SAN FRANCISCO – April 27, 2006 – Mozilla today announced the winners of its Firefox Flicks video contest at the San Francisco International Film Festival. The winning videos were selected from nearly 300 submissions created by Firefox enthusiasts from around the world, who responded to the opportunity to help promote Firefox through short film.
The grand prize winner, “Daredevil,” will be short-listed for the NY Festival of Advertising’s 2006 International Advertising Awards in May, and the finalists’ Firefox videos will be incorporated into Mozilla’s 2006 marketing activities. The contest and today’s announcement of the winners wrap up the initial launch of the Firefox Flicks campaign, which will continue throughout 2006.
The winning submissions are:
Grand Prize
“Daredevil” by Pete Macomber
http://www.firefoxflicks.com/flick/?id=19326
Second Place
“Wheee!” by Jeff Gill
http://www.firefoxflicks.com/flick/?id=19542
Third Place
“Fox Fever” by Andrew N. Green
http://www.firefoxflicks.com/flick/?id=21146
Honorable Mention
“This is Hot” by Danny Robashkin
http://www.firefoxflicks.com/flick/?id=20674
Honorable Mention
“Give Me the Soap” by Chris Wedding
http://www.firefoxflicks.com/flick/?id=19836
“Daredevil” was directed by Pete Macomber, who creates music videos, commercials and screenplays from his Venice, Ca. home when he is not out chasing waves. With “Daredevil,” Macomber captures, in documentary-style, the youthful energy and approach to life of a girl whose “other browser is a surfboard.”
“The coolest thing about the Firefox Flicks contest is that everyone wins,” Macomber said. “Aspiring directors showcased their skills before a wide audience, inspired by a revolutionary organization, and now Mozilla has more than 250 sweet spots for Firefox.”
Accomplished entertainment and advertising judges — including the talents behind Charlie’s Angels, American Pie, and Six Feet Under — had the difficult job of selecting the winners. Mozilla announced the winners following a screening of selected Firefox Flicks and a panel discussion on the emergence of community-powered video on the Web, which included speakers from Butler, Shine & Stern, Creative Commons, Current TV, and Revver.
“The response to Firefox Flicks has been fantastic with entries from as far away as Australia, but the unifying theme has been passion,” said Asa Dotzler, Mozilla community coordinator. “This contest provided a unique way for our community to become a part of the Mozilla project. We thank everyone who participated for helping us launch the ongoing Firefox Flicks campaign with such a big bang.”
“The energy and enthusiasm of our community continues to inspire us as we roll out grassroots marketing campaigns to bring Firefox, and the better Web experience it delivers, to people everywhere,” said Mozilla’s Vice President, Marketing, Christopher Beard.
In November 2004, Spread Firefox volunteers designed and underwrote a two-page ad in the New York Times to announce the release of Firefox 1.0. The New York Times campaign kicked off Mozilla’s unique approach to grassroots marketing. Today, tens of millions of people worldwide are enjoying the better Web experience offered by Firefox. This year, the community has raised the bar with Firefox Flicks, the first large-scale community-produced video campaign for a software product.
To view the Firefox Flicks videos, visit: http://www.firefoxflicks.com
Firefox is available as a free download at: http://www.getfirefox.com or through the Mozilla Store at http://www.mozillastore.com.
About Mozilla Corporation
Mozilla Corp. is charged with the development and deployment of Mozilla technologies and products around the globe. The corporation is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation, and continues to further the mission of the Mozilla project to preserve choice and innovation on the Internet. For more information about Mozilla, please visit: www.mozilla.com.
Contacts
Mary Colvig, 415-336-5938
mcolvig@arpartners.com
Judi Palmer, 650-762-2812
jpalmer@arpartners.com
dissapointed … wheeee is wonderful, but for geeks . daredevil: yes it is good, but i think the 2nd time you see it on TV you would change the channel. fox fever: funny for already loyall Firefox users, but pontetially silly and “bizarre” for the rest of people
my choice:
“give me the soap” or “this is hot”
Daredevil as the winner. I bet you that Pete Macomber guy made that thing years ago, and just slapped a Firefox logo on the end of it.
What a sham this contest has been. And Firefox is too afraid to admit that not all entries were viewed by judges.
I’m not a participant, but I’m a little disappointed too. Couldn’t they at least post all the videos first? Were these guys overwhelmed by their job?
What happened to the women? Not allowed to judge?
I agree – the judges should show what they rated the different vidoes in each catagory. I’m having a hard time believing that they used it at all. :( At least the really bad ones didn’t make it to the top (think “Ride with Firefox” & “Are You Cool Enough?”).
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Side note: though they say “Mail (will not be published)” when you go to post a response, I can see not only the name but also an e-mail address from the most recent post in the “Leave a response” form… as a consequence there is no way I’m putting my e-mail address in that slot.
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Same here. Fix it quick, people!
Alright, now based on the large amounts of negative posts as to the way the contest was run and the silence from the Firefox team, I’m guessing we should be seeing a nice PR/Legal/Coporate approved message letting us know that our feedback is welcome and that the contest was ran in the best way possible at the time but that they’ve learned some lessons. Maybe there’ll be a line in there about admitting some minor mistake(s) and an apology for any “inconvenience” experienced on our part.
So having predicted your MBA marketing approved language so often seen posted by companies, Mozilla, please surprise me and prove me wrong with a genuine apology and make things right by having all the entrants receive the scores of their entries based on what the judges said. If these wonderful industry types saw my video, I’d like to know if they thought it was crap, alright, decent or good.
All these negative posts may be 100% wrong…or they may be right…just prove it one way or the other and end it on your terms…well I guess you could also just ignore this, shut down the Flix site and never get into the contest arena again…just some rants.
Thanks
A few things here:
- The judges picked the winners of the contest. We all have our favorites. Some of your favorites won and some of them didn’t.
- We’re not done promoting all the great submissions that we received. Far from it. We’re going to be doing more to promote all this great work.
- We are of course taking all the feedback in these posts and see how we can do better the next time. Mozilla’s been around quite a long time so we’re very used to criticism, constructive or otherwise.
Congratulations to the winners and all participants! You all did a great job. We’re all very impressed with the effort and the creativity.