Last Saturday some friends and I donned are gay apparel (i.e. Santa Suits) and took part in an annual pub crawl/flash mob thing called SantaCon in downtown Chicago.  Most major cities have their own SanataCons and if you’ve never done it before, but enjoy freaking out Christmas shoppers and like having strangers sit on your lap all night, I recommend you try it.  The day after SantaCon I had no voice (thanks to screaming “Merry Christmas” for 5 hours) and I was kind of hung over but I was also bored.  So I was looking through some contest listings when I noticed something called the “Marc Ecko Digital Muse contest” was ending that night at midnight.  I looked at the details and it was one of the most brilliant ideas for a video contest I’ve ever seen.

To enter, you had to print out an image called a “glyph” from the contest site.  Then you turned on you web cam and held the glyph in front of the lens.  The contest site would recognize the image and digitally insert looping video clips of Lindsey Lohan.  From what I can tell, Marc Ecko did a shoot with her specifically for this contest.  There are four sets of Lindsey clips and together they tell a short, bizarre story.  I know it probably sounds strange but trust me, the whole thing is ingenious.  (check this video out for a simple demonstration of the glyph in action)  I think the thing that impresses me the most about this contest is that the people who came up with it really understood the brand.  This techy, arty holographic movie star idea is a perfect fit for Marc Echo.

So anyways, I knew I had to enter. Contestants were supposed to film themselves with the digital Lindsey in some creative, entertaining way. Before I could even start thinking about ideas I looked at the ground and saw my Santa suit lying there, still soggy from beer and snow from the night before.  So my “script” wrote itself in about 60 seconds.  I went to Best Buy, bought a Web Cam, commandeered a friend’s Christmas tree and shot my 5 mega-pixel masterpiece a few hours before midnight.  CLICK THE IMAGE TO WATCH THE VIDEO:

I like the way it turned out.  That was my second take.  I would have done a third but I smashed just about every bulb on the tree when I tore it down.  One of the most interesting things about the contest is that you couldn’t record any audio.  So the voices and music you hear are part of the “hologram.”  And I didn’t realize that web cams record everything like a mirror so the note on  the bottom of the present was actually printed backwards.

A panel of judges will pick the winners on December 15th.  A percentage of a video’s score is based on views so please do your pal Beardy a solid and check out my entry.  And if you approve of what you see and if you have an extra 2 seconds to spare, please click the LOVE button too.  No registration is needed, just click the button and I will automatically feel your aforementioned love.

Did anyone else enter this contest?  If so, send me your link and I’ll add it to the post.