Winner, 2009 Taxlsayer commercial contest. Prize: $25,000

The other contestants were befuddled because well….that’s a really weird video! It’s funny but obviously it wasn’t something taxslayer could actually put on tv. And that’s why so many of the other contestants were confused. The year before, Taxslayer aired the winning entry as-is. (click here to watch it) So contestants assumed that Taxslayer would be doing that again and many of them sunk a lot of time, money and production values into their submissions.  I actually entered this contest and it was my first video contest loss. (winning was pretty easy back in 2007 and 2008.) In the days after Happyjoel’s video was picked I followed the reaction and let me tell you, people were PISSED. I’ve seen a lot of angry youtube comments in my day but damn, the other contestants flipped the fuck out.

Taxslayer explained that what they liked about Happyjoel’s video was the idea and they weren’t actually going to air the commercial. Instead, they were going to have professionals re-shoot it. I only spent about 80 bucks on my entry but I remember some really slick submissions. (here’s the one I was positive was going to win) If Taxslayer had let everyone know they were looking for “ideas” and not ready-for-tv ads, they would have saved a lot of filmmakers a lot of money.

Fast forward to tax season 2010. Happyjoel’s re-made video has finally hit the airwaves:

I’m glad that happyjoel actually got to play the part he created in his contest entry. But you know what? I think I prefer the original version. The (somewhat) fancy re-make is a bit stiff and the orginal was watchable because of how super weird it was.

Speaking of super weird, Taxslayer apparently decided to re-shoot a second entry from the 2009 contest. Here’s the re-make:

Yeah…that was pretty lame. But the weirdness deepens. Check out the entry that commercial was based on:

The orginal was funnier and more interesting than the remake! Whoever posted the re-shot version to youtube added this note: “Tax Slayer 60 second spot. This commercial was derived from contest creative. The spot was toned down to not look like an abduction, but rather a spoiled brat not wanting to conform.”

I cannot for the life of me figure out why Taxslayer chose that ad to remake or why they turned it into something that was thoroughly not funny.  Whoever wrote that remake forgot the oldest rule in comedy; abduction victims are way more hilarious than spoiled brats.

Warning: Video contains mimes

Whoever shot that thing is really smart. Most of the other entries consist of a people who set their camera up in their bedroom or in their ballet studio and danced in front of it alone. The makers of the winning video went all out and made a super slick music video. I can see why it won but….I don’t know, it seems a little TOO slick if you ask me. This is one of those times when you have to wonder if maybe the sponsor hired a ringer to create a great entry. Except that doesn’t make much sense in this case. Normally I’d suspect a ringer if a company plans on using the wining video in their advertising campaigns. But the ad campaign for Fame is over. The contest itself was part of that campaign and the movie has already kind of been forgotten about. So everything is probably on the up and up. I’m going to guess that a lot of the kids who jumped around in front of their web cams and thought they’d have a chance at winning 50 grand will be upset that a pro-made video went on to be named the winner in this one. Again, the winning video was really well made but picking it sort of goes against the original “film yourself” spirit of the contest, I think.