Commercials ("Selling Out")

Hola, amigos.  Ti amos de la tacos and burritos.  Pour favor las matadors et Carlos uno dos tres salsa.  Wanna know something funny?  All my non Spanish speaking readers will probably think I was actually saying something in Spanish back there.  Fun fact: it's just gibberish.

So, my last few posts haven't really been written blogs.  Just posts of things I like (shoes) and a video I made.  I'm thinking I will do this more often.  I can blog more this way, since I don't always have interesting things to write about.  My goal is to blog once a week.  But don't hold me to that because that probably won't happen.

If you follow my posts, chances are, you watch my videos either on Youtube or Facebook.  And if you watch those, you know some of the first videos I've made were commercials.  These commercials weren't originally supposed to be the jump off point for Elephant Stomp.  Hell, before (and during) the commercials, there WAS NO Elephant Stomp.  Those 6 commercials were made by 4 friends hoping to win some money from an online video contest.  After making those commercials, we as a group decided to keep making videos because it was so damn fun.  And thus, ELEPHANT STOMP was born.  And 20 videos later, I'm going back to the start.

I'm always looking for some sort of video contests to participate in.  I've made a few on my own (not with Elephant Stomp) but these were for a different website.  Now I learned that the site I first made commercials for is having another contest.  I've written a few commercials and have gotten positive responses from those who have read them.  I plan to shoot and upload these soon.  The deadline for this contest is May 30th.  Funny how deadlines motivate me to get shit done.

Now, I've had a few people give slightly negative comments about me making commercials.  Comments like "Commercials are a crutch.  Make original videos.  Leave the commercials for when you run out of things to make."  Or "You make these commercials to win money?  You're selling out now?"  People don't intend to sound mean or hurtful when they say these things.  They really don't.  But here's what I say to them.  Commercials can be more challenging than completely original videos.  With skits, I have no time limit to tell the "story" or whatever.  I can go anywhere with it.  With commercials, I only have 30 to 60 seconds to tell a "story" and to be funny and to get the point across.  Believe me when I say this is WAY more challenging to do.  And as far as selling out?  I guess I see where they are coming from, but I would have made these videos just for fun.  I don't need the possibility of getting money or free products to make a video.  Just the satisfaction of making the video, editing it, and putting it out there for others to see is enough for me.  I enjoy it.  It makes me happy.  I like to enterain.  With having said that, I could win A LOT of money for these videos.  Grand prize is $8,000 plus a trip to France for 3 days and nights.  So yeah, that's a pretty good incentive to make some videos.  But again, I would make these videos for free.

And if you're wondering what site I make these commercials for, it's Mofilm.  Go to http://www.mofilm.com/ to check them out.  Go ahead.  I'm not worried about competition.  I embrace it.  It challenges me to do better.

So, there you have it.  A brief (or not so brief) post about commercials and why I do them.  Again, not doing them just for money, not doing them because I've run out of ideas.  They are just videos to me.  A commercial is just another video.  And video making is fun.

Until next time, blog readers...

Shoes

One of these will be my next footwear purchase. And by "one of these", I mean pair of shoes.  I'm not going to buy just 1 shoe.  That would be too silly, even for me.  Leaning more towards the first pair.