2011 January | Video Contest News - Featuring News about Video Contests!

No, Doritos is not “Going Gay” for the Super Bowl

Posted by Dan L. on January 31st, 2011

Man, people will believe anything they read on the Internet. For the second time this month the blogosphere and the mainstream media falsely reported that some random Crash the Super Bowl entries were Doritos’ OFFICIAL 2011 Super Bowl commercials. Last time it was the Pepsi-and-Doritos-communion-themed entry “Feed Your Flock” that inspired Catholics to boycott and petition Fritolay until the company agreed not to air the spot on TV. (the entry didn’t even make the Crash the Super Bowl finals and had no chance of making it to air) This time it was a pair of gay-themed ads called “Told You So” and “The Sauna.” Just for the record, these entries did not make Doritos’ list of Top 5 finalists and have zero shot at airing during the big game. Here they are:

It’s not 100% clear why the media thought these ads were bound for the Super Bowl. But it seems like the rumor started after the videos were posted on The Advocate’s website. Here’s a bit of the story they ran last monday:

DORITOS GOING GAY FOR THE SUPER BOWL?

By Advocate Editors

A bag of Doritos brings two nearly naked men in a sauna closer together in one of two gay-themed ads the company may air during the Super Bowl.

You can read the rest of the short article here. The author goes on to say that “It has yet to be confirmed whether these two ads will run.” Remember back in the old days of like, 10 years ago when reporters actually had to have confirmation that a story was true before their editor would sign off on it? If the author of this piece didn’t have all the facts, why not make a call or two before hitting the “Publish” button? Or if they didn’t have 10 minutes to waste on the phone, why didn’t the try googling the phrase “Dortios 2011 Super Bowl commercials?” After all the “I’m Feeling Lucky” result is www.crashthesuperbowl.com and the first thing you see when you follow that link is Pepsi and Doritos’ official list of the 10 ads that might actually air on Super Sunday.

So is lazy reporting really this common in the world of online media? It seems to be because rather than try and find out if this story was accurate, other reporters and bloggers jumped on it right away. Here’s how Entertainment Weekly’s website covered the story.

DORITOS MAY AIR GAY-THEMED ADS FOR THE SUPER BOWL. CONTROVERSY AWAITS.

You know, it’s been too long — seven years, to be exact — since we’ve had some sexy controversy at the Super Bowl. But it looks like we’re headed that way again this year: According to the Advocate, Doritos plans to air two gay-themed ads during the biggest television event of the year. In one spot (both are embedded after the jump), a man licks his lips watching his supposedly gay neighbors eat Doritos; in the other, a man appears to be reaching for another’s nether regions in a sauna, before it’s revealed that he’s actually reaching for a bag of chips placed in an inconvenient location. It’s not clear whether or not these ads will really run during the big game — Frito-Lay, the PepsiCo division that manufactures Doritos, has yet to respond to EW’s request for comment.

The full article is here. This story was posted to EW’s website at 7Pm last monday; just a few hours after The Advocate’s post went up. So I gotta wonder, how long did the author wait for Doritos to respond to her request for a comment? Did the article really have to go up IMMEDIATELY? What’s really weird is that the EW writer actually goes on to mention Doritos’ problem with the communion-themed ad “Feed Your Flock.” How could she be aware of that controversy and not realize that maybe these two ads were also non-winning Crash the Super Bowl entries?

While looking into this false story and the “Feed Your Flock” controversy I learned a lot about how a story mutates as it jumps from one media outlet to another. Sure, The Advocate and Entertainment Weekly and Gawker all mention that there is no confirmation that “The Sauna” and “Told You So” were for sure going to air during the big game. But later stories I’ve seen dropped that disclaimer and state rumors as fact. (sample #1, sample #2, sample #3 to cite just a few) I have to think it’s because the authors of the second round of stories must have thought “Hey, Gakwer and EW and The Advocate are famous so they wouldn’t publish something that wasn’t true so there’s no need for me to take 5 minutes and do a google search to confirm this info!”

The truth then really starts to take a beating when people start tweeting the story and posting it to their facebook pages because all they do is post a link to the videos and say something like this…

viewsofbrandon:The Super Bowl going gay, thanks to a few commercial choice by Doritos! Check both out here! http://ow.ly/1s0cq7 & http://ow.ly/1s0cpQ

KINGBEAN14 BEAN: Doritos got some gay ass super bowl commercials coming out

JamesPLCross: Gay-Themed Super Bowl Ads! For Doritos: wp.me/pIfvI-yE mmm, you like that?

WiLD941: Bring on the complaint calls! DORITOS is planning to run two GAY-themed ads during the Super Bowl!

Those are just a few of the countless tweets I found related to this story. As you can see, when you’re limited to just 140 characters, there’s no room for disclaimers or warnings that the info hasn’t been verified. But once the story hit the tweet-o-sphere, the two fake super bowl ads went viral. Both “The Sauna” and “Told You So” have view counts of over 550,000 EACH.

And maybe those massive view counts are the reason this whole thing happened. To be fair to The Advocate and the other sites that first covered this story, it seems like someone actually went out of their way to make it seem like “The Sauna” and “Told You So” were Doritos’ official 2011 Super Bowl. Sixty-five of this year’s 5,600 Crash the Super Bowl entries, including the two ads in question, were posted to a youtube channel called . The channel is (badly) dressed up to make it appear to be an official, Fritolay-run youtube channel. And all the videos uploaded by 2011DoritoCommercial have names like “Told You So – 2011 Doritos Superbowl Commercial Ad.“ Obviously, Doritos isn’t going to be airing 65 commercials on Super Bowl Sunday but if you were forwarded a link to one specific video and if you didn’t look at the channel page, I can see how you could be fooled into thinking the ad you were watching was somehow sanctioned by Fritolay.

So who created this misleading youtube channel and why? Doritos is apparently looking into that mystery right now. GLAAD’s website actually bothered to contact Doritos before running a story about the gay-themed ads. They got a response from Frito-Lay Director of Public Relations Chris Kuechenmeister right away. So they set the record straight just a day after the “controversy” began. (You can read the article here.) Here’s a few snips:

The company behind Doritos says it is not promoting a pair of consumer-created gay-themed ads, and is looking into whether it can have removed from an unofficial YouTube page.

[Kuechenmeister] said that the contest’s judges sought to “identify spots that were appropriate for everyone” and “observe a level of respect for everybody.” Even though the spots do not appear on the contest’s official YouTube page and the company has no direct ability to remove them, Kuechenmeister said he would be raising the issue with the company’s legal team.

I bet Fritolay has a pretty good shot at getting the 2011Doritocommercial channel pulled from youtube. For one thing, the channel owners are using pepsi max and doritos images and that confuses viewers about the legitimacy of the page. But on top of that, a few days ago the idiots running 2011Doritocommercial also uploaded copies of all of the REAL 2011 Crash the Super Bowl finalists to their channel. Not only is that a violation of youtube’s Terms of Service, now it REALLY looks like the page is associated with Fritolay.

One final note…while looking into this story I noticed a few comments that pointed out that “The Sauna” seems to be a blatant rip-off of this Swedish Newspaper ad. As you can see, it aired in the US on one of those “Most Outrageous TV Moments!” shows.

And wow…I guess the makers of “The Sauna” weren’t the only ones who saw that show. Here’s another 2011 CTSB entry with the exact same plot. It’s even called “The Sauna.“ So two teams of filmmakers seem to have copied the same commercial! I guess they thought they were being slick by ripping off an ad that aired in Sweden. Feh. Let this entire post be a warning to you about the evils of lazy writing and recycling other people’s ideas. Maybe you can get away with it but it’s a lot more likely that you’ll get caught and wind up looking like an asshole.

Poptent’s 2nd Chance and Demo Reel assignments

Posted by Dan L. on January 26th, 2011

So, are you still feeling bummed about not making the finals in Doritos’ Crash the Super Bowl contest? Well snap out of it already! You’ve had almost a month to get over the bad news. It’s time to move on to something new! The odds of making the CTSB finals are just insanely terrible. For every one winner there was something like 560 non-winners! So If the 2010/2011 “Crash” was your first video contest you really shouldn’t let that loss deter you from entering other, more win-able video contests. You just need to pick your next contest a little more carefully. And by that I mean you should try and focus on a contest that you actually have a chance in hell of winning.

A great place to start is one of Poptent.net’s “Ongoing Assignments.” These assignments aren’t really like the commercial ones they run for other companies. The open-ended assignments are sponsored by Poptent and don’t require you to shoot anything new! So you’ve probably got videos on your hard drive right now that you could submit to these competitions.

Currently Poptent does two of these on-going assignments. The first is called “Demo Reel of the Month” and the name pretty much tells you everything you need to know. Every month the Poptent staff picks their favorite directing, editing or cinematography reel and awards its creator 500 bucks.

The other Open-Ended assignment is the “Second Chance” contest which is co-sponsored by OnlineVideoContests.com. The concept for this one is pretty awesome. If you shot an entry for a video contest and DIDN’T WIN any prizes you can submit your overlooked masterpiece and Poptent and OVC will award prizes to their favorite “non-winning” videos. So…maybe your Crash the Super Bowl entry will wind up winning something after all.

But money isn’t the only reason to enter these Ongoing Assignments. The submitted “Second Chance” videos and Demo Reels help Poptent editors discover filmmakers that they want to work with in the future. So even if you don’t win you might find yourself invited to participate in a private assignment. And I can tell you, those are pretty sweet because the sponsors will actually send you free samples of their products so you can feature them in your ads. Last year I got invited to a private assignment for the Nokia Neuron and Nokia sent me a sweet new cell phone. (and yes, you get to keep the freebies)

Oh, one more thing; Poptent is apparently thinking about launching a third, Ongoing Assignment but they haven’t picked a theme yet. Like the other two Open-Ended assignments they want to keep it so you don’t have to actually shoot anything new to submit. Right now they are leaning towards an “Indy trailer / film / pitch assignment.” What do you guys think about that idea? Is that something you’d want to enter? Or do you have a better suggestion? If you’d like to share your thoughts on this leave a comment or e-mail me at and I’ll pass your suggestions on to the Poptent staff.

For details on the current “Demo Reel” assignment, click here.

For details on the Winter installment of the “Second Chance” contest, click here.

Fox News goes after a Crash the Super Bowl entry

Posted by Dan L. on January 24th, 2011

Fox news makes me want to puke. Seriously, there must be some really despicable people running that network. They seem to have one goal over there which is to stir up as much shit as possible. They work long and hard to create as many divisions in this world as they can and sometimes the on-air personalities almost seem to delight in the act of turning something stupid and small into a BIG, FUCKING DEAL.

Apparently Fox’s latest phony B.F.D is a lowly video contest entry. Remember a few weeks back I mentioned a Crash the Super Bowl submission called “Feed Your Flock” that had managed to offend some Catholics because it featured what appeared to be a Doritos and Pepsi Max communion? Well, when I first posted about the ad it was getting some coverage on the web thanks to bloggers who assumed it was Fritolay’s OFFICIAL 2011 Super Bowl commercial. These folks and their misinformed readers started contacting Doritos and Pepsi and threatened a boycott if the ad aired on Super Sunday. When Fritolay explained to these people that “Feed Your Flock” was NOT their commercial and was just one of 5,000+ entries in the Crash the Super Bowl contest the complainers then started demanding that the ad not win the contest and be removed from the CTSB website.

And guess what? Fritolay actually pulled the entry! So…controversy’s over, right? Ha…no. Because Fox News just found out about this like a week and a half ago and just because the ad has been pulled doesn’t mean they can’t squeeze some hatred out of this story. Fox’s “Feed Your Flock” coverage started with this short article on FoxNews.com: http://nation.foxnews.com/culture/2011/01/04/doritos-ad-offends-christians

DORITOS AD OFFENDS CHRISTIANS:

In what may be another ad campaign gone awry, Doritos is featuring a new Super Bowl advertisement in which a priest, searching for ways to return to the church, has a supposedly brilliant idea: Replacing the host wafer with a Dorito. While the denomination of the church is unclear, what is clear is that most Christian denominations consider the host to be a big portion of communion and might find the commercial, titled “Feed your flock!”, insensitive. A spokesman for Frito-Lay told The Examiner that the commercial had been approved and would not be taken down from the website. [link to video omitted]

That’s the entire article. It feels like something is missing from that story though, doesn’t it? Oh! I know…they managed to leave out the fact that “Feed Your Flock” was just one of thousands of entries submitted to a user-generated ad contest! Not only that, they actually imply that “Feed Your Flock” was going to be Doritos’ official 2011 Super Bowl ad. Anyone who had done more than 30 seconds of research about this would know that “Feed Your Flock” was just a video contest entry and that it didn’t even make the Crash the Super Bowl finals. In fact, by the time that story appeared on Foxnews.com, “Feed Your Flock” had already been pulled from the CTSB website. So you gotta wonder, did Fox intentionally mislead their readers or did the person who wrote the article not even bother to Google “Feed Your Flock”?

The Foxnews.com story got a flood of angry comments and I guess someone at the network realized they had a potential B.F.D on their hands. So the story made it to air. Here’s a link to some awful, random Fox News show featuring some random, awful, blond, Fox News anchor where the topic up for debate is “Feed Your Flock.” If you’re familiar with how the Crash The Super Bowl contest is run and judged you’ll realize what little regard the folks at Fox have for the truth. Right off the bat they just make up their own facts and state that “Feed Your Flock” made it “pretty high up but it didn’t make the cut because of all the controversy.” The ad made it “pretty high up” in the judging? Really?? How the heck do they know that? Answer; they don’t. The anchor even very carefully avoids saying this was an entry for a video contest. She makes it sound like Doritos hired several “groups” (implying ad agencies) to create potential Super Bowl ads for them. Watch if you dare:

Not content to just debate the controversial aspects of this ad, Fox had to take things to the next, malicious level by trying to turn a freaking video contest entry into a MUSLIMS VS. CHRISTIANS thing. If you couldn’t stomach to watch the above clip, one guy on the panel goes off on a “Why is it ok to make fun of Christians but we can’t make fun of Muslims” rant. It’s a Goddamn video contest entry and these people are using it as an excuse to reinforce the Us Vs. Them/Muslim Vs. Christian/All or Nothing paranoia that keeps their creepy network in business.

If only there was someone good and decent wandering the media wasteland that could offer us salvation from the hate-mongers! Enter my TV hero, Stephen Colbert. The other night he gave the above “news” clip some of the context it was lacking. Skip to 2:24 for the “Feed Your Flock” stuff.

The Colbert Report

Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Thought for Food – Fruit Pouch, Doritos Ad & Super Big Gulp

www.colbertnation.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes

Political Humor & Satire Blog

Video Archive

That was awesome. The great irony of this whole controversy is that “Feed Your Flock” has gotten more and better media coverage than all 10 of the actual Crash the Super Bowl finalists combined! I mean, the entry made it on Stephen Colbert. That’s a hell of an accomplishment.

And “Feed Yoru Flock” did make it on to one more notable show; The O’Reilly Factor. Now, as much as I dislike Fox I gotta admit, Bill O’Reilly is a lot more “fair and balanced” than the rest of the anchors and hosts on his network. He’s able to get his opinions across without resorting to making up his own facts. Case in point; here’s his coverage of the “Feed Your Flock” kerfuffle.

You know that things have gotten out of hand when it’s up to Bill O’reiley to be the voice of reason. He and his guest basically say “hey, it’s not too offensive, Doritos didn’t make it or buy it and the ad didn’t even make the Crash the Super Bowl’s Top 10 so what’s the big deal?”

Let’s wrap this up by giving the final words to Dave Williams and Mike Lyons; the filmmakers who created the ad in question.

I have a google alert set for “Crash the Super Bowl” and I can tell you that “Feed Your Flock” has absolutely dominated the press coverage of the 2011 Crash the Super Bowl contest. But now that game day is almost here hopefully the media will turn their attention from one video out of thousands that didn’t win to the 10 ads that actually have a shot at airing during the big game.

The Best Video Contest entries of 2010

Posted by Dan L. on January 18th, 2011

Though January is already 19 days old it still feels like we’re in that gray area between the old year and the new. So before we get too deep into 2011 I thought we could take a look back at the top video contest entries of 2010.

Now I could ramble on for a paragraph or two about how much video contests changed in 2010, the record-breaking amounts of money that were won and the ways technology has enabled freelance filmmakers to create more professional looking videos. And then I could top it off by explaining why it’s a safe bet to say that User-generated content is going to be an important part of the future of advertising and blah, blah, blah. But anyone reading this probably already knows all that stuff! The factors I just listed are the reasons we all keep making video contest entries; the money and exposure are awesome and the rewards just keep keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

So let’s skip the exposition and get right to the good stuff; VCN’s VIDEO CONTEST ENTRY OF THE YEAR! Now I know what you’re thinking…it’s got to be “Underdog,” the Crash the Super Bowl entry that aired during the Super Bowl, scored #2 on the USA Today Ad Meter and won its creators a $600,000 bonus, right? Wrong! That choice would be to easy. Instead I’ve decided to recognize a different 2010 Crash the Super Bowl winner; SNACK ATTACK SAMURAI by Ben Krueger and Cole Koehler!

2010 Crash the Super Bowl finalist. Prize: $25,000 and aired during the Super Bowl:

So why Snack Attack Samurai? Well to start, it’s a great ad, it made it to the Crash the Super Bowl finals and it scored enough votes to air during the 2010 Super Bowl. But this humble, little video earns top honors this year not because of how much money it won (just $25,000!) but because of what it accomplished. By a fluke of timing, Snack Attack Samurai wound up playing near the end of last year’s Super Bowl right during a particularly exciting moment in the game. The next day, Nielson announced that the ad wound up being the MOST WATCHED COMMERCIAL IN THE HISTORY OF TELEVISION.

Like I said, this sort of happened by chance but it is still an incredible accomplishment. 100 Million people in the United States saw this ad on Super Sunday. That’s 1 out of 3 Americans. More people saw that first airing of Snack Attack Samurai than saw Avatar during its entire theatrical run. So why is this a big deal? It’s a big deal because in the roughly 80 year history of television, the commercial that wound up with the biggest audience ever wasn’t made by a team of marketing geniuses from Madison Avenue and it wasn’t produced by a humongous production company and it didn’t feature any big name stars. It was made by two dudes in Minnesota and it cost a tiny fraction of what most regular TV commercials cost. And here’s the craziest part of all…..those 100 million viewers? THEY DIDN’T CARE WHO MADE THE AD OR WHERE IT CAME FROM. Though a lot of them probably knew Snack Attack Samurai was part of the Crash the Super Bowl contest, to most viewers it was just another Super Bowl commercial. And to me folks, that means we’re entering an age when there aren’t any more “big guys” and “little guys;” there will only be the “talented” and the “untalented.” The playing field is getting very even, very quickly.

So that’s why Snack Attack Samurai gets our “entry of the year award.” But what was the BEST contest entry of the year? Well, chances are you’ve probably never seen this one. Our pick for the Best entry of 2010 was a short film called NUIT BLANCHE. It won first place and 100 grand in LG’s “Life’s Good” oneline film fest. The goal of the contest was to create an HD video based on the theme, “Life’s Good.” Though I suspect that Nuit Blanche wasn’t specifically shot for the contest it’s undeniably awesome and was THE BEST VIDEO CONTEST ENTRY OF THE YEAR:

Grand Prize Winner, LG’s Life’s Good HD Film Fest. Prize: $100,000:

Crazy right?? If you wanna have your mind blow, check out this “” video. Pretty much every effect was done digitally which means in 5 years, high school kids will probably be making videos with equally sophisticated effects.

Next up, here’s THE BIGGEST WINNER OF 2010. Yep, it’s UNDERDOG from the Crash the Super Bowl contest.

Crash the Super Bowl winner. Prizes: Won $625,000 and aired during the Super Bowl:

I think this video might also deserve the unofficial title of “Beardy’s Favorite Winner of the year.” The $600,000 that Underdog won was technically a bonus for scoring well on the USA Today Ad meter. Those bonuses were not guaranteed so you could also consider our next ad to be the “Biggest Winner of the year.” But let’s call this one THE WINNER OF THE BIGGEST GUARANTEED CONTEST PRIZE. It’s entitled “Russell’s Notebook and it won first place and $250,000 in the big Godaddy summer video contest.

Grand Prize Winner, Godaddy Summer contest. Prize: $250,000:

Can't embed this one so click to view

$250,000 by the way happens to the be largest guaranteed video contest prize EVER. The ad has also supposedly played on TV but I haven’t seen it air myself.

Next up, here’s THE MOST VIRAL VIDEO CONTEST ENTRY OF 2010:

Crash the Super Bowl Finalist. Prize: Won $25,000 and aired during the Super Bowl:

EVERYBODY (and their Momma) has watched and re-watched this ad. I didn’t like it when I first saw it but it really grew on me. Doritos really knew what they were during when they picked House Rules as a finalist last year. The ad became a viral hit even before the Super Bowl and to date it’s been viewed almost 10 Million times on the Crash the Super Bowl youtube channel alone.

So those were the big winners of 2010. But here’s a quick list of some of the other video contest entries that scored big last year.

These two commercials were made for a Poptent Assignment for Quiznos. The ads wound up airing on TV for months and they are so well made that I’m guessing few viewers would ever guess they weren’t produced by Quizno’s regular ad firm:

VALUE MENU! Purchased by Quiznos. Price: $7,500.

U-543. Purchased by Quiznos. Price: $7,500.

Godaddy actually ran two big video contests in 2010; a “Spring” contest and a “Summer” contest. The winner of the “Spring” contest and $100,000 was entitled “” and the ad aired on TV a bit. But I think the big winner of that contest was actually the SECOND Place ad; FingerFighting.com:

Second Place Winner, Godaddy Spring Contest. Prize: $50,000:

Though Fingerfighting.com won less money, Godaddy aired it on TV like crazy. I still see it run every once in a while! And the Phoenix-based filmmakers who made it actually won another $25,000 runner-up prize in Godaddy’s Summer Contest with an ad called Isawbigfoot.co. I talked to the director of the ad a few weeks back and he said Godaddy is actually airing the ad in India.

Here’s another video contest entry that made it to TV. This promo was shot for a Zooppa-run contest for TMZ and won first place.

First Place Winner, TMZ promo contest. Prize: $10,000:

TMZ has been airing this promo during their show along with the 2nd and 3rd place winning videos too. You can see them all here: http://zooppa.com/contests/tmz-on-tv#/winners.

Finally, here are a couple ads that won smaller prizes but that I really liked:

DON’T FORGET. Winner, Louisiana Hot Sauce Video Contest. Prize: $5,000.

RONNIE’S SKIN SHACK. Runner up, Skinit.com commercial contest. Prize: $5,000.

First Place Winner, Are You Debit Smart Contest. Prize: $5,000:

HUMAN HEAD. Purchased by Fed-ex via Poptent’s Fed-Ex assignment. Price: $5,000.

1/20 UPDATE: A reader sent me a link to this video that won the Mofilm American Idol Walmart competition. Apparently this ad even aired during the American Idol Finale. It’s pretty good. Prizes won include a trip to LA, tickets to the American Idol finale and thousands of dollars in cash and Walmart Gift cards.

http://www.mofilm.com/std/0ae308

So what do you think? Did I miss any big entries from 2010?

MOFILM wants to send you to Barcelona!

Posted by Dan L. on January 15th, 2011

Great news folks, today we’re welcoming a new sponsor to VCN; the excellent contest site MOFILM.com. Though I’ve only entered one or two of their competitions in the past, I’ve always loved the concept behind MOFILM because they combine two of the most exciting things a filmmaker can experience; winning a video contest and getting accepted to a film festival.

Every MOFILM contest is connected to a different renowned International Film Festival or media event and the winning submissions are screening during the fest. There are categories for different well-known products and the top winners in each category win money AND a trip to the featured festival. Winning money is nice but winning money and being able to spend it in New York or India or London would obviously be extra sweet.

Interested in getting in on the globe-trotting, cash-winning action? Well if so you still have 17 days to submit to MOFILM’s current contest the “Barcelona : 2011 GSMA Film Competition.” The top winners in each category will win a lot of cash plus a trip for 2 to the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. I have wanted to go to spain since I read Don Quixote and tasted my first tapas back in college. So I think I’m going to have to get my act together and submit something for this one.

There are lots of categories to choose from. Each MOFILM competition is like 8 video contests rolled into one. The big daddy of the contest is the special Pepsi “Refresh your World” project. Three filmmakers will each win $10,000 and then at the festival, Pepsi will announce one grand prize winner that will receive the opportunity to shoot a short film for Pepsi Spain. There are a bunch of runner-up prizes too. Take note: The Pepsi contest has an earlier deadline of Jan 22nd. MOFILM has a special relationship with Pepsi and this is the first of seven such competitions that will take place in 2011. If you’re anything like me, you’re probably already thinking about recycling your Pepsi Max Crash the Super Bowl entry, right? Well this time Pepsi isn’t really looking for commercials. They want short films that are based on one of several themes. You don’t even have to include Pepsi in your video and if you do, it doesn’t get you any extra points.

Most of the brands are different in each MOFILM contest. This time the featured brands are AT&T, Mountain Dew, Tropicana, American Red Cross, Findus and Young’s. Each of these categories have top cash prizes of $6,000 to $8,000 plus trips for 2 to Barcelona. Adobe and Motorola are also running a “short film and ad” contest that works a little differently than the other competitions. Check out the details here.

Like I said, there are still about 2 1/2 weeks to go before the January 31st deadline. So get filmin’. And if you do enter and win a prize, let me know and I’ll post about your good fortune. And if you win a trip to Barcelona, why not consider taking your e-pal Beardy as your +1? To read the full contest rules and to download the creatives briefs for the different brands, click here: http://www.mofilm.com/competitions/barcelona2011/

OnlineVideoContest.com’s awesome new features

Posted by Dan L. on January 13th, 2011

Onlinevideocontests.com is easily one of my favorite websites on the entire Internet that doesn’t feature boobs or captioned cat photos. Until now they’ve pretty much focused on doing just one thing, really, really well; listing video contests. The design of the site is PERFECT. It’s clean, user-friendly and simply cool-looking. You can even do custom searches for contests based on specific criteria like whether or not they use judges or public voting to determine the winners! It’s just awesome and I can honestly say that the site has helped me find more than a few contests that I went on to win.

And the the folks at “OVC” have made a good thing even better by adding some great new features to the site. Registered users can now post their winning videos in the “WINNERS” section and if a filmmaker needs votes to win a contest, they can post their video in the “UP FOR VOTE” section. I expect to be making use of both features in the near future. Follow the links to check out the new stuff:

http://www.onlinevideocontests.com/winners

http://www.onlinevideocontests.com/upforvote

Follow VCN on Twitter (finally)

Posted by Dan L. on January 11th, 2011

Follow us...to the gates of hell!

For a good long time I looked at Twitter with disgust and trepidation. Micro-blogging? Feh! I’m too much of a big-mouth to limit my outbursts to just 140 characters! But it finally hit me that starting a Twitter page for VCN would actually make a lot of sense. I come across tons of links and stories and stuff that are interesting but I just don’t have time to blog about all of them. So thanks to our new Twitter page I can post all that stuff and save the “big” news stories for the blog.

But the best thing about the Twitter page is that I can use it to promote new contests. I get requests all the time from companies asking me if I would blog about their contest and encourage people to enter. There are several other sites out there that already do a great job of listing new contests so I’ve basically stopped announcing them here. But here’s the thing….when these contest organizers e-mail me, it’s usually because they are starting to get desperate for videos. In most cases, their contest has already been running for weeks or months but they haven’t been getting many (or any) entries. With their deadline just around the corner the organizers make a last minute attempt to scrounge up some submissions. So when you see a contest being promoted on our Twitter page, it probably means it’s in desperate need of decent entries!

So, Twitter time has finally come. Here’s the link to our feed: Follow us, won’t you? And since I understand that everyone on the Internet is an attention whore, I promise VCN will follow any one who starts following us during the month of January. Oh and if you ever see anything you think I should tweet about, lemme know at .

I Love Chicken Video Contest Winner

Posted by Dan L. on January 8th, 2011

I had to take a break from our Crash the Super Bowl coverage to post the winner of the “I Love Chicken” video contest. The contest was sponsored by El Pollo Loco and some other pro-chicken entities. The premise was pretty simple; contestants were supposed explain why they loved Chicken. I actually thought about entering this one but then I saw a submission called “Chicken is my Best Friend” that was so awesome I knew I could never top it. Sure enough, the video did go on to win the grand prize of $5,000. It’s just great and you should really check it out. I can’t embed the video so click on this still to watch it.

First Place Winner. Prize: $5,000:

click to view

Caution: Viewing this video may result in you having the “Chicken is my Best Friend” song stuck in your head for a few days.

1/10 UPDATE: An eagle-eyed reader posted a comment saying that he thought that the guy in the video might also be the guy who just won $20,000 in the AT&T Simplify Your Life contest. I checked and it definitely is him. And his AT&T video might be even more ingenious than his I Love Chicken Video. Here it is.

AT&T Simplify Your Life, Grand Prize Winner. Prize: $20,000:

That dude is on fire. Bigtime congratulations to him.

I think I must be slipping. I never even heard of the AT&T Simplify Your Life contest. There were a bunch of other winners and you can see them all here: