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There were four grand prize winners (best video, best song, best live performance, and most creative) in addition to ten more honorable mentions.

Since our video was pretty good and there were only 2264 entries, I’m going to just assume that we got 15th place.

If you lost be sure to blame Youtube and talk shit about the winners on the contest’s comments page.

If “Heartbeats” sounds familiar its because the first Sony Bravia commercial features a cover version of the song by Jose Gonzales. What does it mean that both the Bravia commercial and this music video are amazing?! Is the imagery of the two videos secondary to the magic of Swedish Electro Pop? Is the greatness of both attributable simply to the greatness of The Knife?

Two things strike me about this video. The first is how effective it is to simple roll the camera on something charming. I could watch those kids slalom down that hill all day (reminds me of the 1966 surfing documentary The Endless Summer). Second is the delightfully unexpected animated bird.

Unfortunately, I can’t really give you too many details on this one other than it was made in Berlin and won an award from a German digital video magazine.

Stop motion works really well for web video because of the inherent wow factor. When you only have 10 or 15 seconds to hook somebody using a camera trick or other gimmick is a great way to keep people from hitting their back buttons. Moreover, stop motion type videos make for excellent Digg bait. I found this clip on Reddit via Popurls.

Watch the video.

I didn’t know it but my comments were broken! They are fixed now.

Ask any film student what their favorite music video is and I’ll bet a good percentage will say “Star Guitar.” Directed by Michel Gondry, the video features a single continuous shot seen from a train window. The disposition of each passing element of the landscape is positioned in sync with the music. The effect is pretty subtle but once you realize what’s going the video blows your mind.

“Star Guitar” features a bunch of CGI and I don’t really think I could make something like that. Nevertheless, I really like videos that actually create a relationship between the rhythm of the music and images themselves. That’s why this ASCII Disko video, “Einfach,” is so cool. I could totally film myself smashing up an organ.

Watch the video (Quicktime).

(Via the Cliptip.)

Right on the heels of Delivery is another animated clip called “Sundown” from L.A. avant-electronicist, Deadelus. This is a music video in the sense that it’s images put the sounds of somebody who calls himself a musician. However, whether you want to call the work of Deadelus “music” is entirely up to you.

Clip was directed by Clay Lipsky who does a bunch of really stellar art direction and design work. Here’s the embed but for the love of god download the quicktime version.

Panic!

Almost all really great short films are remarkable for their simplicity. Most short filmmakers, myself included, make the painful mistake of diluting their stories with pointless plot points that at best confuse–but more likely bore–your audience.

Delivery is a brilliant CG short by Till Nowak that proves that there is always an exception to the rule. Making your short film about a magic box is typically on the “clichés to avoid list;” however, Delivery is by far the best “magic box” movie I have ever seen. I think most magic box stories fail because inevitably, whatever lame power the box has is disappointing (worse the boxes secret might never be revealed at all). Delivery avoids this trap by opening the box right off the bat. This allows the story to move on from “what’s in the box” to how the box enable the old man to fix his broken world. I particularly love the extreme close up of the flower that starts off the film: Nowak cites Fincher as one of his influences if that shot reminds you of Fight Club’s opening sequence.

Check out this interview with Nowak on Deathfall.com if you want to know more about the making of Delivery.

Nerdkiller is my favorite Youtube personality of the moment. I’m not going to bother giving a writeup as there isn’t really anything noteworthy about the film making.

Making your name difficult to type into Google is probably a bad idea. Nevertheless, +/- {Plus/Minus} is a pretty good band. For people that care about such shit, they are the side project of Versus band members James Baluyet and Patrick Ramos.

“Steal the Blueprints” is a time lapse video featuring the oft used sing at half speed and speed up your footage trick to great effect. I think what makes the video is the simple head-on compositions. I love how the lead singers face sort of rests in the corner of the frame while his band mate air drums in the mid-ground amongst a canvas of zipping pedestrians. Coolest of all is that the clip’s director is none other than the air percussionist himself, drummer Chris Deaner. I hesitantly provide you the Youtube embed; go check out the media section on the +/- website for better quality and more videos (Trapped Under Iced Floes reminds me of the Gravity video).

The Youtube Underground Contest isn’t allowing people to see how many votes their video’s have received. I’m sure Gravity has far outpaced the competion and we’ve already locked up the contest but who knows. Go vote if you haven’t already done so.

Winning contests seem to be an important step in a filmmaker’s career. Not only do they give you credibility but they also generate a lot of press. Here are two more contests we are planning on submitting Gravity to:

Indie 103.1 is LA’s indiest music station. If your band is based in Southern California, submit for a chance to win to win a free Hi-Def shoot of your band’s performance at Rehearsals.com plus get your video plastered on their website and put on a complication DVD.

Music Nation is a new website that’s going to launch in the next few months. From what I understand, it’s sort of a web portal for new music (maybe like more targeted and professional Myspace Music?). Submit your video and the very best submissions from each genre will compete for the big reward: a professional recording contract with Epic Records, home of Modest Mouse, Fiona Apple, Shakira, Jill Scott and others.

Glitterfish Tucson AZ compatriots, The Sparkle Kids, were the winners of the “Best Film” award at the 2006 Tucson 48 Hour Film Contest.

They had to include the following elements:

Prop: pumpkin
Line of dialogue: “I don’t know, I’m not a dentist.”
Character: Bob Johnson
Genre: Horror/Thriller.

Despite the genre, the scariest part of the short is that it features a skinny white guy who is very naked. The box office would suggest that these days its all about torture-horror but personally I dig the horror-comedies.