Jake & Will: CONTEST WARRIORS

My friend Nic Chatfield (whom you know if you watched the superbowl), and I got together a couple weeks ago to decide what creative project to collaborate on. We landed on the Jim Beam remake contest worth 25,000 grand. I pitched him my idea and he loved it, but after concluding that the contest wasn't viable because of rule restrictions I gracefully bowed out of the project.

A couple days later Nic called and told me he was going ahead with the idea, rules be damned. He produced the entire thing, called in all his favors and proceeded to make one of the best Jim Beam commercials I've seen in a long time. I get a writer and associate producer credit for this one.

-Jake

Check it out.

Here's our latest contest entry for the JustDoOne.org Video Contest, worth $5000. Please watch it, RATE IT, and comment!

Recently, Doritos offered $1,000,000 cash in a voting based video contest for the Super Bowl.

In 2008, Klondike gave a guy $100,000 for a video he made at virtually no cost.

Netflix is currently hosting a contest where users submit scripts for a chance to win $500,000.

They get thousands of hits on their website, and people dedicating weeks of their lives to thinking about their product. For us, it's an excuse to hone our skills with the potential for a HUGE payoff.

Video contests have become a marketing phenomenon, so much so that there are sites like Vidopp.com dedicated solely to cataloging, listing and keeping track of all of them.

Vidopp has a fantastic article on the meteoric rise of the video contest. It shows that in 2008 alone, over 2.6 million dollars was awarded by video contests:

http://www.vidopp.com/over-26-million-in-video-contests-on-vidopp-in-2008/

Their projection is that those numbers will only increase.

And that's great news for us.

We went to our friend's apartment just around the corner and shot for a couple hours on a whim. It turns out that we were making a masterpiece. It's sexy, it's fun and it stars Morgan Landers lip-syncing Katy Perry's "I Kissed A Girl".



Winner Prize: We didn't get nominated for the top twenty, but it was still worth it. We learned a lot about lighting making this one.

We drove out to the middle of the desert to find the perfect location. We took an afternoon to shoot the whole thing with a minimal four person crew. Jocelyn Hsu ran sound and Blake Anderson held the camera. For this piece we were awarded 4th Place out of 76 videos.



Prize Won: An electric meat smoker. No joke!
How it was used: ...

The Logitech: liberate your life contest was a perfect storm for us. Instead of making one video we made two and had everyone we know vote for both. This contest was our first time working with Alejandro Wilkins, an excellent cinematographer, and our second time working with Brandon Griffith, an absolutely brilliant sound guy.



Prize won: $2500 for each. Totaling $5000.
How it was used: Paying down our credit card debt.

This is the first contest we won. We contributed chapter five to a six chapter series, think video, "choose your own adventure," where a bunch of different film makers submit for each chapter and only one emerges victorious.



Prize Won: $250 and a balance beam.
How it was used: Bought everyone dinner at Crazy Rockin' Sushi.


Then all of the winners of the past five chapters compete for a chance at the final chapter. Which we won as well.



Prize Won: $2000.
How it was used: Buying a new arri lighting kit.

This was actually our first contest entry, but before we had the idea for Video Contest Warriors, or VCW, whatev'. Actually say VCW, it sounds cooler, like you're in an exclusive club, which you kind of are.



We didn't win anything for this, but we sure had fun making it.