2013 October | Video Contest News - Featuring News about Video Contests!

2009 Crash the Super Bowl teammates get their own TBS show

Posted by Dan L. on October 28th, 2013

Stay tuned after Conan tonight because the Pete Holmes show debuts on TBS at midnight (11pm CST). The show stars the two comedians that appeared in the 2009 Crash the Super Bowl ad, “New Flavor Pitch,” Pete Holmes (of course) and Matt Mccarthy. And the director of that commercial, Oren Brimer is the show’s co-executive producer and segment director. New Flavor Pitch has always been one of my favorite Crash the Super Bowl ads. It made Doritos’ top 5 and won $25,000 but it didn’t air during the big game. Here it is:

Frito-Lay always presets the Crash the Super Bowl contest as an opportunity for aspiring filmmakers who want to kick-start their careers. But as far as I know, the “New Flavor Pitch” guys are the first CTSB finalists to ever really “make it in Hollywood.” There are a few people who manage to make the Top 5 almost every year and even those guys have had trouble finding steady, professional work. (If they could find paying work, they wouldn’t be entering a video contest for amateurs every year). But it’s hard to argue that Holmes, Mccarthy and Brimer have found success because of the Crash the Super Bowl contest. They’ve been creating super weird/super funny viral videos for years and if you’re a comedy central, you’ve probably seen Pete Holmes’ stand-up special. If these guys owe their success to anything, it’s the Badman parodies that they’ve been creating for CollegeHumor.com. I think this is the first one they did. It’s up to 10 Million views on youtube:

The parodies got progressively weirder as Holme’s Batman got dumber and louder. Here’s their most recent (NSFW) short:

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Ok, can I level with you? I’m very much aware that this post doesn’t really have much to do with video contest. I just saw an ad for the Pete Holmes show today and realized it gave me an excuse to post some of these Badman videos. Sorry. My bad…man.
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The 2007, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013 Crash the Super Bowl finalists

Posted by Dan L. on October 17th, 2013

If you want to win the Crash the Super Bowl contest you first need to understand what types of ads make the finals. Doritos used to have all the past CTSB winners posted to a single youtube channel but for some dumb reason, those official videos have all been taken down. So if you want to see all the winning ads you’re going to have to hunt for them all over youtube. Or you could just scroll down because I did the hunting for you! Links to every Doritos finalist from the past 7 years are below. I would have just embedded the videos but 35 embedded youtube videos in one post pretty much would crash my site. So each ad is represented by a screenshot. To watch the actual commercials, click on the images:

2012-2013 Doritos Finalists:

Goat 4 Sale by Ben Callner of Atlanta, GA
-Aired during the Super Bowl.

Goat 4 Sale

Fashionista Daddy by Mark Freiburger of Los Angeles, CA
-Aired during the Super Bowl.

Fashionista Daddy

Road Chip by Tyler Dixon of Los Angeles, CA
-Aired during the Super Bowl.

Road Chip

Express Checkout by Sasha Shemirani of San Diego, CA

Express Checkout

Fetch by Joe Taranto of Los Angeles, CA

Fetch

2011-2012 Doritos Finalists:

Man’s Best Friend by Jonathan Friedman of Virginia Beach, VA.
-Aired During the Super Bowl. WINNER: Million dollar USA Today ad meter bonus

Man’s Best Friend

Sling Baby by Kevin T. Willson of Los Angeles, CA.
-Aired During the Super Bowl. WINNER: Million dollar Facebook ad meter bonus

Sling Baby

Bird of Prey by Joby Harris of Los Angeles, CA.

Bird of Prey

Dog Park by Tyler Dixon of Liegh, UT.

Dog Park

Hot Wild Girls by Brad Scott of Denver, CO.

Hot Wild Girls

2010-2011 Doritos Finalists:

Pug Attack by JR Burningham of Burbank, CA.
-Aired during the Super Bowl. WINNER: Million dollar USA Today ad meter bonus.

Pug Attack

The Best Part by Tyler Dixon of Lehi, Utah.
-Aired during the Super Bowl.

The Best Part

Adam and Eve by Stephen Schuster of Topanga, CA.

Adam and Eve

Birthday Wish by Heather Kasprzak of Los Angeles, CA.

Birthday Wish

House Sitting by Tynesha Williams of Santa Monica, CA.
-Aired during the Super Bowl. WINNER: $400,000 ad meter bonus

House Sitting

2009-2010 Finalists:

Underdog by William Kyle Gerardi of Cary, NC.
-Aired during the Super Bowl. WINNER: $600,000 Ad Meter bonus.

Underdog

Snack Attack Samurai by Ben Krueger of Minneapolis, MN.
-Aired during the Super Bowl.

Snack Attack Samurai

The Smackout by Brendan Hayward of Santa Monica, CA.

The Smackout

Casket by Kevin Wilson of Whittier, CA.
-Aired during the Super Bowl.

Casket

House Rules by Joelle De Jesus of Los Angeles, CA.
-Aired during the Super Bowl.

House Rules

Kids These Days by Nick Dimondi of Cary, NC.

Kids These Days

2008-2009 Finalists:

Free Doritos by Joe Herbert of Batesville, IN.
-Aired during the Super Bowl. WINNER: Million dollar USA Today Ad meter bonus.

Free Doritos

New Flavor Pitch by Oren Brimer of New York, NY.

New Flavor Pitch

Power of the Crunch by Eric Heimbold of Venice, CA.
-Also aired During the Super bowl.

The Power of the Crunch

The Chase by Chris Roberts of Burbank, CA.

The Chase

Too Delicious by Michael Goubeaux of Los Angeles, CA.

Too Delicious

— 2007-2008: No Commercial contest —

2006-2007 Finalists:

Live the Flavor by Five Points Productions of Cary, NC.
-WINNER: Aired during the Super Bowl.

Live the Flavor

Check Out Girl by Kristin C. Dehnert of Los Angeles, CA.
-Also aired during the 2007 Super Bowl.

Checkout Girl

Mouse Trap by Billy Federighi of Beverly Hills, CA.
-Aired the next year during the 2008 Super Bowl.

Mousetrap

Chip Lover’s Dream by Jared Cicon of Claremont, CA.

A Chip Lover’s Dream

Duct Tape by Joe Herbert of Batesville, IN.

Duct Tape

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The 2014 Crash the Super Bowl contest is now accepting entries!

Posted by Dan L. on October 11th, 2013

On Tuesday afternoon, the 2013-2014 installment of the Crash the Super Bowl contest officially started accepting entries. As of right now you have 44 days to shoot and submit your Doritos commercials. It looks like some filmmakers actually shot their entries before the contest even began because there are already 30 ads in the video gallery. And speaking of the video gallery, Doritos has remodeled and resurrected the classic, scroll-able, video wall. Last year it was a real hassle to watch multiple CTSB entries because the videos were all hosted on a sluggish facebook page. But the new gallery is slick, fancy and fun.

Click to check out the gallery

This year Doritos made another change to the contest; ALL SUBMISSIONS ARE BEING UPLOADED TO YOUTUBE! If you’ve ever tried to upload a CTSB entry at the last minute, you’ll understand why this is a big deal. You can even submit videos that are hosted on your own youtube channel! The old CTSB servers would sometimes have problems in the final hours of the contest because hundreds of people were trying to upload videos at the same time. But now if you enter 20 minutes before the deadline you don’t have to worry that the uploader might crash on you.

Crashthesuperbowl.com is gone so if you want to read the official rules and the contest FAQs, you’l have to head to https://www.doritos.com. If you do decide to enter the Crash this year, be sure to tweet me a link to your entry () and I promise I’ll reply with a 140 character review!

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$19,000 is up for grabs in Womadz’ new Liberty Tax Service video contest

Posted by Dan L. on October 8th, 2013

Lady Liberty likes to watch you do your taxes

Last week the new video contest website Womadz.com launched their first official commercial contest. It’s sponsored by Liberty Tax Service and there are some very nice prizes at stake. The video that gets the most votes will win $10,000 and the video that gets the 2nd most votes will receive $2,000. Then a panel of judges will select 3 winners and each of those videos will earn $2,000. I suspect that some VCN readers may be hesitant to enter this one because some contests that involve online voting can get pretty ugly. But the Womadz system has an interesting safeguard that should discourage people from cheating. Womadz is going to select 20 voters at random and award them $50 each. So if someone votes for themselves 1,000 times, some of their fake votes are probably going to win prizes. And if a bunch of “people” don’t respond to respond to e-mails informing them that they just won 50 bucks (of if the e-mail addresses turn out to be fake) then the Womadz team is going to realize something fishy is going on.

So cheating probably won’t pay off in this contest. I think whoever wins the grand prize is going to have to get it the old fashioned way….by begging for votes on facebook. But the $50 voter prizes will probably make the begging process a whole lot easier.

To enter this contest, filmmakers need to create videos that are aimed at people who are thinking about buying a Liberty Tax franchise. The sponsor has come up with two basic ideas and contestants need to incorporate one of those ideas into their entry. If you want to read the full contest brief, head here: http://www.womadz.com/liberty-tax—45-days-to-ceo

The deadline for entries is November 5th so you’ve still got a few weeks to come up with an entry. If you submit a video and need help getting votes, let me know (via ) and maybe I’ll give you a little plug on twitter or even here on the blog.

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The Canon 70D’s new auto-focus feature actually looks pretty good

Posted by Dan L. on October 4th, 2013

I recently started shooting a new documentary project for a local burlesque troupe (nice work if you can get it) and while I was filming my first rehearsal I realized that my DSLR just wasn’t going to cut it this time. The depth of field was just too shallow and the performers were always going in and out of focus as they moved around the stage. So I’ve started shopping for a new camera that’s good in low light and can auto-focus. I haven’t made up my mind yet but I’m probably going to go with the Canon XF100. All the I’ve seen looks really great and all the reviews say it’s perfect for documentaries.

But the other day, a photographer friend told me I should check out the new Canon 70D. He said it was supposed to have a “revolutionary” new auto-focus feature. I wasn’t expecting much from the camera because my Canon T4i was supposed to have a pretty good auto-focus too. But I’ve found the feature to be totally worthless. In Auto-mode the T4i is always loudly zipping in and out of focus and can never make up its mind about what it should concentrate on.

I figured the 70D would feature a slightly improved version of the T4i’s auto-focus. But based on the camera tests I’ve seen, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Here’s a review from a sorta-kooky camera vlogger named . He does something great in this video; he first demonstrates the auto-focus features of a few different DSLR before finally showing us how the 70D performs. The 70D footage starts at 4:50:

Compared to those other cameras, the 70D’s “Dual Pixel” auto-focus really does look revolutionary. The camera never has to hunt for the primary subject and it also never does wild, blurry focus re-sets. And the motor is whisper-quiet which is another huge plus. The auto-focus isn’t 100% perfect but it looks like a skilled camera assistant is pulling the focus as the subject moves around the room. The image kind of looks like someone stuck a DSLR lens on a regular camcorder.

Here’s another good test video that features some sketchy eminem-looking dude creeping around people’s backyards.

Again, the autofocus wasn’t perfect but it’s certainly good enough for low budget documentaries or video contest entries. If I were to buy a new DSLR right now, this would be the one. I think I paid like $900 for my T4i kit last year and the D70 (body only) is currently going for $1,200 on amazon. That’s a damn fair price. So if you’re thinking of upgrading (maybe before you shoot your Crash the Super Bowl entry) you may want to check out the 70D.

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