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Happy 2012 from VCN!

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Happy New Year’s Eve, Eve everybody!  Man, is it just me or was 2011 totally f-ing banana cakes?  The world might have gone crazy in 2011 but for me personally this was a pretty good year.  I won an assload of video contests!  In fact, probably 90% of my income this year came from winning video contests and from running this site.  I didn’t make a fortune or anything but did pretty ok!

And VideoContestNews.com did pretty damn ok this year too.  I am constantly amazed at how many people actually visit this goofy blog every day.  In November we set a record for most unique visitors in one month:  13,901.  And if at least 383 more people visit VCN in the next 34 hours, we’ll have a new monthly attendance record.  New Year’s Day Update: We did it! Decemeber was VCN’s busiest month ever with 14,072 unique visitors.

A lot of that traffic is coming from people who are looking for info about the Crash the Super Bowl contest.  If that sounds like you, I hope you’ll bookmark us or subscribe to our RSS feed and keep visiting us throughout the year.  But if all you care about is Doritos-related news, we’ll have a whole lot of that for you in the next two months.  Last week we announced our picks for the 25 entries that have the best shot of making the finals of the Crash the Super Bowl contest.  But on Tuesday, January 2nd were going to announce our predictions for which 5 submissions will actually made the finals.  Then after Fritolay officially announces the finalists on Thursday morning we’ll be posting reviews of all the winning commercials.  TAKE NOTE:  If anyone reading this actually makes the Crash the Super Bowl finals this year, let us know as soon as you can and if we like you’re entry we might just endorse it and promote it here on the blog during the month-long voting process.

I’ll end the year with a few Thank-Yous.  First, thanks to all of you for checking out the site.  And an even bigger thanks to those of you who leave comments or send me tips via e-mail.  Oh…and an even bigger, BIGGER thank you to those of you who have been voting for my dumbass contest entries this year!  I know i asked for a lot of votes in 2011 but be aware that if you ever need some votes yourself you should feel free to e-mail me.  And because I can’t help myself, I’m going to squeeze in one more vote request.  Right now I’m in a big contest being run by a company named Randstad.  I’m only a few votes away from being in first place in my category.  It only takes one click to vote and the deadline is Sunday at midnight.  So head here if you’d like to help me out with a vote!

Finally, I’d like to thank all the contest-hosting sites that ran ads on VCN this year.  That list includes Poptent, Mofilm, Zooppa, Highly Humorous and Tongal.  All of those sites are running tons and tons of big-money contests right now so I suggest you check them out and start planning your first contest entry of the new year.

Good Luck in 2012 everybody and I will see you in the future!

 

---- Posted by Beardy. Follow us on Twitter @ ----

 

Low Budget Lighting Part Three: Putting it all together

Beardy’s Note: Here now is Part III of Cinematographer Jeremy Applebaum’s Three Part Low Budget Lighting guide.  In case you missed the first two installments you can read them here:  (Part I) (Part 2)  Big thanks to Jeremy for creating this very handy guide.  Remember, if you have an idea for a Guest Post of your own, be sure to send me an e-mail at .  And now, on to Part III…..

First here are the answers to the questions from Part II:

1: 4.16 (dived by volts = 120) or 5 (dived by volts = 100).  2: 2.  3: Yes.  4: No, Around 3.74, largely depending on how you round (dived by volts = 120) or 7 (dived by volts = 100).

In the first part of this series we went over what gear you should invest in for low budget lighting and in the second part we went over some basic electrical safety. This time I’ll explain how to put everything together to light a simple scene.

It should be noted that while stingers, multi taps, and surge protecters would be used in order to power our a lights, a lighting diagram as well as amperage calculations (per circuit) wonʼt be presented here. You should always take note of your amperage draw and be calculating your total draw on the circuit before plugging anything in. With that in mind lets get to work!

Let’s say that we are shooting a commercial for a contest and our script involves two actors; one sitting in a kitchen and the other standing in front on him.  It is to be assumed that our kit contains*:

– 2 Work lights, 1 500 watt fixture, one 1,000 watt fixture (a stand with 2 500 watt fixtures)
– 1 China Ball
– 4 clamp lights
– 5 Pony Clamps
– Clothes Pins
– Tin Foil
– 2 Sheets of each white and black foam board
– Gloves
– Various Bulbs
– Various Stingers, Multi Taps and Surge protecters

A rough diagram of our scene would look something like this:

Note: For these examples the exact wattage of the lamps doesnʼt matter

So were do we begin? The first light that we will need for a our scene is a key light. This is probably the most important light you can place as it determines were all the other sources will come from. What I would do here is take my 1,000 watt work light, place in right hand corner and bounce it off some white foam board (or tinfoil, depending on your tastes) onto the subjects. This would give me a large, soft, directional lighting source that I can then build off for the rest of scene.

While it should be assumed stingers/multi taps would be needed to power our lights, the exact amount needed/used isnʼt important

The next thing I would do is to start adding some fill light. I would proceed by taking my paper lantern and hanging it overheard. This would give me a more even, all around, soft light while not canceling out the effect of the key. It would also help light the background.

I made these images using Google SketchUp and its 3D warehouse. Special thanks goes out to who ever created the templates that I used in creating these diagrams.

So now that we have a strong key light, and a multipurpose fill light it is time to start adding some highlights and more focused fill lights.  While the paper lantern provides overall fill, we will still have a little too much contrast between the key light and the non key light sides.  To remedy this I would then take two clamp lights, and place one at each the opposite side key of our talent.

A china ball is hard to make in that program!

At this point our scene should look good enough that we could go ahead and shoot the commercial. However there a few more things you could do to make our actor or some of the props stand out. One would be to take your clamp lights and use them to highlight certain objects in your scene. You would do this if there was something in your scene you wanted to call special attention to (like the product or something important to the story).

The other thing that you can do would be to place backlights on the talent. The backlights would provide a nice shine to the back of your actors heads and makes them pop out a bit. Be careful though, if your backlight is too bright it can make your whole scene look cheesy.

Yep, that's a lot of clamp lights

Remember that this is just a sample lighting diagram and won’t work for all angels or shots. You may very well have to tweak or move lights out of the way for a different angel. Furthermore this example, while very broad and general may not work for all circumstances and is just to give an idea how these lights can be used.  When on your own shoots you may very well find that you like the look of the scene with only the paper lantern and clamp lights or you may not like the look the paper lantern gives at all! The best way to learn is to go out there and shoot something. Donʼt be afraid to experiment and mess up, itʼs the best way to learn.

If you liked this article, have any questions, or think I missed anything please speak up below.

* This is not to be considered an end all be all kit, just a basic kit with several options to light your scene with.

**You may want to use parchment paper attached with c-47s to soften the lights or a dimmer to control the brightness of the lights. If you do choose to use parchment paper please allow the lamp some room to breath.  You should not allow the parchment paper to directly touch the lamp. CFL (compact fluorescent lamps) lamps wonʼt dim.


—     Guest Post by Jeremy Applebaum. Check out Jeremy’s “Virtual AD” app    —

 

Interview with Max Traylor of HighlyHumourous.com

This week I’m happy to welcome a new sponsor to VCN, the video contest site HighlyHumorous.com.  Since Highly Humorous is brand new and since they are kind of different than the other video contest sites you might be familiar with, I thought it would be nice to talk to one of the site’s founders, Max Traylor and get the scoop on what’s going on over at HH.

VCN:  So what inspired the creation of Highly Humorous?

MAX:  Well, the five of us (Max Traylor, Adam Hauff, Greg D’Aleo, Jordan Berger, and Tom Blakeley) were about to graduate from business school last year and we knew we wanted to start a business where we could have fun. We saw the success of large video contests like Crash the Superbowl and we knew that video contest websites were getting pretty popular. We also loved watching funny videos on comedy sites like College Humor and Break.com so we started to develop this idea of a video contest comedy website hybrid. It turned out to be a pretty good idea so we ran with it.

VCN:  What do you think sets HH apart from other video contest sites?

MAX:  HighlyHumorous was designed specifically for comedy teams and organized groups of creative filmmakers. Just like Facebook brand pages, a highlyhumorous video channel is an opportunity to showcase what a comedy team can do as a brand. There are thousands of comedy teams out there, each with their own style and tight knit following. HighlyHumorous is a platform where these creative teams and their followings can compete against one another. One of the really unique things about HighlyHumorous is that there is much larger scale competition among the teams than simply one video contest.  We have a leader board, which takes into account the total points that each team has earned from all the competitions that they have participated in.  This allows the teams to compete on a more macro level than any other video contest website.

Sponsoring a contest for a brand means that they are tapping into the energy and organization of these teams AND the communities they are a part of, instead of reaching out to individual filmmakers with a smaller social footprint. Keeping a steady flow of contests also benefits the comedy teams. They have a chance to win cash for their videos, and they build a diverse portfolio for brand advertisements in the process. In a business sense, HH plays cupid for business to business relationships between brands who are in need of creative assets, and brands who specialize in creating engaging material for their fans.

We also try to make the platform more entertaining for viewers by allowing comedy groups to populate their video channels with material not related to our contests. Comedy teams can show off their funniest videos, announce their own live shows, plug their own social networks and websites, and collaborate with others who have the same love for comedy.  Teams also have a wall on their profile where users and other teams can interact with the team and leave comments.  We really wanted to make HighlyHumorous more social and engaging than the other video contest websites that we had seen.

VCN:  How can someone win prizes on HH?

MAX:  There are two ways you can win a prize in a contest. First, you can win the popular vote. When you submit a video to a contest any registered HH user can award that video between one and five stars. The amount of stars or (points) the videos collect determine the popular vote winners. Secondly there is an additional cash prize awarded by a team of judges. Sometimes this panel of judges will include the HighlyHumorous staff, also known as the “High Council”, but it may also include representatives of a sponsoring brand.

VCN:  Some video contest filmmakers are wary of contests that require voting because of cheaters.  What steps have been taken to prevent cheating?

MAX:  Preventing cheating is next to impossible. Anyone can write a silly program that will shoot their video to the top of the voting charts. One of the measures we have taken to keep the game fair is to recognize when a video is collecting illegitimate votes. As soon as a video is submitted to a contest we watch it like a hawk. We know who shares the entry, when they share it, and what networks it goes to. We can then track how many people are interacting with that video and how many are coming back to vote on it. Additionally, we require voters to be registered users on HighlyHumorous.com. We look very closely at the winning entries, who voted for them, and when. We know when someone is collecting illegitimate votes from users that do not exist, and we disqualify them.  Additionally, each registered user of HighlyHumorous can only cast one vote per video and no vote can negatively affect the video’s score.

VCN:  What kind of contests do you expect HH will run in the future?

MAX:  Many of our future contests will feature sponsoring brands that are eager to see what kind of ideas and commercials our creative community can put together. In addition to these sponsored contests we are planning smaller side contests which give our community a little more creative freedom, like parody contests. We will always have something going on to engage our content creators and to provide our viewers with a constant stream of unique videos.

 

---- Posted by Beardy. Follow us on Twitter @ ----

 

There’s Always at Least One Rap Video

Guest Post by Manny Arciga, Community Manager of the video contest site, Zooppa.com.

In my short time as a community manager for a video contest site I’ve learned this blaring truth rules most if not all video contests. I’ve thought of the possible reasons why. Could it be the wide acceptance of this previously niche genre of music? Could it be that it is the easy way to skirt music copyright issues if you make what’s essentially your own music video? Could it be that they are a rollicking good time to make and watch?

The answer is all of the above.

The following 3 rap videos have won awards in Zooppa contests. Each take rap and place it in incredibly un-gangsta situation like purchasing plane tickets. I’m reminded of “Office Space” when I watch “I’m IT.” The funniest scene in that movie was the destruction of the printer with a musical backdrop from Geto Boys.

Submitted to MegaPath’s I’m IT contest.  Prize won:  $2,000: 

Submitted to Hormel Compleats contest.  Prize Won:  $2,000:

Submitted to:  Orbitz Contest.  Prize Won:  $1,500:

Submitted to Silk: Better for You, Better for the Earth. Prize Won: $8,000:



It’s funny that a niche genre becomes most accessible when it becomes a novelty. This is what these videos are: novelty rap. It’s not just for Sir Mix-A-lot anymore.
 

—   Guest Post by Manny Arciga, Community Manager of Zooppa.com   —

 
Beardy’s Note: So that was our first official guest post!  Remember, if you’d like to write a Guest Post for VCN, just e-mail me at and let me know your brilliant idea.

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