2005 Grain Belt Premium Commercial Contest
Well, let me just say this...we made the top 60. We did not win 1st, 2nd, or even third. I don't want to say that we were out of our league, but we were definitely out of our element. In my opinion, our commercial was great. Apparently, what it lacked was lesbian barbie dolls, gay men and a sexual innuendo every 2 minutes. It also didn't help that this contest was organized like shit. Aside from the technical difficulties every 15 minutes or so, the emcee (also a judge in the competition) admitted to be close personal friends with more than one of the top 10 finalists. Now don't get me wrong, the top two were definitely deserving of their respective prizes. They had very high production values and were obviously made by industry professionals. Which is fine, I enjoyed them both. Our commercial did not go over too well with the several drunk college co-eds that made up the majority of the audience. Maybe it was because we were the first or second commercial to play after a 5 minute technical delay (the audience was already getting very restless), or because the audio was so god damn low that it was nearly inaudible. But maybe it just didn't connect with the audience. Regardless of the outcome, Chad and I both had fun making the commercial. I think we did a bang up job considering we found out about the contest 15 days or so before the deadline, wrote the dang thing in a day and shot/edited it in a day. Now that the contest is over, maybe we can post the commercial on icebreakermovie.com for a week or so.
P.S. Sorry if this post seems garbled. Nick need sleepy.
posted by Nick Evert at 10:40 PM
2 Comments:
Hell, at least we got a chance to shoot some video. We might've been out of our element when compared to the subject matter of the other submissions, but while we were shooting the spot, we were definitely in our element. And this commercial is only a taste of what we're going to get to do in a few months.
The way I see it, it would've been nice to get $1500 for our movie (not to mention a year's worth of Grain Belt!), but our primary concern always has and will be IceBreaker.
Those who performed well at this year's competition should pay themselves on the back and look forward to next year. But I don't really see us doing this contest again next year. Because by this time next year, IceBreaker should be on its way to Sundance. And who needs to win a local beer commercial contest when you've got a feature motion picture traveling the country on the festival circuit?
Tonight was definitely an experience though. And if nothing else, I got a free can of Grain Belt to drink while watching the screening. I mean, come on! How often do you get to drink beer in a movie theater?!
I guess what we were going for was something that Grain Belt could actually use in a real television ad campaign. I would say that about 90% of the commercials we saw last night were unfit for TV- either becasue they weren't compelling enough or because of content.
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