I just received an email from Brian C. Ezeike of Works of Bawbee Films. The guys who shot the “Miss Van Der Volt'” entry for the Chevy Super Bowl crowdsourcing competition. I will print it in its entirety below, but a couple of points. He says I claim that filmmakers get nothing for entering the competition. He says that if they win they get a prize… Well yeah. But if they lose, they get fuck all. That’s what crowdsourcing is all about. And secondly... No one is as fucking hot as Kate. Anyway, he should be pleased that I am asking everyone to vote for his fucking masterpiece. After all, I am a fucking prince… Enjoy…
Hello George, I hope all is well. I read with interest your blog post on my spec commercial, Miss Van der Volt, and I just thought I should respond.
Please view this email as me passing on information to you to clarify things and not me defending my spot or Chevy - You mentioned that the filmmakers get nothing for entering into the competition. That's incorrect. The filmmakers do get prizes if they're lucky enough and you can go here to view the prize breakdown: http://www.chevroletroute66.com/prizes.html
- Please keep in mind that in life many of us take different directions to our destinations so while we might be ridiculed as C-level or D-level directors we're working hard and looking for opportunities to elevate ourselves despite whatever challenges we face. Hopefully one day we'll have the resources of big agencies at our disposal so we can deliver polished work. Until, then we can only work with what we have at our disposal. With the right resources in place, we believe we could tremendously improve our craft. We cannot be ashamed of trying our best to better ourselves and looking for opportunities to climb the ladder. - As you know part of the challenges of being indie is production cost. As you can imagine when Chevy is crowdsourcing commercial spots they're looking for quality work as the winning spot might be broadcast nationally during the Super bowl. It's idealistic to think that crowdsourcing means getting consumers to shoot homemade videos but it might not be realistic. That's why Chevy actually gave us indie filmmakers production grants to cover our costs and enable us to produce work that is decent quality. That is quite generous of Chevy as I have seen many crowdsourcing competitions but not really aware of any that give production grants. I got a grant and it helped me tremendously with covering my cost so I'm not doing this out of pocket. Can you see how that is a good thing for a struggling indie? Here's a complete list of production grant winners for the Superbowl Competition: http://www.chevroletroute66.com/prodgrant.html
- I did not create Miss Van der Volt to be 'as hot as Kate'. I thought it would be interesting to create an awkward hero that is not your generic superhero but one that still fits the soccer mom mold.
Thanks for your time!
Brian C. Ezeike - Works of Bawbee Films, LLC
REMEMBER… You MUST vote for “Miss Van Der Volt.”
Kate and her electric GypsyMobile!