We’ve watched all the videos submitted to the Poptent Promo assignment a hundred times, at least. Heck, it’s our own assignment, right? After much internal debate over coffee, heated deliberations over pizza and hours of rooting for our faves in front of the little screen - here are our choices for awards.
The First Place Award and the $1000 go to:
The two Runner Up Awards of $500 go to:
We also wanted to recognize exemplory work from the following creators. These all recieve our congratulations and an ‘honorable mention’.
Thanks for all the efforts in working on these videos! We appreciate your creativity and effort. We’ll be doing more of these assignments soon, so stay tuned for your chance if you didn’t get into this one.
A friend of mine passed this video on to me this morning. Five side-splitting commercials for (now defunct) Ameriquest Mortgage, each with a similar witty punch line. What I love about these is how simple they are. Nothing fancy here, just a tight script and a few clever shots.
Of course, the irony of these spots (and their message) in light of current events is a bit, um, rich. But all things being equal, these commercials are quite amusing as stand-alone stories.
We’ve been overjoyed to have our friends at OurPets.com bring a bunch of their great products to the Poptent network. They’re excited to see your creative commercial video talent that will help promote them. First it was the Flappy Dog Toy, now meet Smart Scoop!
I know there are a lot of pet lovers out there. Heck, we’re all pet lovers here! I’m sure you’ll be able to make some side-splitting videos showing off the Smart Scoop. Submit them to the assignment, get awarded cash - OurPets will be buying three top videos for $2000 each! Plus they’re going to throw in $250 worth of merch to boot. It’s that simple. Head over there now, download the assets and the creative brief and do some creative planning. Remember: the message is the most important thing! Have fun with it. But keep it on point.
Several people have emailed me in the past few weeks asking about good resources for music to add to their videos. It prompted me to write a post to help you guys get a jumpstart on finding good tunes to go with your commercial work.
Option 1
How could I not recommend that you search the Poptent network for musicians? There are dozens of musicians, audio engineers and composers there now, and more joining every day. Strike up a conversation with them. Listen to a few of their tracks. Ask them to collaborate! Do you know musicians who should be on Poptent? Invite them!
Option 2
Find some royalty free music. For example, I was just reading on TechCrunch today that iStockPhoto - the great crowdsource photo resource - just launched their new product iStockAudio.
iStock’s Standard Audio collection now includes more than 11,000 royalty-free, user-generated sound effects and music tracks from 500+ artists along with a fresh Pump Audio collection of over 18,000 single-production music tracks. Pricing hasn’t changed since its launch: royalty-free tracks still start at $2 each with Pump Audio tracks going from $29.
And that’s just one option. There are many sites like this out there cropping up on the web. Here is Mashable’s list of 100+ music resources on the web (warning: this list is nearly 2 years old, it might need some updating, but it’s a good place to start).
[update] I’ve just been looking into more companies that sell inexpensive royalty-free music and found Jamendo. They’re definitely worth a look, as well.
Option 3
One of the best thing to do if you have the time and the means, in my opinion, is to make the music yourself. There are great programs out there that offer a platform for creating music quickly and easily. I use Garage Band for Mac, but there’s also several similar music apps for PCs such as Cakewalk Home Studio, Guitar Pro and Fruity Loops.
Option 4
Befriend your favorite local band. Go to one of their shows, walk up to them after they play and say “Hi, would you like to contribute one of your songs to a video I’m making?” Make a deal with them if your video gets purchased. So many indie bands are looking for new and different outlets just as you are. I can assure you (knowing a lot of indie musicians myself), a lot of them will be more than happy to share or collaborate. Search MySpace Music in your area, or keep an eye on the local listings for clubs in your town.
Conclusion
We all know music is a highly important part of the visual medium of film and video. Get creative. Don’t leave the tunes to the last minute or use filler. It’ll show. There are so many ways to find superb music for use in your projects, be they commercials for Poptent or your own personal work.
Good luck, and by all means share your insights on the comments below. I know I’m only scratching the surface, so let me know about something that’s worked for you.
[update 2] Post Script
I thought it’d be cool to add this recent video from Samantha Ettus. In it, she interviews award winning Hollywood soundtrack producer Ali Dee.
I’m happy to announce (with a hearty congratulations to their creators) that Stouffer’s has selected the first two Poptent videos they’ve agreed to purchase for use in the ABC.com Full Episode Player. They reviewed all of the nearly 100 commercial video submissions from their assignment, and these two stuck a chord with them immediately. Please watch and enjoy.
The Callaway Big Bertha Diablo assignment was a huge hit with over 140 amazing commercials submitted. After reviewing them all, the folks at Callaway have given us a list of their finalists. They will be buying their select choices at $5000 each from among these videos. Congratulations!
The choices for purchase as well as the 3 award winners will be announced shortly. Stay tuned!
And the $500 award for Reel of the Month on Poptent in February goes to:
Congratulations, Dan! Super creative stuff. You will go far.
Honerable Mentions
Our Judges Panel This Month
Derek Hewitt
Senior Vice President of Marketing at TracFone, the fastest growing cell phone company in America
Lance Weiler
Founder, the Workbook Project. Writer and Director of “Head Trauma”. Recently named one of “The 18 People Who Changed Hollywood” by Business Week magazine.
David Schoneveld
Senior Digital FX Artist at Hydraulx. Particle and Fluid Dynamics Instructor at The Gnomon School of Visual Effects in Hollywood. Previously Senior Digital FX Artist at Dreamworks Animation.
Denise Zimmerman
President and Chief Strategy Officer of NetPlus Marketing, a digital agency based in greater Philadelphia. She has authored numerous articles and white papers on developments in the online world, and speaks at iMedia Summits and Shop.org conferences frequently.
John Shanley
Creative Director at NetPlus Marketing, a Top 50 Interactive Agency
Steve Rockman
Vice President of the StarGroup, a full service ad agency based in Philadelphia.
Hey all you pet lovers out there, come check out the excellent new assignment on the Poptent network! Our new friends at OurPets.com have lots of fantastic pet toys and products including the soon-to-launch, super fun Flappy Dog Toy. It squeeks!
This assignment has THREE awards of $2000 each, plus OurPets is going to throw an additional $250 of cool stuff on top of that. Let’s see what you’ve got! Get those cute pet videos up now!
