Archive for the ‘Recent Results’ Category

Why Open Education Matters winners

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.
 

Ecos Detergent’s “Get Washed” winners

Man, early summer is really a slow time for “video contest news.” I’ve been looking for interesting story ideas for the last few days but I haven’t seen anything that’s especially post-worthy. Well…I guess I could just post the video that won the Ecos “Get Washed” contest. Ok, so this spring the makers of Ecos “all natural” detergent asked their fans to create a commercial for them that was good enough to air on TV.  There was a public voting phase to determine the finalists and then judges picked the ultimate winners. Here’s the video that won the top prize.

Grand Prize Winner.  Prize: $10,000:
 

 
Apparently that was shot with an actual, old-fashioned 8MM camera.  The video kind of has a quaint charm to it but I was really surprised by this pick.  It’s not something that Ecos could ever air on TV, is it? I guess they must have given up on the “make our TV commercial” plan.  Oh well, it’s too nice outside to care. Two other videos won runner up prizes and you can see them . Or you could just go for a walk around the block. I recommend the latter option.
 

Speedstick’s “Don’t Sweat it, Hande it” winners

Yo, WTF is going on over on Tongal?  In the last few weeks there’s been just an avalanche of new contests being announced on that site.  I just checked and they’ve got 13 open contests right now.  I really need to do more entries for them.  One contest I meant to enter was the “Don’t Sweat it, Handle it” contest that Tognal ran for SpeedStick.  But of course I forgot and the contest is long over.  Here’s the pretty funny video that won the grand prize.

First Place Winner.  Prize:  $12,500:

And a special congratulations goes out to friend of VCN Jared Anderson who scored the #2 spot in this contest!

Second Place Winner.  Prize.  $4,000

Funny stuff.  Actually there were a lot of great winners in this contest.  You can see them all here.  If you feel like a dope for missing this one, guess what….Tongal is running a second “Don’t Sweat it, Handle it” contest right now.  But this time the winning video will feature a voice over from actor Danny Purdi who of course plays Abed on Community.  Details for that one are right here.
 

Roomba’s iRobot Dance Revolution winners

Dagnabbit.  I forgot to enter Roomba’s contest.  To enter, all you had to do was shoot a video of yourself doing the robot to roomba’s new theme song.  20 people won robotic vacuums that retail for about $600.  Vacuuming by hand is for dorks who aren’t awesome enough to own robotic slaves. So I really wanted to win one of those things.  Oh well.  There was a public vote phase and here’s the video that came in first.  Caution: After you watch this video you’re probably going to have the roomba-roomba song stuck in your head for the next few days the rest of your life.
 

 
I have to say, the face the robot guy makes at the 0:40 is freaking brilliant. There wasn’t really any extra prize for winning the public vote so I hope Roomba sends that guy two vacuums so he can wear one on each foot and ride around town like he’s the king of the robots.
 

“Welcome to Prizes.org” winner

VCN super-fans may remember that a few months ago the site was covered in ads promoting Prizes.org’s “Welcome to Prizes.org” video contest.   The company was looking for an official “explainer video” that would you know….explain how the site worked.  They got a bunch of nice entries but here’s the very impressive submission that won the top prize.  If you head to the Prizes.org homepage you’ll notice that the winning video is the first thing you see when you visit the site.

Prizes.org winner.  Prize:  $10,000:

I was at a party about a week ago and there happened to be a whole bunch of filmmakers and editors there.  I asked everyone what kind of projects they worked on recently and I can’t tell you how many times the phrase “explainer video” came up.  Every website that offers some new kind of service needs an explainer video and most of the ones I’ve seen are very similar in style to the above animation.  Hmm, maybe I should find an animation class I can take this summer…..
 

Ringo announces the winner of his video contest

It seems like a lot of bands are running music video contests these days and I always stay far away from them.  Producing 3 or 4 minutes of interesting video content is pretty damn hard.  And for some weird reason, the prizes are usually pretty small.  Ringo Starr just ran a music video contest for his new song “Wings” and even though Ringo has got to be like a mega-super-millionaire the grand prize was only $3,000.  I happen to think Ringo is awesome and I doubt he had much to do with the contest.  But these small prizes just guarantee that there won’t be too many great entries.  Of course, the winner does get a credit as the director of Ringo’s official music video.  And that’s pretty sweet.  But that credit kind of seems less impressive if you know the video was made for a contest.

Anyways, like I said, Ringo is cool.  And the video he made to announce the winner of his contest is pretty funny.  You can tell that someone probably just pulled him into his backyard to shoot this.  Then even though a incredibly loud plane flies right overhead, Ringo kept going.  So one take was all that Ringo had time for.  But he does say something pretty perfect at the end that saves the whole video:
 

 
And now here’s the music video that won the contest.  As you’ll hear/see, this was a really hard song to make a video for since there were long breaks where there weren’t any lyrics:
 

 
You can read the details of the contest or see more entries right here.  Peace and love, peace and love, peace and love.
 

Pringles’ “Tournament of Flavors” winners

This spring Pringles ran the biggest contest in the history of Tongal and paid out $45,000 in prize money.  Pringles picked 16 winning videos and featured them in a campain they called the “Tournament of Flavors.”  Facebook Fans were asked to vote for their favorite flavor-themed shorts until just one submission was left standing.  Here’s the video that won the tournament:
 

 
That was pretty cool.  But that video didn’t actually win he contest.  The “tournament” was just kind of for fun.  Voters had the chance to win prizes but the filmmakers didn’t win anything in the facebook poll.  Pringles picked their winners on Tongal before the tournament was even launched.  Ten videos earned $50o, four got $1,000 and then the top five were award prizes ranging from $2,000 to $12,500.  The above video came in 3rd and the director (hey, it was the same guy that made this great Hoverboard video and this amazing Duct Tape video) won $3,000.  Here’s the video that won the actual contest:
 
First Place Winner.  Prize:  $12,500:


 
Man, I really liked that one.  It was very well made and felt so genuine despite the absurd subject matter.  Actually, almost all of the 16 winners are pretty well done.  Some people really went all out and did incredibly elaborate submissions.  You can see all the winning videos right .  But be warned: watching all 16 of these videos will probably make you want to eat some pringles as soon as possible.  Damn I wish I had  tube of Sour cream and onion right now.
 

Chevy to air Mofilm-made commercial across Europe

Whenever a winning video contest entry winds up on TV it’s a big deal.  For the second time this year, Chevy has decided to start airing a commercial that won one of their Mofilm contests.  Last time it was “Happy Grad” which aired during the Super Bowl.  This time it’s the Chevy Volt commercial “Zombie Ride” by Josh Soskin.  The ad won first place, $8,000 and a trip for two to Spain in Mofilm’s Barcelona competition.  It looks like “Zombie Ride” was shot in Southern California but it definitely has a cool, European vibe to it.  The spot is scheduled to start airing as part of a “European-wide” campaign in a few weeks. Over the years I’ve probably seen hundreds of video contest entries that featured zombies but this one actually managed to feel totally unique and fresh.  I can’t embed the video so click the image to check it out:

Like I said, click this image to view

Pretty awesome, no?  Good thing that wasn’t Lori from the Walking Dead driving that Volt otherwise she would have flipped the car after going like 40 feet down the road.  If you don’t get that joke you need to watch a lot more TV.
 


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