Winning Entries to be Announced on Thursday
This Thursday, at the Kabuki Theater in San Francisco, we’ll be screening top ads, discussing community generated content and video on the web, announcing the three winning entries along with two honorable mentions. We’ll be putting as much of that on the web as possible, both on Thursday and on Friday.
If you’re in the area and would like to attend the Firefox Flicks Awards Celebration, please email our event coordinator, Debbie Litle and we’ll get you added to the list. We have limited seating so if you think you can attend this Thursday, mid-day, please email Debbie quickly and she’ll send you the formal invite.
April 24th, 2006 at 12:13 pm
So basically, if you haven’t heard from Firefox yet, you’ve lost the contest. Is that safe to assume? If the winners are flown out to be at the ceremony on Thursday for the announcement, you would have known by now.
-Eric
April 24th, 2006 at 12:40 pm
We’re in the process of contacting the winners now.
- A
April 24th, 2006 at 12:55 pm
http://www.sallad.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/oldblog/loser.jpg
April 24th, 2006 at 1:09 pm
I don\’t know how anybody is expected to show up. Even if I won I couldn\’t make it, and I\’m only two hours by car. Don\’t buy too much cake.
April 24th, 2006 at 1:12 pm
This whole contest just doesn’t make sense.
People who have put in tons of hard work and haven’t had their flicks uploaded have been royally screwed over. Even though I have not participated in the contest directly, I can’t help but feel disenchanted about the submission/voting process.
It doesn’t matter whether or not your an artist or amateur. The point is that you put in effort to be creative. The contest would only seem competitive if everyone’s flicks were viewable and eligible for voting at the same time. Even as a critic, how can I compare a current flick with one that I haven’t even seen yet?
Firefox team - I know converting/compressing/uploading videos is a royal pain in the arse. I’ve had to do it before and it sucks. However, if you want the contest to be fair then you all should seriously consider the following:
1. Upload everyone’s work
2. Reset the comments/poll data
3. Make voting stricter (use captchas to prevent fraud)
4. Figure out a way to balance your front page (what about the “long tail” of submissions?)
Maybe the results won’t be THAT different. Maybe certain flicks will STILL prevail. One thing is certain - you will be doing the FAIR thing. At least there will be a benchmark (an even zero-second start).
I think we need to turn this back into a contest for/by the loyal enthusiasts before picking any winner.
April 24th, 2006 at 1:19 pm
So if we haven’t been contacted by now, then we lost? Man, I was hoping to go to SF. Well as long as my work gets uploaded to the site I’ll be happy. Congrats to those who one.
April 24th, 2006 at 1:23 pm
Slicio, the top three winners were selected by judges and had nothing to do with the votes at the website or which videos were posted to the website. The original plan was to not start posting videos to the website until after the winners were announced (starting with the winners and adding a few more each day) but we got lots of feedback from our community that they wanted to see the videos sooner so we started posting them sooner.
We’re offering the website as additional visibility for the contest entries, but it was not tied to the contest itself so there isn’t a lot of value in making sure that the voting is perfect there.
The website “results” you’re talking about have no impact on which entries our panel of expert judges selected. No web voting system that gets any level of participation is scam proof so I don’t see a lot of value in investing resources to make Flicks voting perfectly accurate.
- A
April 24th, 2006 at 1:39 pm
Congratulations to the top 3 and the 2 runner ups. We all put in effort, time and love into our ads and I want to thank Firefox for creating this contest and giving us this great opportunity. I would also like to thank Asa for handling the blog with class and professionalism and for getting back to any questions I had quickly.
Thumbs up!
Marc
April 24th, 2006 at 2:08 pm
so excited to know who the winners are…
April 24th, 2006 at 2:08 pm
Nice work, EVERYONE. The spots look great, the site is organized, and the contest was/is fun!
Let me just *bump* the explanation that the online voting had NO bearing on the results of the contest. It was/is just to see what people are watching, and how they like(d) it.
Looking forward to seeing the rest of the flicks!
April 24th, 2006 at 2:15 pm
Oh, I forgot to mention, we’re trying to set up a webcast (nothing definite yet) so that everyone can share in the celebration. Will have more on that later. We’re definitely going to video it and get lots of photos so if we can’t live webcast, we’ll work on getting videos online soon after the event.
- A
April 24th, 2006 at 2:23 pm
Silico, calm your fire, it seems you didnt read the contest rules. Web votes has nothing to do with the judges.
However one thing you may complain is the delay of the decision and the sudden announcement of the SF Film Festvial thingy. It makes it hard for someone far away to make plans in such short notice, plus being unsure if he /she is a winner or not.
Other than that, this is a great contest, l learned a lot no matter if i won or not.
April 24th, 2006 at 2:23 pm
What an attitude. Saying these Flicks are about the community that loves your product. And then being deaf to our pleas. I will NOT be participating next year; if nobody will step up and admit things are SERIOUSLY wrong around here, than screw it.
I just cannot understand the attitude that would claim this contest is based around the community that supports firefox, but nothing is done to give back to that community when we pour hundreds of thousands of man-hours into our pieces.
Shame.
April 24th, 2006 at 2:30 pm
forget:
with that attitude, mind as well quit your film / video passion now. There are people making features, and got nothing in return, but still lived on - Ang Lee was jobless for 10 years, he lived for his passion. This is a 30 second spot, treat it as an experience.
not a shame
April 24th, 2006 at 2:42 pm
true, it’s only a contest and only a 30-sec spot, and i will always cherish the learning experience and hassle that it was, however i’m still annoyed at how there wasn’t a set date to announce the winners; one email said the 21st, the other the 25th. we all put a lot of time and passion into our work and feel as though we are not getting the feedback we need on this project. no notice to let us know the media we sent worked fine or anything like that. i’m just frustrated.
April 24th, 2006 at 2:47 pm
hmmm way to focus on the wrong point.
We are a community of millions, HUNDREDS of whom have put thousands of hours into FREE commercials for a product we believe in. The blog comments are appalling, people are tearing eachother\’s throats out from frustration in the way this is being run. Not ONE, NOT A SINGLE ONE of our concerns have made a change around here. With hundreds of ads, in total worth Millions of dollars, you would think that would not be the case.
April 24th, 2006 at 3:04 pm
Forget,
What concerns did you have? I’m not being funny or sarcastic. I thought the whole thing went as any contest would go. It’s true we poured lots of free man hours and used thousands of dollars in equipment and software (mostly pirated or not licensed for commercial use), but we weren’t forced to do any of this. They asked and we replied. Also, I spelled “won” wrong.
April 24th, 2006 at 3:13 pm
nebbie, sorry about the confusion on the announce date. I believe that we said “the week of the 24th”. You’ll also remember that we extended the contest two weeks to accomodate the scores of people in our community who said they didn’t find out soon enough. That also may have led to some confusion about the close date or the announcement date, but I think it was the right thing to do to extend the contest period to let more of our community participate. Had we not done that, we would have had more time between the close of the contest and the celebration of the winning three entries but getting more people involved felt like the right decision.
Also, I want to say it again, that this does not end with the announcement of the winners. “Whee!” didn’t get half a million plays at Flicks and another half million plays at other video sites because we announced the winners. It got a million plays because people thought it was entertaining. We’re going to keep posting videos and I don’t think we’ll see any slowdown in traffic by announcing the top three — if anything, we should get a slight bump in visibility (though nothing compared to what we get when a video “takes off” like “Whee!” did).
- A
April 24th, 2006 at 3:20 pm
what time is a safe bet to know you are not a winner? Its a torture to be left hanging!!! ahhh!!!!!!!
April 24th, 2006 at 3:51 pm
Now is probably a safe time to assume you lost.
April 24th, 2006 at 4:01 pm
i guess…
April 24th, 2006 at 5:35 pm
Since it’s pretty obvious the losers aren’t entirely pysched with their exposure - why not post ALL the videos now?
April 24th, 2006 at 9:15 pm
To all the sore losers out there i say this… no-one held a gun to your head and demanded you enter the competition. The point of the exercise was to inspire us all to use our creativity and imagination to make an advertisement. The exposure itself is fantastic, and for those who feel they were hard done-by… that’s the industry. If you can’t handle disappointment or discouragement- albeit unintentional- then you need to reconsider your place in this magical, but competitive industry. Good luck to the nominees!
April 24th, 2006 at 9:45 pm
As far as I see it: EVERYONE IS A WINNER.
Firefox Flicks challenged the world to create a 30-second Firefox commercial to be judged by a jury and only 280 teams picked up that challenge. Those teams knew there could only be a few winners — of course, we all dreamed we would win, but the real prize was really just exercising our creativity, and completing our entries. Congratulations to everyone who entered: as far as I’m concerned, you all successfully rose to the challenge and are winners.
You know what would be really nice? Maybe Firefox Flicks could duplicate a DVD of all 140 minutes and mail it to each of the teams, as a way of saying ‘Thank-you’. (And post all of the entries, so we can see our work online. At this rate, it’s going to take another month. It’s almost like the contest has to go dark for two months after it closes so all the entries can be digitized and then all posted online at the same time, while the jury deliberates.)
Cheers,
Airlock Machine
April 24th, 2006 at 9:58 pm
Waaaaa~~~ Waaaaaaa~~~~ I lost!
April 25th, 2006 at 7:19 am
please guys
there is a small team at firefox putting THEIR hours into digitizing these entries. Its very upsetting to hear such talk about how the contestants are recieving nothing out of this. “Forget”, you need to re-examine why you entered the contest. If there was only one acceptable outcome for the contest for you , (winning 5,000 dollars) then your chances were very small. You should not have entered if you thought you might lose, becasue now that you obviously have not won, you are putting others through a hard time on the blogs. Please just accept the fact that there are others out there that apparently have a bigger passion for film than you, and dont harp on them because their taking your light.
I got more than i ever would have guessed out of this contest. NO, i didnt recieve 5000 from B&H, yet i did master some modeling in Maya 7, and greatly improved my skills in Final Cut. Without this contest I would have never had such experiences. I am only 18 and still in high school, yet i have a lifetime ahead to produce wonderful films for others to enjoy. Now it is the winners turn’s. I’m sure they havent won film contests right and left. Why dont you sit in front of the winners on thursday, and take notes on some good aspects of their entries. You can learn a lot from others, and that just might help you out later on. There is nothing to lose in a contest like this.
Sincerely
Donnie Strubler
April 25th, 2006 at 7:27 am
Not posting all the ads was a serious mistake. no doubt about it. how can you compete with ads that are online weeks before yours? getting a lot of exposure is clearly an advantage.
In theory, that had nothing to do with the judges vote, but believing that is not believing in marketing as such- which is the starting point for a contest like this one.
I’m confused about the selection process for choosing the ads that made it into the webpage. Did you choose the 50+ best ones? the ones you got first? it’s weird that the 5 chosen ones are already posted. It’s very weird. I have to trust that the judges got to see all of them, but in my heart I’m not sure about that.
April 25th, 2006 at 7:38 am
alright, now that the winner’s announced … seriously… no comment
April 25th, 2006 at 8:16 am
cleancut, I don’t think it was purely our idea of “the 50 best ones”. We posted what we thought was a good cross-section of ads, from humorous to serious and everything in between. We certainly tried to launch the site and build early momentum by highlighting a set of ads that we thought would be compelling and entertaining to a broad audience.
- A
April 25th, 2006 at 8:48 am
ahahhaha…what a joke!!!….ahahahahahah ( laughing…seriously!)
ready everyone??
i am gonna start my own contest…….
http://www.firefuxflicks.com
send stuff please!…NOW!…wheeeeeeee!!wheeeee!!!,,prrr..prrrr…!!!!
April 25th, 2006 at 12:16 pm
Cleancut, I am going to have to agree with you on this one. I think it is a very strange coincidence that all 5 of the chosen ads were from ones that were already up on the site.
There are 230 ads that nobody has seen yet, and I have to question if the judges really saw all of those too or just checked out the website and picked from there.
I have to assume that there not all of the 230 unposted ads are that bad. In fact, 3 of the chosen ads were from the very first group of ads posted, 1 was from the 3rd group posted and the 5th was from the 4th group posted. It seems as if having your ad posted early was a huge advantage, weather Asa will admit that or not.
Whatever the case, this contest has left a bad taste in my mouth…
April 25th, 2006 at 6:02 pm
Oh well, guys. Every system is flawed in the end. Props to the winners; they played thier networking game and won.
April 25th, 2006 at 11:10 pm
I think it’s obvious that the people who are frustrated and complaining are people who didn’t get their videos shown. While, yes, that’s completely frustrating, there’s no need to flood these comments, or the video comments with non-stop hating, not to mention stupid technical complaints.. I mean, really? You’re actually complaining about why Quicktime is used, etc.. on a video comment page?
Regardless, the videos chosen by the judges (not by the rating system on the site) were all great videos, and should be appreciated as great ideas. Sure, perhaps if this continues on to future contests, things should probably be handled differently in certain areas, but appreciate the fact that these guys have put sleepless nights into this, and called to us to say what we think about their product (something that rarely happens).
All the people that are pissing and moaning will probably weed out if this happens again, which will make it even better next time. Thanks to all you guys that worked hard for this, Mozilla people and contestants. It’s inspiring looking at all of these great ideas.
April 26th, 2006 at 7:20 am
I think you must have 250 t-shirts lying around that you can give to all the participants. A hat? Mousepad? Maybe you could give us Firefox for free? Oh wait…
April 27th, 2006 at 11:06 am
I have to say that next time around, it would be best if all the ads were posted before being judged. No one is as enthusiastic about watching these ads now that we know who won. I’m definitely still going to watch (and not just because mine hasn’t been posted yet). I’ve seen one today that looked like it should’ve won a prize. I seriously question the choice of putting up a “cross-section” of ads. Asa, you should’ve just said you were putting them up in order that you received them. I would’ve believed that and not been annoyed at these “choices”. Anywho, my frustration is gone, although I’m still disappointed, but it was definitely an invaluable lesson learned. And it’s great to see everyone’s take on the subject, there are some really inspired ads out there. Imagine if we all got together and made a series of shorts for a dvd to promote ourselves. Just putting out there, doubt anyone will care.