2010 October | Video Contest News - Featuring News about Video Contests!

Vote for Beardy, early and often

Posted by Dan L. on October 24th, 2010

We know who the big Godaddy winner is!

Posted by Dan L. on October 19th, 2010

Yesterday I posted the news that Godaddy had postponed the announcement of the winners of their humongous until October 27th. According to the contest site, the winners were originally supposed to be announced “on or around October 18th.”

After the post went up I got a tip from a reader that said that some or all of the winners of the contest had been notified. Now if you just won a giant cash prize in a video contest, what’s the first thing you’d do? Call your mom? Sure, ok. Then what? You’d probably start spreading the good news across the tweet-o-sphere, right? Well I checked twitter and the word about who won is out, big time. So here, one week early is the grand prize winner of the Summer Edition of the Godaddy commercial contest!

Godaddy First Place Winner. Prize: $250,000:

Ok, I can't actually embed the video here on the site. So click this image to watch it.

You’ll have to wait until next week to see the “web only version” I suppose. Now I watched all 215 entries in this contest and “Russel’s Notebook” is probably the video I would have picked as the first place winner too. It looks amazing, it has a ton of production value and the song is even kind of catchy. And tapping into Glee phenomenon was just a stroke of genius. So it’s no surprise at all that this won. But what is surprising is who made this video. It was created by a group called Wayside Creations. Wayside Creations is the team behind the very excellent IndyMogul.com and the web series Back Yard FX! I actually have Indy Mogul listed in our side bar under “Video Contest Resources” because it’s such a great site. Last year, I even won $2,000 in a video contest using muppet-like puppets I learned how to build thanks to an episode of Back Yard FX. So if you’ve never checked out the site, it has a lot of very handy tricks for low-budget filmmakers on there.

Speaking of low-budget, I just checked the Indy Mogul forum and apparently, this entry only cost about $500 to produce. Amazing. But obviously, the filmmakers probably have a ton of resources at their disposal. So today’s lesson is this; if you have good gear and skilled people who know how to use it, you don’t need to spend a ton of money to make a great video.

Update on the big Godaddy contest

Posted by Dan L. on October 19th, 2010

I checked our web stats this morning and I was surprised to see that we got a big spike in traffic yesterday. It only took me a second to realize why; yesterday was October 18th. And “on or around October 18th” was supposed to be day that Godaddy.com announced the winners of their gigantic “summer” commercial contest. But the 18th came and went with no announcement. We don’t have any scoops for you about who won but I just checked the Godaddy website and the contest page has been changed. It now says:

WINNERS ANNOUNCED: On or around October 27, 2010 at GoDaddy.com

So if you entered this contest and figured you’d lost because you hadn’t been contacted yet it seems you’ve still got a shot. The odds are still really stacked against you though! I just did a quick count and it looks like Godaddy recived 215 entries this time around. Sure, last time Godaddy ran a video contest they got over 500 entries but keep in mind, that first contest was only for 30 second commercials. For this one, filmmakers had to create up to 120 seconds worth of content. I’m kind of amazed that so many people would be willing to do so much work for free. 215 two-minute entries equal 860 thirty-second entries!

We’ll post and review all the winning ads as soon as they’re announced so be sure to check back here on (or around) October 27th.

Know your Tropes: ZOMBIES!

Posted by Dan L. on October 14th, 2010

If you’re a filmmaker who wants to come off as someone who knows what they’re talking about, I recommend throwing the word “trope” around every so often. It’s a very handy term but use it sparingly. Over-use it and you’ll just sound like a pretentious jerk talking out of his ass. I found a lot of dry definitions of “trope” online but I like this explanation from tvtropes.org:

Merriam-Webster gives a definition of “trope” as a “figure of speech.” In storytelling, a trope is just that — a conceptual figure of speech, a storytelling shorthand for a concept that the audience will recognize and understand instantly.

Above all, a trope is a convention. It can be a plot trick, a setup, a narrative structure, a character type, a linguistic idiom… you know it when you see it.

You know in a horror movie when a person is in the bathroom looking into the half-open mirror on a medicine cabinet and then they close it and the new angle reveals a ghost-girl or something behind them? That’s a trope. The goatee as a tip-off that a character is evil? That’s a trope too. Alcoholic cowboys with troubled pasts, hookers with hearts of gold, babies that act like grown ups, grannies that rap, dogs that talk; all these clichés are story-telling tropes. The audience understands what they are as soon as they see them, no back-story needed.

Understanding tropes is especially important for video contest filmmakers because video contest entries are usually just 30 to 60 seconds long. There’s little room for depth or rich characters so tropes are sometimes a handy short cut. Using a ubiquitous character-type or idea can work for smaller contests but relying on tropes in big contests will normally land you right in loser-town. When a company like Doritos or Godaddy or Butterfinger goes looking for “user-generated content” they are hoping to find something totally new and off the wall. If they wanted the same old ideas they’d just save themselves the trouble of holding a commercial contest and hire an ad firm.

So tropes, especially character tropes, should be avoided lest your contest entry be seen as amateur, unexciting and unoriginal by the contest judges. Even if your video is exceptionally well made it will suffer because in large contests, more than one filmmaker will probably use the same trope you did. To help you avoid falling into a trope-trap, we’re starting a new feature here at Video Contest News; Know Your Trope! Every so often we’ll dedicate a post to identifying and dissecting tropes that are popular among video contest entrants.

This time we’re going to start right at the top with the trope that I probably see more often than any other; ZOMBIES! Every video contest I see that has more than say, 40 entries will probably wind up with at least one or two zombie-themed submissions. Why? Well there are lots of reasons but I think the biggest are that zombie videos are cheap, easy and even fun to make. It’s also an incredibly obvious idea so you see a lot of new filmmakers and young filmmakers sticking zombies in their entries.

Doritos’ annual Crash the Super Bowl contest is absolutely plagued by zombies; presumably because it’s run during October and contestants have horror movies and haunted houses on the brain. Plus it’s the only time of year where you can walk into walmart and buy fake blood and zombie make up. So it seems like every 10th video in the Crash the Superbowl gallery features a 20 year old guy, covered in blood, acting like a reanimated corpse. (side tip: no video contest sponsor will ever pick a winner where the actors are covered in fake blood. If you must feature zombies don’t make them the bloody, 28 Days Later kind.)

So let’s look at some samples of the Zombie trope in action. A quick search on youtube turned up tons of really not-so-great zombie-themed video contests entries. But let’s start off by looking at two pretty cool ones:

Godaddy contest entry:

Doritos Crash the Super Bowl entry:

Those are the cream of the crop when it comes to zombie entries. But no matter how slick or funny or professional a zombie entry might be, it just won’t feel super-original because the zombie concept is pretty much played out.

Now I could list about 40 more zombie-themed contest entries (and most of them would just be from last year’s Crash the Superbowl contest) but instead I want to hit you with a two-fer. Check out these zombie videos and you’ll see that they don’t just share a common trope, but a common plot! Let’s call this idea the “Hungry Zombie Fake out.” Whenever you see a contest about a food item you’ll probably see an example or two of the Hungry Zombie Fake Out. I wanted to specifically point out this common concept because right now, dozens of filmmakers across the county are probably having a conversation like this in preparation for the Crash the Superbowl contest:

Filmmaker 1: Ok so picture a guy walking down a dark street, eating a bag of Doritos. Suddenly, he sees a horde of hungry zombies so he runs. The zombies chase him down and trap him in a corner…

Filmmaker 2: Oh no! He’ll be killed!

Filmmaker 1: But that’s our twist! The zombie pounce on him but not to eat his brains…what they really wanted was his bag of Doritos!

Filmmaker 2: Awesome! You call everyone we know to be zombies and I’ll go to Party City and buy one of those Gallon jugs of fake blood.

And now, a few examples of the Hungry Zombie Fake Out:

Snickers contest entry:

Hienz Ketchup contest entry:

Doritos (Canada) Viralocity entry:

Home Run Inn contest entry:

Doritos Crash the Super Bowl entry:

Doritos Crash the Super Bowl entry

Doritos Crash the Super Bowl entry:

And if all those entries aren’t enough to convince you not to do your own zombie-themed entry for the Crash the Superbowl contest, maybe this will. It’s an actual Doritos commercial that aired in Mexico that features a Hungry Zombie Fake Out!

Doritos Commercial (Mexico only)

Because the Crash the Superbowl contest receives so many entries using the same tropes, we’re going to try and run this feature a few more times before the contest closes in November. Have you seen a popular idea that you think we should cover? Send your suggestions to .

MSI’s “Month at the Museum” winner

Posted by Dan L. on October 8th, 2010

I live in the south suburbs of Chicago so I’ve been to the Museum of Science and Industry plenty of times over the years. It’s a fine place to spend an afternoon, especially if you like giant train sets. But I don’t know if I could handle spending a whole month there. And that just happens to be the prize in the MSI’s Month at the Museum contest. Well, that and $10,000. The winner of the contest gets to become the museum’s “roommate” for 30 days. Once the winner goes in, they can’t leave. They are given an “apartment” inside the museum but they can also go sleep among the exhibits. I’d probably take up residence in the giant, walk-through heart. Aside from sleeping in fiberglass organs the winner will also help promote the museum and teach science experiments to kids. That’s why, despite all the e-mails and messages I got from friends saying “this is the perfect contest for you!” I didn’t enter this one. It seemed like a sure thing that the winner would wind up being a cute girl with an adorable personality. I mean seriously, think about it…a girl sleeping inside the lunar lander at the museum and teaching kids about magnets seems cute…but there’s just something a bit creepy about a full grown man doing that. Plus if I won, I would just hit on chicks all day long, man. Eventually I’d find one who’s fantasy it was to get in on in the coal mine.

More than 1,500 people submitted videos for this contest. The MSI picked a group of finalists and let voters choose the ultimate winner. Here she is:

Month at the Museum Winner. Prize: $10,000 + a month at the MSI

The way the MSI announced the winner was cool. Here’s a recap from the museum’s website:

In this morning’s live ceremony, the winner of the Month at the Museum search was revealed with scientific flair. Each of the five finalists — Alex, Felix, Johnathan, Kate and Krispijn — was given a laboratory flask and a test tube. Four of the flasks contained water, but the other actually held hydrogen peroxide. In this favorite experiment at MSI, called “Elephant’s Toothpaste,” only the flask of hydrogen peroxide would cause a reaction when, after a countdown, the finalists simultaneously poured test tubes of sodium iodide into their individual flasks. One flask sprouted a bubbly pillar of orange foam.

Sadly, more than 2 dozen onlookers were blinded by science during the ceremony

The winner starts her month at the MSI on October 20th. I wasn’t planning on going to the museum just to gawk at her but I just saw on the museum’s website that they’re currently running an exhibit about the muppets! I might actually have to go to that.

2007, 2009 & 2010 Crash the Super Bowl Finalists

Posted by Dan L. on October 3rd, 2010

Last week marked the official start of the 2011 installment of Doritos/Pepsi Max’s Crash the Super Bowl contest. The deadline isn’t until November 15th but already people have started submitting their entries. I know that in 2008, Doritos received about 2,000 entries for the competition and last year they received more than 4,000 entries. Now that they’ve upped the prize pool to ten, $25,000 prizes it won’t be at all surprising if they receive more than 5,000 entries.

But don’t let that number intimidate you. Because the undeniable truth is that most of those 5,000 entries just aren’t going to be very good. Last year, I checked the CTSB website every day and watched (or started to watched before clicking “next”) at least 2/3rds of the submitted videos. And I’d say that only about 1% of those videos were actually good enough to make it to the finals. I’m not trying to be harsh, just realistic. I don’t even think my own entry was good enough for the finals. (seriously…a guy fakes his death so he can get his last wish to be buried in a ? What was I thinking!?!?)

As I watched last year’s submissions I couldn’t help but wonder, “do the people who made these videos realize what it takes to win? Have they ever even SEEN the videos that have won this contest?” I bet a lot of them haven’t. If they had, they’d realize that the ad they shot in their backyard with a camera phone and their cousin in a ninja costume is not the type of thing Doritos/Pepsi will be looking for. If you plan on entering the contest this year, Step One should be to try and write the kind of script that the sponsors will be looking for. And if you want to know what they will be looking for, you need to watch ALL of the CTSB finalist videos from the past 4 years. (There was no contest in 2008 but Doritos did air a finalist from the 2007 contest during the game.)

Below are every, single video that made it to the finals in the 2007, 2009 and 2010 Crash the Super Bowl contests. So grab a two-liter of Pepsi Max and a big bag of Cool Ranch Doritos and have yourself a little film fest. And after you’re done, sit back and seriously consider this question: “can I create something as good or better than the commercials I just saw?”

2007 CTSB Finalists:

“Winner,” aired during the 2007 Super Bowl:

This finalist also aired during the 2007 Super Bowl:

No CTSB commercial contest for the 2008 Super Bowl but….

2007 CTSB finalist that Doritos chose to air during the 2008 Super Bowl:

2009 CTSB Finalists:

Aired During the Superbowl and won a million bucks for getting #1 on the ad meter:

Also aired during the 2009 Superbowl:

2010 CTSB Finalists:

Aired during the Superbowl and won $600,000 for getting #2 on the ad meter:

Aired during the 2010 Superbowl: