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Posts Tagged ‘winner’

Ringo announces the winner of his video contest

It seems like a lot of bands are running music video contests these days and I always stay far away from them.  Producing 3 or 4 minutes of interesting video content is pretty damn hard.  And for some weird reason, the prizes are usually pretty small.  Ringo Starr just ran a music video contest for his new song “Wings” and even though Ringo has got to be like a mega-super-millionaire the grand prize was only $3,000.  I happen to think Ringo is awesome and I doubt he had much to do with the contest.  But these small prizes just guarantee that there won’t be too many great entries.  Of course, the winner does get a credit as the director of Ringo’s official music video.  And that’s pretty sweet.  But that credit kind of seems less impressive if you know the video was made for a contest.

Anyways, like I said, Ringo is cool.  And the video he made to announce the winner of his contest is pretty funny.  You can tell that someone probably just pulled him into his backyard to shoot this.  Then even though a incredibly loud plane flies right overhead, Ringo kept going.  So one take was all that Ringo had time for.  But he does say something pretty perfect at the end that saves the whole video:
 

 
And now here’s the music video that won the contest.  As you’ll hear/see, this was a really hard song to make a video for since there were long breaks where there weren’t any lyrics:
 

 
You can read the details of the contest or see more entries right here.  Peace and love, peace and love, peace and love.
 

Via IndyMogul: How to find and win video contests

If I were a much lazier blogger, about 50% of my posts would just be embeds of How-To videos created by IndyMogul.  If you haven’t checked out their youtube channel before you should stop reading this and click here to subscribe right now.  If you poke around their page you’ll find about a hundred gazillion handy tips for low budget filmmakers.  But this week’s episode is especially relevant to the interests of video contest filmmakers since it’s about finding and winning video contests!
 

 
If you’re a hardcore video contester (I’m hoping that phrase will catch on) then this video won’t really tell you anything you don’t already know.  But if you’re new to the game, this video will give you a crash course on the basics.  Actually, the episode starts with some cool info about the new wave of prosumer cameras that were unveiled at the NAB show in Las Vegas last week.  So even if you’re a video contest super-genius you might want to check it out.
 

BMW’s “0 to Desire in 5.9 seconds” winner

BMW’s “0 to Desire in 5.9 Seconds” contest was a really, really, REALLY tough one to win.  Contestants had 6 seconds (It takes a BMW 3 Series 5.9 seconds to reach 60 MPH) to explain why they desired a new 3-Series.  Because it was so easy to enter, the company got about 1,500 submissions!  They picked 30 (pretty damn good) finalists and then the ultimate winner was picked via a lengthy online vote.  Or at least, that’s how the winner was supposed to be determined.  There was some fine print in the rules that said the judges could use the public vote to choose the winner or they could totally ignore the voting and just pick their favorite.  No one will ever know how the winner was actually selected but I’m guessing the judges just went with the one that got the most votes:

Winner.  Prize: A new BMW 3-Series (AVR $38,000):


 
The winning video seemed to contain clips from a professional BMW commercial but I guess the judges were cool with that. It was still pretty funny and well made and for once “the public” actually picked a great winner.  Still, it wasn’t even the best video in the finals.  Here’s my favorite finalist:
 

 
Now THAT guy really knows how to make the most of 6 seconds!
 

Chevy to air Mofilm-made commercial across Europe

Whenever a winning video contest entry winds up on TV it’s a big deal.  For the second time this year, Chevy has decided to start airing a commercial that won one of their Mofilm contests.  Last time it was “Happy Grad” which aired during the Super Bowl.  This time it’s the Chevy Volt commercial “Zombie Ride” by Josh Soskin.  The ad won first place, $8,000 and a trip for two to Spain in Mofilm’s Barcelona competition.  It looks like “Zombie Ride” was shot in Southern California but it definitely has a cool, European vibe to it.  The spot is scheduled to start airing as part of a “European-wide” campaign in a few weeks. Over the years I’ve probably seen hundreds of video contest entries that featured zombies but this one actually managed to feel totally unique and fresh.  I can’t embed the video so click the image to check it out:

Like I said, click this image to view

Pretty awesome, no?  Good thing that wasn’t Lori from the Walking Dead driving that Volt otherwise she would have flipped the car after going like 40 feet down the road.  If you don’t get that joke you need to watch a lot more TV.
 

Mayor of Virginia Beach presents key to city to the star of Man’s Best Friend

Over the year’s I’ve reported on a lot of really bizarre Video Contest News.  But this is story is especially weird.  You remember Man’s Best Friend, right?  It was the Crash the Super Bowl ad that featured a hilariously gigantic dog that bribed a guy with a bag of Doritos.  The commercial wound up being ranked the best ad of the Super Bowl by USA Today’s ad meter (the real one, not the bogus online vote one) and so the creator of the spot, Jonathan Friedman, received a million dollar bonus from Fritolay.  Friedman is from Virgina Beach and the town decided to pay tribute to his accomplishment by presenting a key to the city to Huff, the great dane from the ad.  Yes, the dog is the one that got the key to the city.  If that wasn’t strange enough, the mayor’s office actually made a crazy video about the whole thing.  I won’t try describing it.  Just watch it and be happy that there are still people and politicians in this country that aren’t afraid to get weird once in a while.
 

 

eHarmony “Viral Video” contest winner

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.

One Million votes cast in the Street King video contest

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.
 

Ok seriously, Hoverboards ARE Real!!

Last August I did a post about the amazing video that won Tongal’s “Stuck on Duct Tape” contest.  It was entitled “Duct Tron” and it featured some incredible stop motion animation and ridiculously brilliant surprise ending.  Well the director who made that ad, David Brashear just won another Tongal contest and once again is work is extremely worthy of a blog post.  Here’s his first place entry in Tongal’s BodyArmor contest.

BodyArmor’s First Place winner.  Prize:  $7,500:

Pretty damn good, huh??  The thing that I love about that video is that it’s almost certainly based on a 20 year old urban legend.  Back when I was in grade school, I can remember kids talking about the hover boards that appeared in Back to the Future II.  The rumor was that the hoverboards in the movie were real but they were illegal in America because they were too dangerous.  Just a few years ago I learned that this hoverboard myth came directly from the film’s director, Robert Zemeckis.  According to Michael J. Fox, Zemeckis got tired of explaining how the hoverboard special effects were done in BTTFII so he just started saying that Hoverboards were real.  He went so far as to declare in some Back to the Future TV special the hoverboards were a real thing but toy companies couldn’t sell them because parents groups wouldn’t let them.  You can read a whole lot more about this weird story here.  That page includes a video that Zemeckis produced as “proof” that hoverboards existed.  Watch it closely and you’ll see that the director of the Body Armor video probably drew a little inspiration from it.

A dozen (!) other videos won prizes in this contest ranging from $3,000 to $500.  A lot of them are also pretty good so you might want to check them out.  Actually, you might want to just head over to Tongal so you can take a look at some of the contests they’re currently running.  I’m really impressed with how that site has grown in the last year.  They keep announcing one huge contest after another and the prize amounts keep going up and up.  I just checked and it looks like almost all of their current contests offer top prizes of at least $10,000.  So…that’s pretty nice.  http://tongal.com/projects
 

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