. Video_Contest_980x148_v01 .

Archive for September, 2009

No fair! You used your skills!

yaac_banner._V231157360_

A filmmaker from LA named Angela Kholer won both the $10,000 jury prize and the $10,000 audience award in the “” contest.   On the contest page there’s a little story about how the video was created.  Their concept was to do an Ad for the Amazon Kindle:

“On a plane from Japan to Thailand, we brainstormed ideas and sketched out little stories that our character could fall into following different literary genres. We scribbled out pictures on napkins and made a flip-book, putting the little scenes in different orders. The day of the shoot, we gutted a pillow to make clouds and smoke (a last-minute addition) and did the commercial in one seven-hour take.”

Here’s the video.  I can’t embed it so click on the image to view it:

Pretty f#%&ing amazing right?

In all, the filmmakers shot more than 300 frames for their human stop-motion animation. That was a huge amount of effort and those folks certainly earned their winnings.  However…there seem to be a lot of disgruntled people on the Amazon contest site.  Some of the other contestants are upset about Amazon’s choices for the finalist slots.  People are complaining that the five finalist videos (which you can see ) are too good!!  Ha!  Is that a refreshing change or what!?  Usually other contestants are mad because the winning videos suck.  In this case, contestants are mad because Amazon only selected videos that seemed (to commenters on the contest site) to have been created by professional filmmakers.

I have actually seen these types of complaints before.  Non-pro video contestants feel like they are given false hope by contest organizers.  They assume the contest will be for amateurs only so they shoot a video with their Flip camera and assume they have a shot at winning a big pile of cash.  But then when a slick, HD video is selected as the winner they feel like the “little guys” never really had a shot at winning.

I can sort of understand this line of thought but yo…..$20,000 was up for grabs!  It always amazes me that in every big contest half the entries will be poorly shot, badly lit and have terrible sound.  Why would Amazon want to give thousands of dollars to an amateur-looking video?

Even though so much money was at stake there seems to be a real “anti-budget” mentality in the on the contest site.  Contestants who didn’t have much money to spend feel that people who are already rich enough to own high-end cameras had an unfair advantage.  There’s even one discussion where contestants proudly compare their hyper-low budgets.

Like I said, I get the frustration but “best video wins” is the name of the game.  If you’re new to video contests here is one thing you must lean and accept:  Production Quality DOES matter.  You don’t need a super expensive HD camera and full crew though.  I once won $5,000 in a contest using a $250 camera from Walmart…which I returned after the shoot.

Videos need to be compressed to be posted to the web and that compression really levels the playing field.  As long as you can SEE all the action that is taking place in your video and as long as you can HEAR everything that is going on and as long as the script is good enough that the viewer CARES about what is happening then you will have a shot at winning.  You just need to learn how to make the most out of the gear you have.  Just look at the video that started this discussion.  Did it really take a lot of money or expensive gear to shoot that?  No way.  The only things it took was creativity and ingenuity.  As long as you have plenty of that you’ll be a serious contender in any contest you enter.

NY Film Festival Trailer selected

If you’ve ever been to a film fest you’ve probably seen a short little video bumper promoting the festival that run before the screening starts. They’re always very unique and fun. Well the New York Film Festival needed a promo bumper for this year’s festival so they put out an open call for submissions on poptent. This call was kind of unusual for the site since the fest is non-profit and there would be no cash award. However, the fest did give out a “super” VIP package and the selected festival trailer will be shown throughout the New York Film Festival and will then be shown in theaters year round before other screenings.

That right there is actually a pretty sweet prize. Getting a film into the NY festival would be great for anyone’s filmmography but to have the festival as a client and to have your work screen in theaters and in Lincoln Center(!) would be a really nice resume builder. Here’s the video that was chose by The New York Film Festival:

That’s really slick. I like it. If you want to see something crazy though, check out this video that was one of the finalists:

That video was created by three US Marines while serving in Afghanistan! More details about the guys who made it can be found here. To see more submitted videos, check out Poptent’s blog: http://www.poptent.net/blog/

I heart sandwiches

chefcontest_header_winner2

After my last post I needed to write something more upbeat.  So as a palate cleanser, here’s the winner of Vincent Giordano’s Video Chef contest:

Grand Prize winner.  Prize: $4,000.

Ok, that video is just awesome.  If there’s one thing I love it’s sandwiches and if there are two things I love it’s sandwiches and bears.  That video is great for a lot of reasons but for one it just goes to show that you don’t need a fancy camera or slick editing to win a contest.  Sometimes all you need is a funny idea and a stuffed bear.  So kudos to Evan and Carl.  Nice work.  The canned bear roar coming from the motionless bear is what totally makes this one.

And who says rap videos never win video contests?

It never fails.  In every, single video contest there is almost always one rap entry.  It’s a no brainer.  It’s the easiest way to get a lot of required information out quickly and in a possibly amusing way.  I myself once filmed a rap video for a contest and the entry went on to win $5,000.  But that was way back in 2007 when the concept was still fresh.  Today, the rap video idea is pretty played out.  Even though there is always at least one rap video submitted to every contest, it seems like the rap videos never, ever win.  Oh…until now.

A few weeks back I blogged about the Department of Health and Human services Swine Flu PSA contest.  Apparently the got more than 200 entries and for once, a rap video beat out all the other contenders.  Here’s the winner.

First place.  Prize: $2,500 and a national TV spot.

What cracks me up about this video is that the guy is a real doctor!  Guess Health and Human services thought that’d be a nice hook for a TV spot.  You can read more about the contest and the winner on the ….official white house website??  Holy crap.  That’s a pretty sweet prize  in and of itself.  http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Rapping-Doctor-Wins-H1N1-Video-Contest/

The video contest that can’t get no respect

The ghost of happyjoel

This next contest we heard about thanks to super-video contest winner HappyJoel. In fact, it’s HIS contest. After having some fun doing an imitation of Rodney Dangerfield for Conan’s “Please blow up my car” contest, Joel decided he needed to encourage others to also channel Rodney.

The rules of the contest are amusing so I’ll just post them straight from Joel’s site. After years of being frustrated by the limiting rules of other contests, Joel decided to keep the restrictions on his own pretty loose:

“You must submit a video of your best Rodney Dangerfield impersonation.

ALL THE JOKES MUST BE ORIGINAL! YOU CANNOT USE ANY OF RODNEYS OLD ROUTINE! Just jokes IN THE STYLE of Rodney Dangerfield.

Post YOUR video as a response to MY video by midnight October 4th, 2009. Winner announced Monday, October 5th. Here’s the link for my video:

1st PRIZE: $50 iTunes Gift Card

2nd PRIZE: $25 iTunes Gift Card

3RD Prize: My intern and I will call you and say hi.

Since it’s my own video contest, I’m finally going to run one the way I wish they all were run. The winner is to be determined by me and me alone. There is no time limit minimum or maximum. I am picking based solely on which one I think is the funniest. I don’t care about production value, I don’t care if it was filmed with a webcam, cell phone or HD CRX-500 or whatever the hell it is. NO age limit. Any Nationality. Just make it funny, make it watchable, and make it feel like Rodney.”

So far, only 2 people have entered and one of them is Joel’s personal assistant for hire from India! The assistant’s entry cracks me up but I think it’s ineligible to win. Still, it’s funny so I’ll post it as inspiration.

So there are two itunes cards up for grabs and only one entry so far! This one definitely qualifies as “ripe for the plucking.”  You know what I like best about this contest?  That the winners will be announced the day after the contest closes.  Joel understands that in any video contest, the waiting is the hardest part.

Scariest Story Ever told

scariest_Story

This site has only been up and running for a few weeks and even though I haven’t really done much to promote it we’ve started getting a small but growing stream of visitors. We’ve even heard from a few contest organizers which I think is a good sign.

VCN’s un-written policy is that if a contest organizer asks us to post about their contest, we’ll do it no mater how big or small the contest is. On that note, here’s some info for a contest called The Scariest stories Ever Told. The top prize is $500 plus some prizes and it sounds like a very, very easy contest to enter. All you have to do is sit in front of a camera and tell an original scary story. Scariest story wins!

Jawbone.tv is running a video contest to discover The Scariest Story Ever Told, and we’ve got more than a thousand bucks in cash and prizes to make it happen. Contest opens today (September 22, 2009) and runs through until October 22, 2009.

# 1st place

* $500 Cash.
* $474 prize package

# 2nd place – 5th place

* Prize packages

For all the details, Click right here.

Olivia Munn picks her fan film

oliv1

This was an unusual but very cool video contest. G4′s Attack of the Show host Olivia Munn has been looking for video pitches for Star Wars fan films. She agreed to appear in the final version of her favorite concept and Atom Films would put up a production budget of $5,000. Today Olivia announced her choice; it’s an idea called “Galaxy News.” You can see Olivia announce the winner and the selected video pitch below.

I like the concept. I think it’s a good choice. Yeah it’s not a traditional fan film concept but it’s just right for this type of thing. $5,000 isn’t really a ton of money top make a high quality short film. So with the news show idea they can shoot most of it in front of a green screen in only a day or two. If it’s written and paced well it’ll be joke, joke, joke, joke, joke end. It’ll be able to hit hard and fast and won’t take too much effort or money. So, way to go nerds!* Good thinkin’!

More details and pitches here:

*I use the tern “nerds” with the utmost affection for I too am a Star Wars nerd.




Voter Shenanigans in the Butterfinger contest?

butt3

Imagine this scenario: You’re a finalist in the Butterfinger video contest.  You now have a one in four chance of winning ten thousand dollars. All you have to do to get the money is to get the most votes in the competition. To vote for videos on the butterfinger site, all you have to do is open a yahoo account. Now, imagine that you are just 200 or so votes away from winning the ten grand. How tempted would you be to take a day off work and do nothing but register and vote for your own video all day long?

Voting ended yesterday in the “ video contest and even though the vote counts of all the finalists are right there on the website for the world to see, no winner has been announced yet. The Butterfinger site says they are “tallying” the votes and a winner will be announced on October 1st.

What the heck is there to tally? The winner of the contest was supposed to be determined by a public vote. The votes are in and one video clearly has the most votes. Here’s the final results of the butterfinger contest:

butterfinger5

I have a feeling that by “tallying” Butterfinger really means “checking for vote fraud.” I’ve been checking in on the voting in the last few days and it seemed really suspicious. Why did 2 videos peak at 9210 and 8046 votes while two other videos both made it past 12,000 votes? Is it because they are way more hilarious than the other videos? Not really. All four videos are pretty much equal in quality though I guess my personal choice would be “Robochop.” But according to the votes, the winning video is Butterfinger Phone App by David Markus.

First place. Prize: $10,000



As I said, I kept checking on the voting during the final days. As it got down to the wire, the number of votes coming in really seemed to jump. The top 2 videos were gaining hundreds of votes a day. Was some kind of advertising done to draw more people to the butterfinger site in the last days of the contest? Or maybe the people who made those top 2 videos remembered they had hundreds of friends and family members they hadn’t asked to vote yet?

During the final two days of the contest, the vote counts of the top two videos both were going up so steadily that it did seem like maybe 2 people (or two teams of people) were racing each other to the finish line.  Maybe the reason the bottom two videos didn’t make it past 10,000 votes is because the people who made them saw that something fishy was going on and decided not to even bother after a certain point.  So in the end, the “winner” was whoever had the willpower to crank out the most votes for themselves.  This kind of vote fraud would be easy to prove if yahoo kept tabs of the IP addresses where the votes came from. I guess we’ll find out if they did that if they final scores have been adjusted when the winner is announced on October 1st.


Designed by: Free Cell Phones | Thanks to Highest CD Rates, Domain Registration and Registry Software