I wrote about a video contest that I entered for ZorbEEZ. I found out today that I didn’t make it into the top 5 for the contest. I don’t think that I did the best job of telling about how wonderful the product is, but I think I made a good video. It was a fun shoot. Since I didn’t win I’ve posted it on YouTube and can now link it here to my blog.

enjoy the Dam Video!

I watched a lot of TV when I was a kid, and I loved it. Those shows were the BEST, but I don’t want to watch them now. I don’t want to ruin my memories. I production quality and dialog and action in those shows don’t really stand up to my memories. The Dukes of Hazard, The A-Team, Transformers, GI Joe, Robotech, Voltron, G-Force, He-Man just to mention a few. Well, as I’m getting older, so are the directors and authors. I think that they sit around and think, “Man I loved that show when I was a kid, we ought to redo it so it lives up to our memories”. Now there’s a whole slew of new-old movies.

Scooby-Doo, Josie and the Pussycats, Aeon Flux, Thunderbirds, Popeye, Underdog, George of the Jungle, He-Man, Transformers, GI Joe, Speed Racer. A short list of my childhood favorites that have made it to the big screen. A few of these have actually come full circle.

George of the Jungle and Transformers started out as traditional animated tv shows, became feature films, and then when back to the tv screen as animated shows.

I wonder if part of this is a lack of imagination, or just of love of the past. The thing that spawn this thought is an add I saw today saying that you can watch full episode of the tv show BUCK ROGERS on NBC.com.

Link to Buck I can’t believe it. I wonder if they’re going to make a movie out of this? Actually, the tv show Farscape was kinda like Buck Rogers.  But then the Buck Rogers that I watched as a kid was just a re-make of an older story wasn’t it? 

Well it’s not the whole movie, and I made up the name Shoestring Cinema (I think I did?) but this is WONDERFUL! I’m going to try and find some more information about it but it looks like these guys shot it with their digital camera.

When deciding what size trampoline to get the kids for Christmas, we opted for the larger one without the netting thinking that we would just bury it in the ground. HA! That’s just a little bit of work. Good thing I don’t have anything going on and it’s not getting hotter. btw, that’s water from the sprinklers and not all sweat soaking through my shirt.

See how that boy of mine has his own little nest so that he can supervise my progress?  Such helpers.

Well, the top 20 videos selected by Schick and open to public vote were announced today. Unfortunately, the video that I made was not one of them. I’d like to think that there was some sort of clerical error. Oh well. I shot and edited the video in one day (including a location shoot in Payson) and then had some technical difficulties when it was uploaded. I’d like to think that because the video didn’t have a chance to be seen, it couldn’t get any positive ratings and therefore wasn’t consider by the brand. I think that it’s a winner.

Thanks again to Jon, Amy, and Peter for helping out with the video.

I wonder if it’s my sketches that they want or if it’s just the fact that it’s part of the Lord of the Rings set. Not matter what their reasoning may be, I feel honored that they would but one of my sketches.

Really it’s just some of my work. The Indiana Jones Heritage Sketch Cards that I worked on are on sale now.

I’ve been bit by the contest bug. I put the deadlines for a bunch of contests in my calendar so that I can try and be better organized about entering them. I’m still waiting to hear back on the ZorbEEZ and 100 Grand candy bar contests, but while I’m waiting I’ve entered a new one.

The Schick Quattro Titanium razor YouTube contest.  Mine is called “Schick Bigfoot“.
This is the first video contest that I’ve decided to get someone else to be in front of the camera. I mentioned that I was trying to be better about scheduling these projects but they just sneak up on me. So I lined up a girl for the shoot last Sunday (the 9th) and then called the guy on Wednesday thee 12th. LOL the contest deadline is 6AM on the Tuesday 18th and he’s going to be out of town until Sunday night! I decided to take it on as a personal challenge and do the whole thing in one day.

I picked them up around 7:30AM on Monday and we drove to Payson. I checked the weather and found out that there was a 40% chance of precipitation (and with the weather being so cold, that means SNOW!). We started shooting around 10:00 and then headed back into town for some lunch close to 12:00. I got back to my house and worked on my day job, took care of some kids, had some dinner, and then started editing.

Things went pretty good until I have to compress the movie down below 100MB. It just wasn’t working out for me. When I finally got it down to size, it took FOREVER to upload to YouTube. I ended up staying up until 5:45AM to try and confirm that I had actually entered the contest.

I checked the next morning and found that my video was entered in the contest BUT it wouldn’t play!!!! Something was wrong with the file! I contacted YouTube, Google, and the Schick contest people to try and get everything worked out. It finally started working this afternoon.

So here’s what I now know about the way the contest works, I had until 6:00AM to get my video entered. THEN, people vote on it and if I get a 50% or higher approval rating the contest sponsors will look over the videos and select their top 20. Those top 20 are then submitted for a public vote. The vote to try and get the high approval rating and move to the selection round ENDED 6 hours after I posted my video. I had one person rate my video at 5 out of 5 stars, but I don’t know when that happened.

After all that work, I’m not even sure that I got into the contest! I had a blast making it though. Here are a few stills from the video and then a link to it on YouTube. I’ll have more information to follow.

Special thanks go out to

Jon our Wildman/Bigfoot

Amy our keen tracker

and Peter who was snapping twigs and manning security

Lastly, we did get snow! On the way up this hill there was snow everywhere. It was a white out! Then, we got to the other side of the hill and it was gone. As we were leaving lunch, it started to snow pretty good.

here’s the link again Schick Bigfoot

I went over to the Bandit page on Heavy.com to see if there were any new posts about my video. I don’t really visit the site very often, I just signed up to enter the contest. So I checked and what do I see?

11,109 total video views.

WOW! The video was added on Nov. 26th. I’ve got a new video contest that I’ve entered on YouTube, but the video isn’t working quite right yet. I’ll post some info about it when I can get the link working right.

For those of you who may be a bit “Sketchy” on what the sketch cards are all about, here’s a video that explains things a bit more.