Well, Beardy is back from his road trip across the south and apparently, a lot of stuff happened in the video contest world while I was off line. For instance, here’s a story I first read about on the forums at Poptent.net.  Check out the video that won the “critic’s choice” award in the Nokia Mini Mo contest.  It was a contest for students in the UK and was run by Mofilm. The goal of the contest was to shoot a film parody with a mobile device in under 2 minutes. The filmmaker that shot this entry was named Jemma Lyon and she won a trip to Cannes for her ingenious little film.

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.