut to the web on October 28^th and I uploaded my final entry to the Crash the Super Bowl contest site around November 5^th.

Because Doritos and the Mosaic team would not even tell me WHEN the idea for “Casket” was born, I decided to do some digging myself.  And by “digging” I mean I just read the articles that showed up in my google alert notices.  The information below all comes from interview quotes from members of the “Casket” team.  These are my sources (1) (2) (3) (4)  Here’s what I’ve learned in the last few weeks:

1.  The idea for “Casket” was first suggested in a Mosaic pitch meeting that seems to have taken place in early October, probably around October 9^th.

2.  The idea for “Casket” was pitched by one member of the group.  The group decided to shoot the idea and the person who suggested the idea then “wrote the original script.”

3. At least 4 other people are credited as having co-written or contributed to the script for “Casket.”

4. “Casket” was shot in one day on November 1^st and the entry was uploaded just before the deadline on November 9^th.

Alive in a Casket full of Doritos. "Rest in Chips"

As I said, members of the “Casket” team shared all of this information during interviews so unless they all lied to several reporters, the above points are facts.  And these facts line up perfectly with my theory of how I may have been plagiarized.  FritoLay has had a timeline of when I created the various incarnations of my Crash the Superbowl entry since mid-December.  I explained weeks ago that I wrote my script shortly after the Crash the Superbowl contest began and then created an animated storyboard version of my script and uploaded it to youtube on October 6^th.

For roughly a week, the storyboard was on youtube and could be seen by anyone doing a search for videos tagged “Doritos.”  The “Casket” team has gone on record stating that from the day they decided to shoot an entry for this contest to the day they uploaded their video, only a month had gone by.  That means that their pitch meting seems to have happened right at the time my storyboard was visible on youtube.

Alive in a casket full of Doritos. From the video storyboard for "Rest in Chips"

I find it very hard to believe that not one member of a large, well-organized team of professional filmmakers went to youtube before their pitch session to research last year’s winning entries and watch other Doritos related videos.  I have known about the Mosaic pitch meeting for a while and my theory has been that one member of the team prepared for that pitch meeting by doing some Doritos research on youtube beforehand.  While there, they saw my storyboard, realized the idea would work great in one of Mosaic’s churches (I think they have 7 total) and probably figured that the concept was fair game and took it.  Now that I know when that pitch meeting took place, I suspect that my theory accurately describes how things happened.  And since it seems that as many as 5 people contributed to the story of “Casket,” that explains the differences between my works and the final version of the other team’s entry.

The goal of Doritos’ Crash the Superbowl contest was for the winners to score a spot in the “Top 3” on the USA Today ad meter.  If one of the Doritos finalists were to be ranked the best spot of the game, the creators would get a million bucks.  Second best would get the filmmakers $600K and 3^rd would get them $400K.  The ad meter results are in and one Doritos ad actually scored the #2 spot.  But “Casket” wound up being ranked #14.  (click here for the full ad meter results)

I mention this because I want everyone reading this to understand that there is no big jackpot that I am trying to grab a piece of here.  All the makers of “Casket” got was $25,000 and I’m sure that money is already divided up and gone.  So my concerns aren’t part of some crass sue-a-church-and-get-rich-quick scheme.  For me, this is about principle and as I’ve told the lawyers at Doritos many times, my number one goal is simply to find out the truth about what the heck happened here.

Now that the contest is all over, I really don’t know what I should do next.  Should I get a lawyer?  Should I seal myself up in a casket full of Doritos and pretend this never happened?  What the heck is the little guy supposed to do in this country when he suspects that some giant megachurch with deep pockets and lawyers on retainer infringed on his copyrights?

Right now, the only thing I know for sure is that next year, I’m entering Careerbuilder’s Super Bowl commercial contest.

BTW:  I normally post under the pseudonym “Beardy” but here’s info about the real me.  Ironically, I do not actually have a beard.  If anyone (even a member of the “Casket” team) wants to contact me I can be reached at Videocontestnews@gmail.com.

We were correct about one finalist though. “The Casket” was the only of the 6 finalist videos to leak before the official announcement at 12AM Central time today. So the portions of this post that pertain to “The Casket” will remain up.
—————————————————————————————–
Tonight at 11PM Eastern time, voting begins in the 2010 installment of Doritos’ Crash the Superbowl video contest. From the looks of the CTSB website, the 6 finalists won’t be revealed until voting begins. So you’ll have to wait until then to see which entries made the cut. Or you could just continue reading and see three of those six videos right now.

Like I said, the Crash the Superbowl finalists won’t officially be announced until later tonight. But I can say with 95% certainty that these three ads have made the top six. WARNING: Two of these three videos are on this list because they are educated guesses based on very, very strong information. If you actually made any of these videos and you have not heard from Doritos, that means you didn’t make the finals! In that unlikely scenario, I apologize for getting your hopes up. Again, these 3 are 95% for sure.

INCORRECT VIDEO #1 REMOVED

INCORRECT VIDEO #2 REMOVED


“The Casket” by ms. Video #3006



“The Casket” is the only entry I am certain made the final cut because it was mentioned in an article about superbowl commercial sales on usatoday.com today. This….is not good. As some of you frequent readers may know, I was worried “The Casket” might get to the finals because I suspect that the makers of that entry may have plagiarized my own work. Here is MY casket-full-of-doritos entry, video #1983, “Rest in Chips.”


This is my video and NOT a finalist:



Both videos feature a dead man’s last wish to be buried in a casket full of Doritos, a funeral for that guy that turns out to be fake, a big, framed photo of the “dead” guy enjoying a bag of Doritos next to the casket, shots of that guy in his casket buried up to his face in chips and a climax in which the “dead” guy gets his comeuppance when the casket of chips is knocked over. So many of the same key elements appear in both spots that it’s hard to chalk the whole thing up to coincidence.

A month before I shot “Rest in Chips,” I created a (crude) animated storyboard so that I could plan out the timing of the shoot. I uploaded the storyboard to youtube the first week of October so that my actors and crew could get a better idea of what I had in mind. I named it something like “Doritos storyboard.” That means any potential Doritos contestants could have seen it while searching youtube to see last year’s winners. In fact, it would have been one of the top results since it was a recent upload. After maybe a week I realized this and pulled the video. Then I re-uploaded it with a generic name so it would not appear in Doritos-related searches. Here it is. If you watch it on youtube you’ll see that its upload date is October 12th. Play my youtube storyboard and “The Casket” at the same time and they almost seem to line up shot for shot. And for the record, I did some googling and “The Casket” was shot on November 1st. By November 1st I already had rough cuts of my entry posted to my youtube page.





I really never expected to make it to the finals and I’m not upset because I didn’t win. But I am upset that someone who may have plagiarized my work is going to be rewarded for their actions. Because “The Casket” was so slickly produced, I knew it would be a contender for the final six. So several weeks ago I e-mailed Doritos, sent them my links and told them about my suspicions. They told me they would send the information to their legal team. But I never heard from anyone from Doritos again.

Originally, I posted (at length) about my plagiarism worries on November 19th. Since then, my suspicions have only increased. The usatoday.com article mentions the name of the producer of “The Casket” and explains that he works at the church that appears in that video. They even mention the church by name. Based on this new info, I dug through my site logs and it seems very, very likely that the producer of “The Casket” found my post about his entry last week and read it over and over.

So think about that for a second. Imagine you just found out that you made the final 6 in the CTSB contest. Then imagine that you google “Doritos casket” (according to my weblogs, that’s how the person found my post) and see that the number one search result for that phrase was a blog post by another filmmaker suggesting that your entry might have been a rip-off of his idea. What would you do? I know what I’d do. If I didn’t steal the idea, I’d immediately e-mail the blogger or leave a comment and explain my side of the story. But no message ever came.

And now that I know that the producer of “The Casket” works at the church featured in their entry, I think I have a pretty good idea what happened. The producer or the director of the entry went to youtube after the Crash the Superbowl contest was announced and searched for “doritos” so they could see what the 2009 finalist videos looked like. “The Casket” was shot with a very expensive camera called a “RED Camera.” Any filmmaker who watches last year’s finalists would recognize that all but one of them were shot with RED cameras. So the producers of “The Casket” clearly did their homework. And I suspect that while they were doing their homework, they saw my storyboard. The idea in the storyboard seems kind of outrageous and un-film-able….unless you happen to have free and total access to an amazingly beautiful church. My theory is that they saw my storyboard and figured no one would be crazy enough to get a casket and dig a giant hole in the ground. I think they assumed the idea would never be shot so they took it and adapted the idea to fit the location they had at their disposal.

For the record, I have no concrete proof of any unethical behavior and if my theories are proven to be incorrect I will wipe all mention of them from this site and apologize to everyone involved. But the circumstantial evidence is pretty strong I think. I have a reputation of my own to think about and I’d never share these ideas in public if my gut didn’t tell me I was on to something.

I really have no idea what I’m going to do about all this but to quote The Dude; “This aggression will not stand, man.” If anybody has any suggestions about how I should proceed I’d love to hear ‘em.

Caution: Ding Dong talk ahead

I really enjoy entering video contests. Each contest I enter is a new creative challenge that requires a different solution. Thanks to the contests I’ve entered I’ve become a much sharper filmmaker so it’s a great way to improve your skills. And of course, I also really like winning and getting big checks in the mail for my work.

But there’s a lot about video contests that frustrate me.  Contest organizers sometimes don’t play by their own rules and sometimes contestants just flat out cheat in an effort to win. And that’s why I started this blog. My hope is that if someone shines a little light on the negative aspects of video contests, people will be forced to do better and play fair.

I think the thing that bothers me most about video contests is the lack of civility and good sportsmanship. Greed, jealousy and desperation can make people go a little crazy.  Throw in the anonymity that the internet provides and you’ve got a recipe for sabotage and trash talk.  For example, in a score-based competition, how many times have you seen your star rating drop mysteriously in a very short amount of time? How many times have you gotten ugly, anonymous comments about one of your videos? Do other contestants really think that the judges will see that youtube user “rudeboy742” thinks your entry “sucks goat ass” and then think to themselves, “yeah! This video does suck goat ass!?”

A few days ago I wrote about suspicious voting activity in the Butterfinger contest. The next day, someone going by the name “Douche Pumper” (yes, that’s what he called himself) left a very angry, very depressing comment on that blog post. Here it is:

Wow. Talk about someone who is bitter about being fat and having a small ding-dong. You think anyone really wants to listen to some fat, red-bearded turd ramble on about how disgruntled he is over video contests? They don’t. Loser.

Get a life and get a job, you lazy f—. And, better yet, why don’t you make your own videos and actually compete in these contests. Then someone might actually care about what you have to say. Until then, have fun watching your website float off into the ether of Internet sites never visited.

It’s always the fat guys with little ding-dongs who start sites like this. Like Harry Knowles.

Anonymous Coward. <—That means you. Not my signature.

It’s obvious what has happened here, right?  One of the contestants in the Butterfinger contest saw that I was questioning the suspicious voting activity and are pissed that I suggested that they may have been doing something less than ethical to win that contest.

Except….that’s not what happened. Though the comment was left anonymously it was pretty easy to figure out where it came from.  I added a fancy piece of code to this wordpress blog that tells me where visitors are from and how they got here.  I checked the program logs and saw that the comment came from a visitor from Dallas, TX who arrived at the site via a google search for the name “Justin Spence.”

A few weeks ago I did a blog post about a Dallas filmmaker named Justin Spence who I believe flagrantly plagiarized the work of frequent video contest winner, Jared Cicon. Mr. Spence seemed to copy Jared’s 2008 winning Taxlsayer.com video for a contest held by ForRent.com. I feel that he not only plagiarized the concept he even copied the tone and pacing and locations of Jared’s video. I wouldn’t have even mentioned it on the site except that Mr. Spence’s apparent rip-off actually won first place and 10 grand from ForRent.com. Jared graciously said he didn’t mind the plagiarism but Spence never bothered to get his OK until other people called him out on his theft.  All around it was just a very uncool thing to do.  To read the blog post that got Mr. Spence so angry, click here. And just so you can see I’m not crazy, here is Jared’s original Taxslayer ad:
 

 
And here’s is Justin Spence’s winng ForRent.com ad:
 

 
So anyway, it looks like Mr. Spence found the post about him while googling himself. He got angry and needed to unleash his venom (he also unleashed in a rather ugly way on the people on the ForRent site who also accused him of plagiarism.) But if Mr. Spence left a comment on my post about him then everyone would realize it was he who was obsessed with the size of my “ding-dong.” So he left the comment on the Butterfinger post to make it look like someone from that contest was the anonymous jerk. And that’s the part that really bothers me. Not only did he say a bunch of ugly (and wildly incorrect BTW) stuff, he also tried to frame one of the butterfinger finalists.

If Mr. Spence thought that what I said about his ForRent.com winning video was incorrect or unfair, he could have just e-mailed me and said so. I would have even been happy to post some kind of rebuttal from him or maybe even take down the original post. But instead, her spewed out a bunch of weird bile.  Just for fun, I’ll address some of Justin’s points:

“Wow. Talk about someone who is bitter about being fat and having a small ding-dong. You think anyone really wants to listen to some fat, red-bearded turd ramble on about how disgruntled he is over video contests? They don’t. Loser.”

Not actually a photo.

Do you see what’s going on in this guy’s head? He doesn’t seem to realize that the mascot of this website isn’t an actual photo of me. I don’t look anything like that guy. I just thought it was a funny piece of clip art so I picked “beardy” as The Video Contest News’ mascot. The thing that really speaks volume’s about this person’s maturity level is his obsession with “ding dong” size. Why is Justin Spence so hung up on penis size? I’m no psychiatrist but I’ve seen enough episodes of Frasier to make an educated guess.  Also, I am not disgruntled.  I am totally gruntled with video contests!  I don’t want to give an exact number but I have won A LOT of money thanks to video contests in the last two years.  Also, Beardy’s beard is really more brown than red, isn’t it?

“And, better yet, why don’t you make your own videos and actually compete in these contests. Then someone might actually care about what you have to say..”

Why would someone be into video contests enough to start a blog devoted to them and yet never shoot entries themselves? For the record, I shoot maybe 3 contest entries a month and as I said, I do win….a lot.

It’s always the fat guys with little ding-dongs who start sites like this. Like Harry Knowles.

How does Mr. Spence know how big Harry Knowles’ penis is?  I don’t know and I don’t want to know.  Wait a second, they are both from Texas.  Maybe…um, never mind.

At the end of Mr. Spence comment he slams me for writing this blog anonymously….and then signs off anonymously with the name “Douche Pumper.”  (Why would he call himself Douche Pumper??)

Ok….so, I understand that the irony here is getting pretty deep.  I write a blog under a pseudonym where I call out cheaters, bad sports and crappy contests and Justin criticizes me for doing that and then tries to make it look like some innocent contestant from the Butterfinger contest did it.

This is a good time for me to explain why I do things the way I do here on VCN.  I’m very, very proud of my video work and it’s been very tempting to post about my latest wins here. This site could also be a great tool for building a personal fan base and for getting votes for videos when I need them.  But I’ve decided that I should keep my work out of this blog, at least for now. The reason? I am worried about retribution from people like Justin Spence. Like I said, I want to see video contests cleaned up and so I’m going to be bringing attention to people who are making video contests less fun for the rest of us. Now imagine if my name and a list of my work was available on this site. Many video contests are basically popularity contests. If a guy like Mr. Spence is so bitter and angry that he has to make fun of a cartoon mascot’s beard and penis size then it’s not a giant leap to assume that he might also try and sabotage a stranger’s contest entries in retribution for them pointing out his inappropriate actions.  Long story short, if you act like a jerk I am going to call you out on it. But I refuse to give bad people the tools to wreck my chances in whatever contests I’m currently in.

Video contests are awesome but guys like Mr. Spence make them less awesome.  These are the guys that aren’t just satisfied with getting their friends to vote for their entries, they also have to get their friends to give bad scores to their competition.  These are the guys that create fake youtube accounts so they can make it look like “the people” all agree that your work sucks.  These are the guys start fights in the comments sections of a contest’s website.  These are the guys that make us all look bad and these are the guys that convince companies that video contests are just not worth all the hassle.  Guys like Mr. Spence are the ones that want to wreck a good thing.  But you don’t need to let these angry people get away with it.  If someone is harassing you in a contest, let us know and we’ll try and give them some of the attention they obviously crave so badly.

Starting this blog has inspired me to dig up the results for contests that I thought about entering once upon a time but then forgot about. One big one I remember was ForRent.com’s “Ready2Move” video contest. The prize for first place was $10,000 and the idea was to show someone who was, you know…ready to move. Today I looked up that contest and I was freaking flabbergasted by their choice of winner! Here’s the winning video:

Grand Prize Winner. Prize: $10,000:

So do you get why I’m shocked? To me it looks like FORRENT.COM’S FIRST PLACE WINNING VIDEO IS A CLEAR AND COMPLETE RIP-OFF OF THIS VIDEO BY FREQUENT CONTEST WINNER JARED CICON:

That video right there won Jared $25,000 in the 2008 Taxslayer.com video contest and aired on national television! I suspect that the ForRent.com winner, Justin Spence of Dallas, TX didn’t just steal the idea from Jared….it looks like he even copied the Taxslayer video’s pacing, tone, locations and style! I’m going to have to break out some 25 cent words here….this looks like one of the most egregious act of plagiarism I think I’ve ever seen. The first half of this ad looks like a shot for shot remake of the taxslayer entry.  If you were to read the two scripts for these two videos they would be nearly identical.

It’s one thing to rip off the style of a Nike commercial or something but to straight up steal the idea and style of a fellow struggling, independent filmmaker? That’s just as low as you can go. What really blows my mind is that this video won even though the other contestants called this Justin Spence guy out on his possible theft. Check out some of the comments left under this video. Not only does the guy who made this video try and defend himself he viciously attacks those who accuse him of ripping off the Taxslayer guy’s video:

Rocky Collins:
Are you kidding? You plagiarized the 2008 Taxslayer.com winner!? This is for your safety that I’m telling you,you might get sued. But cool vid anyway, but it’s not really yours :-p

Justin Spence:
Come on, Rocky. Don’t be bitter just because your video for this contest completely sucks. I’ve seen your other work on Vimeo, and it’s far better than this cave man trash that you plagiarized from so many other thoughtless contestants before you who threw together something at the very last minute due to time and not being able come up with anything more than the way over done grainy silent film look. I mean, really, do you know how many times that dumb concept has been overdone for video contests? You all should be sued for not coming up with something a tad more original. But, I digress. Obviously, you’ve never seen the movie Swingers where the guys point out how filmmakers “steal” film ideas from each other all the time in their movies. Steven Spielberg from David Lean. John Singleton from Spike Lee. Countless filmmakers from Martin Scorsese. If no filmmaker ever borrowed an idea from another, then we’d all be out of business. Take your silent cave man video for this contest, for example. But, I’ll tell you what. I’m going to email this video to Jared, the winner of the 2008 Taxslayer.com video contest. If he thinks I have blatantly stole from him, I will eat my words, take this video down immediately and apologize to everyone – including you. However, if he is flattered for using his winning concept and formula for another commercial, I’m going to challenge you to muster up an apology and consider taking your silent video down. Good luck in the future, Rocky!

Lynkoya Marcell:
Well i like this video but it reminds me of a commercial…

Justin Spence
I’d like to apologize for my brash comments to Rocky. We put a lot of work into writing, shooting and editing these projects, and to be torn down by each other is not very conducive to a productive environment for us or the companies who provide these opportunities. I wish I could delete the comments and start over; however, the system doesn’t allow this. So, I will offer my sincere apology to Rocky and the other contestants and supporters of this competition. Good luck and God bless.

Thomas Scott
It’s funny how often the people who always talk about God are the same people who lie and cheat..

Matthew Brown:
What does it feel like to win when your video layout was stolen from another writer?

rob kennedy
Hmm, this looks/sounds exactly like the guys who won the 2008 Taxslayer video. I guess the idea was decent, so you “borrowed” it.

Jack Farnsworth
CHEATER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Paul Jones
God knows what Justin did and will judge him accordingly.

Justin Spence
Thank you, ForRent.com, for the great opportunity you provided. I’m thrilled the video will help your advertising efforts, and honored with the award among some great competing videos.

Despite all those comments, For Rent still gave that guy the top prize. What is really, really, really weird about this is that the video isn’t very good!  There were a few, clearly better entries and as other commenters point out, this one doesn’t even show a wacky reason for someone to move and that was the entire point of the contest. If it hadn’t been for “Justin Spence” ripping on other videos in the comment section I’d assume that he was a ringer hired by ForRent.com. A ringer would have done a better job concealing both his (alleged) plagiarism and his temper though.

In the comments section, Justin goes on to post a letter from the Taxslayer winner, Jared Cicon.  In it, Jared says he’s cool with his work being the inspiration for this video.  You can read that and the other comments here.  Does it make it OK if the person being plagiarized doesn’t mind that he was ripped off?  No….because it still unfair to all the other contestants who worked hard and came up with their own ideas.  Actually, maybe the lion’s share of the guilt belongs to ForRent.com.  After all, they decided to purchase and disseminate a commercial that looks like a rip off of a well known taxlsayer commercial…and that was a very dumb move on their part. (No pun intended.)

UPDATE:  Justin Spence explained his side of the story on his website.  Here’s exactly what he had to say about this:

Jared won a $25,000 video contest for Taxlayer.com with this video. I really liked how he used a Wes Anderson deadpan camera angle style on himself as the actor while talking to a buddy on the phone about the benefits of Taxslayer. I thought this was a brilliant tactic that I could use to try to win the ForRent video contest for $10,000.

As you can see in my ForRent video entry and Jared’s Taxslayer video from the links above, yes, there are some exact similarites to how I initially set myself up as the actor on the phone talking to his buddy at an upscale apartment complex. But, that is where the similarities end. The whole point of my video is to sell the user on the luxurious apartment complex that he is missing out on by not using ForRent.

During the contest, another contestant made a derogatory remark in the comments of my submission about how I plagiarized Jared Cicon’s Taxslayer video. At first, this made me really angry after growing up and seeing many filmmakers take shots that they loved from filmmakers like Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese et al. and use them in their own movies. There’s a famous quote in the movie Swingers, where one of the actors jokingly says, “What? Everyone steals from everyone. Every movie is derivative.” – as the camera slowly pans around them in an exact Quintin Tarrintino style pan around from Reservoir Dogs. So, I left that contestant a derogatory comment about how his video sucked and how he was just jealous.

The bottom line is that Spence saw some good ideas, shots and performances and copied them without crediting the source until after he was busted.  And that sounds like pretty much a textbook explanation of what “plagiarism” is.  However, Spence has sent me countless, obscene, angry and crude e-mails and comments since I first wrote this post and he continues to claim that what he did was not “plagiarism.”  But it seems like he simply does not actually understand the term.  When Swingers copied that shot from Reservoir Dogs, the copying was the point.  That joke only worked if the audience understood that the slow panning shot originally came from another film.  Justin however was not making an homage to that taxslayer video and he admits that he got upset when another contestant realized where he got his ideas.  Plagiarists take other people ideas, pass them off as their own and then hope no one realizes what they did.  And to me, that’s what it looks like this particular filmmaker did.

To read more about this story, click here:  Justin Spence teaches me about the Ugly Side of Video Contests.