2012 July | Video Contest News - Featuring News about Video Contests!

Hey Chuck, thanks for the cash!!!

Posted by Dan L. on July 30th, 2012

Darn right, I did

Were you awake and watching CBS This Morning at about 7:40AM on Saturday? No?!?! Well that’s too bad because if you had tuned in you would’ve seen an interview with the $10,000 winner of Charles Schwab’s “Oh Chuck, I Blew my Cash” photo and video contest…and that winner was me!

On top of the ten grand, the nice folks at Charles Schwab also treated me to a trip to New York so I could appear on CBS’ morning show. It was a very surreal experience but overall I had a ton of fun. I would have promoted my little appearance ahead of time but I had to keep the news top secret. For this contest, people were supposed to submit a photo or a video and tell a story about something crazy that they wasted money on. (Money that could have been put to better use in a Charles Schwab account.) As soon as I read the description for this one I knew exactly what my video was going to be about. Here’s my submission:

Grand Prize Winner. Prize: $10,000 in a Schwab account and a trip to New York:

Believe it or not, filming that video was one of the most difficult shoots of my life! Because I’m an idiot I waited until the last minute and I wound up filming on one of the hottest and brightest days of the year. That’s why the colors look kind of weird. Even with my ND filter on, the sun just blasted everything out so I had to darken all the footage in post. This was literally the last video I shot with my big, bulky HVX-200. Have you every tried to hold a 15 pound video camera over your head while inside a bouncy house that was as hot as an oven after filming outside in the bright sun for a few hours? I have and I don’t recommend it. After I turned my camera off I basically collapsed onto the floor of the bouncy house. I had barely ate or drank anything all day (like I said, I’m an idiot) and suddenly I realized that I might have heat stroke. My head was throbbing, my skin felt like it was 105 degrees and I could barely move. The bouncy house had been stored in my grandmother’s garage and I did the shoot in her backyard. I was by myself, laying on the inflatable floor and I felt like I was dying. Then a terrifying thought crossed my mind; dying of heat stroke inside of a bouncy castle while filming a video contest entry would be the most hilarious and appropriate way I could possibly die. But there was no way I was going to spend my last moments in a goddamn bouncy castle so I forced myself to slither out of the little opening. I rushed home and looked in the mirror and my skin was blood red. I thought I had gotten a terrible sun burn. But after I took an ice cold shower and drank a gallon of water my skin color was back to normal. So it wasn’t a sun burn…it was a sign that I was you know, sort of dying of heat stroke.

But in the end my near death experience was worth it! I’ve won a $10,000 video contest prize before but since I got a free trip, this is technically my biggest win ever. And being on CBS This Morning was a great prize in and of itself. I was on with a financial consult from Schwab and he actually did most of the talking. The hosts just introduced me, asked me a question or two and then they started talking about fiances with the adviser guy. I did manage to squeeze in one joke and I think I accidentally embarrassed the consultant a little bit. The hosts asked if he had given me any advice about how how I should spend my prize money. I said something like “backstage this guy was telling me I should buy 10 more bouncy castles!” (I just noticed how shocked he looks in the screengrab about to post.) He was a cool guy though and he kept me talking backstage to help me from being nervous. So just for the record, he did NOT tell me I should buy $10,000 worth of bouncy houses.

Our segment is on the CBS This Morning website and you can see it by clicking this image of me cracking wise. By the way, my real, non-Beardy name is Dan but at the end of the video the host called me Don. (I assume it was because I reminded her of Don Draper.) So since Saturday I’ve got about 20 “Congratulations Don!” texts, calls and facebook messages from my wise ass friends.

You’ll have to sit through a commercial and a lot of finance talk if you watch the video. Sorry about that.

I’ve been to New York a lot of times over the years but my “Oh Chuck” adventure was definitely a lot classier than my past visits. Schwab put me up in the Parker Meridian which is a super swanky place. I had a totally baller hotel room over looking central park. I also had a car service take me wherever I needed to go and let me tell you, that little perk is priceless if you’re in NYC. Oh, and I also got my very first Per Diem! I blew about 25% of it having “James Beard Award winning” potato pancakes for breakfast in my hotel’s trendy little restaurant though.

In all, the Oh Chuck, I Blew My Cash contest received over 250 photo and video submissions so the odds make this win all the sweeter. A huge thanks goes out to the folks at Charles Schwab for being so cool to me and for running such an awesome contest. Even if I hadn’t won, this competition would have earned a place on my “best video contests of 2012″ list. This was actually a really huge promotion; four runners up won prizes of $5,000 each and several honorable mentions won $1,000 prizes. You can click to see the winning photos and to see the winning videos.

Mofilm’s interview with the Beard Man

Posted by Dan L. on July 27th, 2012

Mofilm is going to start posting Q&As with people who work “in and around the world of film” on their blog and I was very flattered to be the first person they interviewed. They even broke up my answers and turned my post into a two-parter.

Here is Part one and here is Part two. Here’s one of my freakier responses:

MOFILM: In the wider sense what do you think its like for a filmmaker trying to break into the industry today?

Dan: When I was a kid I used to go to this amusement park that was on a lake. At the end of one pier was a popcorn stand and for 60 years people have been throwing popcorn into the lake for the fish. If you throw some popcorn off the pier, about 100 gigantic carp will surface and an insane feeding frenzy will ensue. They thrash around and fight to suck popcorn into their monstrous fish mouths, the fish pile on top of each other so violently that some of them are pushed out of the water. It’s a really freaky thing to witness… anyway, that’s what it’s like to be a filmmaker trying to break into the industry in 2012!

Ok, I know that was kind of a weird answer but I’ve had those giant carp on my mind lately. Last weekend me and some friends took a ride to that amusement park I mentioned (Indiana Beach in Monticello, IN) and sure enough, at the end of the pier were the great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandchildren of the carp I fed back in the 80′s. I even captured some video of the insane feeding frenzy. When you think of filmmakers trying to “make it” in the industry today, this is the mental picture you should have in your head.

Should Taco Bell’s Doritos Locos tacos be the star of the 2013 Crash the Super Bowl contest?

Posted by Dan L. on July 23rd, 2012

eat me.

Believe it or not, Doritos’ annual Crash the Super Bowl contest is now almost six years old. The first installment was launched way back in the fall of 2006 and since then Frito-Lay has run the commercial contest 5 times. (Doritos skipped the commercial contest in 2008 and instead ran a version of the Crash for aspiring musicians) The folks behind the CTSB contest are pretty secretive and filmmakers across the country are anxiously waiting to hear if the contest will be run again this fall. Personally I think Frito-Lay would have to be nuts to kill off one of the most popular and successful promotions in the history of advertising. Consumer-made Crash the Super Bowl commercials make the top three in the annual USA Today Super Bowl ad meter poll year after year after year. Other companies pour millions of dollars and months of work into commercials that wind up getting panned the day after the big game. But with the Crash the Super Bowl contest, Doritos has figured out a way to get some of the best, most original, most viral commercials possible without spending too much money. In fact, the winning CTSB ads are usually so good that Frito-Lay is able to run them all year long. So the company is basically able to get a year’s worth of commercials from just this one promotion. And as a side benefit, the contest increases brand loyalty and enthusiasm among consumers and gets Doritos an unfathomable amount of free exposure and press.

But even though the CTSB contest is still pretty awesome, I do think it’s starting to get a little stale. I’d be willing to bet a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos that most of the 2013 finalist ads will feature dogs, babies or jerks getting their comeuppance. And I’m sure that at least 1 or 2 of the winning ads will created by that one well-funded team of filmmakers from LA that manages to win the contest every year. (Here’s the full story about that.) The non-winning ads are even easier to predict; as they do every year, I’m sure fritolay will receive hundreds and thousands of videos that feature zombies, ninjas, mousetraps, Dorito footballs and guys in cheesy homemade chip costumes.

If the Crash the Super Bowl contest is going to remain relevant and exciting, I think it needs to be shaken up a bit. And the best way to reinvent the contest would be to add a new “star” for 2013. There are only so many low-budget chip commercials we “average joes” can produce on our own. So Frito-lay, if you’re listening, why don’t you give your fans some uncharted territory to explore? Why not make the next CTSB contest be about America’s new fastfood sweetheart, the Dortios Loco Taco!?

I’m not saying that the Crash should be totally Dorito-free this year. In 2010, The Crash the Super Bowl contest actually featured two product categories. Fans could shoot commercials for Doritos and/or Pepsi Max. I was really psyched by the addition of a new product and I was disappointed that there weren’t two products featured again last year. But a diet soda isn’t exactly a fun product so I wouldn’t want to see Pepsi Max be part of the Crash again. (Plus the Pepsi judges just didn’t get the contest and picked some terrible finalists.) But you know what is fun? A freaking taco bell taco with a shell made of Doritos!! That is one of the most ridiculous food items ever conceived of by man. I tried one for the first time just last week and that sucker was yummy as hell. And people LOVE those things. THEY LOVE THEM. Taco Bell sold 100 million Doritos Locos Tacos in just the first 10 weeks that they are available and Taco Bell saw a 6% spike in overall sales during the first quarter they were available.

In other words, they are a monster hit. I think consumers would go crazy for the chance to make commercials for such a wacky, fun and beloved product. I know I would absolutely enter the Doritos Locos category if I could. And I would love to see what kind of crazy ads other fans would make for a non-chip product.

I know this idea might sound kind of infeasible since Doritos and Taco Bell are two different companies. But you’d probably be surprised how closely related they are. Doritos is owned by Frito-Lay. Frito-lay is owned by Pepsico. Pepsico used to own a company named YUM! Brands but they spun that company off so it could be its own entity. And one of the companies that YUM owns is Taco Bell. That’s why Taco Bell features Pepsi and Frito-lay products. So it wouldn’t be too difficult to get Taco Bell’s marketing team to work with Frito-Lay’s marketing team. After all, they’ve been working together for the last year to promote Doritos Locos Tacos. I think that adding Taco Bell to the Crash the Superbowl contest is just a logical next step in this crazy snack food/fast food marriage. In fact, I suspect that I’m not the first person to suggest that Dorios Locos Tacos would be a EPIC addition to the contest. The Crash the Super Bowl contest and Doritos Locos tacos would go together like ~~chocolate and peanut butter~~ Taco Bell’s spicy ground beef and crunchy Doritos-flavored shells. The combination just seems like a no brainier, doesn’t it?

Shell’s “Let’s Go” ad generator contest is actually a hoax sponsored by Greenpeace and the Yes Men

Posted by Dan L. on July 20th, 2012

Are you sure about that?

I’ve talked to a lot of people who run video contests over the years and one of the most interesting bits of inside information I’ve ever learned is this; apparently many companies are hesitant to run video contests because they don’t want protestors to hijack the promotion. For example, I once heard a (possibly apocryphal) story about an SUV company that ran a video contest that was flooded with “ads” that mocked the vehicles for being gas guzzling monstrosities. This is one reason that so many brands put such tight controls on where you can post your entries and how you can use their logos. They don’t want to lose control over the content they receive. No one will care if some random troublemaker posts a snarky parody ad bashing an oil company or a fast food chain on youtube. But if protestors can take over and ruin a company’s PR stunt that would be both hilarious and newsworthy.

Earlier this week it looked like Shell had been the “victim” of just this type of contest trolling. A website that claimed to be owned by Shell launched a consumer-generated ad contest in which users could add captions to stock photos of the arctic. As you can imagine, protestors jumped all over this and used the site’s “Ad Generator” to create sarcastic ads that mocked Shell’s arctic drilling operations. In fact, if you look at the contest gallery, every entry seems to be a joke. Here are two of my favorites:

Submitted by “Mariette”

Submitted by “Brad”

So the Internet has been buzzing about how Shell’s ad campaign had backfired and how no one at the company had even noticed that their site was filled with hundreds of protest ads. But yesterday it was revealed that the entire contest was a hoax created by The Yes Men and GreenPeace. Here is the statement that Shell released on Thursday:

Shell not involved in spoof video and fake advertisements

Journalists, blog readers and YouTube viewers have recently been targeted with scams launched by organizations opposed to energy exploration in Alaska. A contest on a mock Shell website promotes the creation of fake advertisements. A video purports to show a bungled corporate PR event at the Seattle Space Needle. And a false press release claimed that the company is considering legal action against the scam campaign.

Just in case there is any remaining doubt, Shell did not host, nor participate in an event at the Space Needle. The video does not involve Shell or any of its employees. The advertising contest is not associated with Shell, and neither is the site it’s on. And Shell did not file legal action in this matter. Our focus is on safely executing our operations.

Further, we care that people are not deceived; and in the spirit of intelligent debate on such a serious topic, we continue to offer our own (genuine) views as well as a few real facts about the challenges and opportunities of arctic exploration at www.shell.us/alaska.

The video that the press release refers to was shot at a fake Shell event at the Space Needle. You can watch it here. I was surprised that anyone actually thought that event was real since the old lady that got oil sprayed on her wasn’t such a great actress. The fake contest site on the other hand totally had me fooled. It’s a great prank but there is a downside here; this fake contest will probably become the new cautionary tale that comes up every time a company debates holding any kind of consumer generated ad contest. But if a company does things that many people feel are immoral or dangerous, maybe they shouldn’t be asking the public to make their ads anyway.

As part of the hoax, the folks behind the site actually shut down the ad-generator to make it look like Shell finally caught on to what was happening. But you can still see all the ads that were submitted here: http://arcticready.com/social/gallery. If you take a look at the homepage it becomes very obvious that this was built as parody/protest site.

Why Open Education Matters winners

Posted by Dan L. on July 18th, 2012

News Flash: America spends a shit ton of money on education but many teachers still can’t get all of the educational resources they need to teach your dumb kids. That’s why “Open Education” resources are so important these days. Basically they are royalty free tools like books, videos and presentations that teachers are allowed to use and alter year after year. To get the word out about these free, reusable resources, Creative Commons, the U.S. Department of Education, and the Open Society Foundation ran a gigantic video contest. The winning video was picked by a panel of judges that included James Franco for some reason and the winning filmmaker received…$25,000?!?! Oh my God, if the Tea Party finds out about this there will be riots in the street. Hopefully Creative Commons and the Open Society Foundation will cover the bulk of the tab for this one. If not, here’s the video that won a whole bunch of your tax dollars.

Grand Prize Winner. Prize: $25,000:

A few other videos won (smaller) prizes. You can check out all the results here. Just please don’t tell Rand Paul about this.

Help Bob’s Red Mill and the USA reclaim the golden spurtle!

Posted by Dan L. on July 14th, 2012

I have no idea what a Spurtle is but Bob’s Red Mill wants to win the golden one and they need your help. Right now they’re accepting video entries from “oatmeal enthusiasts” who have a great original recipe that features Red Mill Steel cut oats. Three finalists will win a trip to Portland, Oregon and then one grand prize winner will head to Scotland to help the Red Mill team in the 19th annual Golden Spurtle World Porridge Making Championship in Scotland this October. Here’s a little video that will tell you all you need to know about the contest:

I’d freaking love to go to Scotland so I might need to shoot a video for this one. If you want more details, head to the contest page: http://www.sparforthespurtle.com. And oh…I just checked wikipedia. Apparently a spurtle is a “Scott’s kitchen tool, dating from at least the fifteenth century. It was originally a flat, wooden, spatula-like utensil, used for flipping oatcakes on a hot girdle the Scottish equivalent to a griddle.“ KNOWLEDGE IS POWER!!!!!!! Now go enter and win this contest FOR AMERICA.

Poptent hits a $5,000,000 milestone

Posted by Dan L. on July 10th, 2012

Last month Poptent.net announced that they had passed a major milestone; the site has now paid out more than 5 million dollars to their members. That’s huge but what’s really amazing is that they had just passed the three million dollar mark late last year. This is great news for spec/video contest filmmakers since a number like this really helps legitimize the industry. Five million bucks is a serious amount of cash but in a few years, I think companies like Poptent will be paying filmmakers that much annually. Right now Poptent has 20 freaking video assignments running! That’s about twice as many as they were running last summer. Ok, 80% of the current assignments are invite-only but at least somebody, somewhere is gettin’ paid….right?

Poptent’s recent shift in focus does actually have me a little worried. How are they going to find new talent for all those private assignments if they run so few public assignments? I talked to a filmmaker recently who said his partner gets about 2 or 3 invites to private assignments a month. That’s awesome for that particular guy but not so awesome for everyone else who’d like a shot at some cash. During the spring and summer of 2011 I was shooting maybe one Poptent submission a month. I didn’t make any sales last year but I did win a few thousand bucks in other poptent awards. (enough to fund all of my video contest shoots for the year) But so far I’ve only shot 2 poptent videos in 2012 simply because there haven’t been many assignments that got my creative juices flowing.

So personally, I’d really, really like to see more public assignments. Of the 4 commercial assignments that are currently open to everyone, I think the one for Micheal’s Craft Store might be the best one to go after. There’s only one guaranteed purchase of $7,500 but there are only 9 days left to submit and so far only 311 people have accepted that assignment. I bet they’ll only get about 40 submissions for that one so if you’re feeling crafty (lol) you can head here to check out the details.

Lonely Island donates $250,000 LIKE A BOSS

Posted by Dan L. on July 8th, 2012

The 2011-2012 installment of Doritos’ Crash the Super Bowl contest was kind of weird. When it was launched last fall, Frito-Lay dubbed it the “Hollywood Edition” of the Crash because the guys from The Lonely Island (Akiva Schaffer, Jorma Taccone, and Andy Samberg) were going to create a Doritos commercial that would compete with a consumer-made ad during the Superbowl. If the non-pro scored a top spot on the USA Today ad meter poll they’d receive $400K for 3rd place, $600K for 2nd or a million bucks for 1st. But if the Lonely Island spot made the top 3, Frito-Lay would donate their bonus money to charity. So basically it was going to be an average joes vs. comedy superstars type of thing.

But after the finalists were revealed, Frito-Lay announced that The Lonely Island would NOT be shooting a Crash the Superbowl commercial. Apparently the guys decided to give up their Superbowl slot so one of the other consumer-made contest ads could air during the big game. I thought that was a great idea since the whole “Hollywood Edition” kind of rubbed me the wrong way from the very start. It just seemed kind of unfair to make non-pros compete with some of the hottest comedians in the country. I know the Lonely Island would have made a great ad and I bet they would even done it in a low-budget, DIY style. But those guys are so popular and so well liked that I think preexisting good will would have given them an unfair advantage in the focus group polls.

For giving up their Super Bowl time, Doritos promised to donate $250,000 to any charity that the Lonely Island guys wanted. They wound up choosing the Berkeley Unified School District and Frito-lay made the donation last month. Here’s a little bit of a press release from Pepsico:

The Doritos brand and The Lonely Island today announced a donation of $250,000 to the Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) as a part of their collaboration on the annual Doritos Crash the Super Bowl contest. One of the hottest entertainment teams in the industry today, the award-winning trio of Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone that make up The Lonely Island, designated BUSD as the donation recipient because of the group’s hometown ties to the region — all three members attended school there and Samberg’s mother is a longtime educator in the district.

BUSD and The Lonely Island have designated the funds for improvements to the Berkeley Community Theater, which is located on the Berkeley High School campus and used by district students for music and theater performances. The theater has been an important part of the Berkeley community for more than 60 years.

“The Berkeley Unified School District has been a huge part of our lives — it’s where we met and became friends,” said The Lonely Island members Samberg, Schaffer and Taccone. “Now having the ability to give back to it feels great. Hopefully it will help today’s students pursue their creative dreams and make their school a generally nicer place to be.”

So that’s nice. of the presentation of the giant check but it’s not especially exciting. The guys couldn’t go to the actual ceremony but their moms showed up which was a cute little touch.

And now, because this post was pretty boring, I’ll end with a video from Lonely Island’s pre-fame days. This one’s from 2001 so the guys would have been out of high school for just a few years when they shot this. If they hadn’t blown up, Akiva Schaffer, Jorma Taccone, and Andy Samberg would probably be dominating the world of video contests right now. Hell, I bet they could have even managed to make the finals of the Crash the Superbowl contest. Lonely Island is still supposed to shoot a doritos commercial (directed by the 2012 CTSB winner) this year and I’ll post it as soon as its released. I’m sure it will be a very enjoyable piece of weirdness.