Video Contest Tips Part 1

Recently, I’ve been entering several online video contests to try and actually put my filmmaking skills to some use. Yes, making videos for friends and families to watch is nice, but making films for money is nicer! Plus, I actually like to compete, it makes things more fun and interesting. And I liking winning, but I would like to think that I won because of the merits of my skills, and not because my competitor’s entries were lame.

So I’ve thought of the following video contest tips in the hopes that a fellow competitor will read them and apply them so as to beef up my competition. Why oh why would you do that? Because online video contests is a new form of marketing and wealth destribution, but the “THE MAN” wants their monies worth, and if us “Little People” want the monies, we gatta deliver the goods. Not just deliver them, but deliver them in a nice package for everyone’s viewing pleasure. If the quality of video entries don’t increase, then “THE MAN” will just stop this new system of wealth distribution. Let me break it down for you:

Online Video Contests + Lame Entries = :( Sad Corporate Honchos (”We paid $25,000 for that!? Screw this, no more contests.”)

Online Video Contests + Great Entries = :) Happy Corporate Honchos (”Yay! Let’s Increase the prize for next year’s competition!”)

We’re doing good for now because the Honchos are actually increasing the amount of reward prizes , so that last year’s prizes totaled close to a million dollars.

Following tips are also for me to remember them, less I break these “Tips/Rules” for making videos for future video contests. I’ve actually broken a couple, which is the reason why they’ve come about. Enjoy.

TIP #1 Don’t Shoot/Edit/Turn In Your Entry the Same Day It’s DUE

I’ve actually broken this Rule with a recent Youtube contest for Swiffer. Because I’m also going to school, I don’t have a lot of time alloted for contests, but I really wanted to enter this contest, so 5 or 6 hours before it was due, my friend and I shot it, and I edited it - 5 hours later it was done, but it was too late, I had passed the deadline mark. I’m pretty fast at shooting and editing, and I would have made the deadline if it wasn’t for Youtube’s slow uploading process. Which leads into my next tip:

TIP #2 Know Thy Upload Size/Time

If you are going to upload it on the same day it’s due, Don’t estimate your final export size, KNOW it, live it, smell it before hand. Also, look up your uploading size, kilobytes per second and what not, so that you can also estimate how long it will take to upload. With my Swiffer entry, I overestimated my export size, and I underestimated how long it was going to take for it to upload to Youtube.

TIP #3 READ THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS THOUROUGHLY, AND THEN AGAIN, AND AGAIN

A lot of the lame entries just don’t read them - at all - thus, their lameness. Read the terms and conditions because it basically tells you how to win. Right there! In big bold letters, Terms and Conditions = HOW TO WIN, STUPID! Trust me, if you don’t, then you’ll probably end up doing something that the TnC tells you in plain English not to do.

For example, for a recent contest on Youtube, the TnC said “Do not infringe on other people’s copy righted material!” Duhhh! So what this lay-mo did was put a Justin Timberlake song on his entry. You can’t use other’s stuff to make money for you, that’s illegal. Music? Use royalty-free music. Soda Cans? House hold products? Foods? Make up your own brands or something, but for God’s sake, don’t have them directly in the shot. I had a problem where for one of my contest entries I had a Disney character in one shot, so what I did was I blurred/pixelated it out COPS-style. And it looked funnier because of it!

TIP # 4 DO NOT USE GREEN/BLUE SCREEN

Don’t….It’s painful to watch. Only do it if you are a trained , or if you’ve read lots of books on how to do it right PLUS lots of practice after you’ve read the books PLUS a good program to key out the colors.

There’s this one Lay-mo that enters a lot of contests and repeatedly uses God Aweful green screen, where the green bleeds onto his outline, and so, it looks like his edges are disappearing. It looks utterly, abysmally dreadful.

That’s all for now. I’ll have more soon.