Holiday Winners

We want to THANK everyone who participated in the very first Spexster Challenge! We hope these little incentives are motivation to film some fun new work to post on Spexster. We received some great submissions this year, so good work!!! As the "Holiday Challenge" has now come to a close, stay tuned for more challenges we will be posting soon...

THE WINNERS

1st Place $3,500 B&H Gift Card

JOSEF PERSZON (Canada) : IKEA "ESSENTIAL FURNITURE" SPEC

My IKEA spec was created in a very short timeframe. We have some pretty heavy COVID-19 restrictions here in British Columbia, so basically my only option was to cast my family in this spec. Nonetheless, we had a blast shooting it! My brother, girlfriend, and I spent the whole day preparing for the shoot - shopping for food, set dec, and even building a for sale post by hand. Once it was dark, my girlfriend prepped each food dish while I began to shoot. I was fortunate to have the support of my friend who lent me some equipment to try out. We shot the whole spec that evening, and I edited it the next morning. Funny enough, about half of the christmas lights outside the house were burnt out, so I had to add some in After Effects. 

I've been making films for about ten years now. For the last five years, I've been a camera operator and editor at a local video production company. There, I made everything from corporate promos to wedding films and educational videos. Four months ago, I left that day job to pursue video production freelance, and I couldn't be more fulfilled.

2nd Place $1,000 B&H Gift Card

CHRIS WARREN (U.S.A) : COCA-COLA "HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS

The idea for this spot came from my wife, Candice. She thought a commercial having an emotional father/son moment, and honor Military at the same time during the holidays would make a good spot. After fleshing out the idea a little more, we decided on Coca Cola being the perfect product for this. 

This spec was completed in about 10 hours. The first couple hours were spent getting the military attire from a surplus store and searching for the perfect product, the glass coke bottle. Shooting took about 7-8 hours. We spent most of the day shooting with our lead actor John Carroll. We had several setups adding more to the story, with the original edit being around 60 seconds. Ultimately the 30 second version worked better. Overall it was a simple shoot, and I think we presented the emotional tone we wanted. We shot in 2k Pro Res 4444 on my Ursa Mini Pro with the Angenieux Tokina 28-70 2.6.

3rd Place $500 B&H Gift Card

VLAS IGOR (Moldova) : WE HAVE HEART

The idea of this video was to give the public the message that it is necessary to have a heart to offer warmth, smiles, joys, gifts to your loved ones.

Film director / filmmaker with a solid experience, making a variety of video productions. My passion goes beyond simple duty. I am in constant competition with myself and I always tell myself that I can do more.

I don't consider myself an artist, but I like to think that I have a great talent ... plus experience and a permanent desire to live up to expectations. Every detail is important to make a new project to become unique and personal. My ambition is to reach the ideal to get results with maximum impact.

I am happy for the award, as they say in our country "it's good and little than nothing :) "