BotCon 2012 Fan Filmfest Winner "Starting Them Young"

El Duque wrote:Here's the BotCon 2012 Fan Filmfest first place winner "Starting Them Young" by Ben Harpold. Own our podcaster jON3.0 took second and third place with his entries "Green Energy" and "The Best Transformers Botcon 2012 Fan Film Thingy EVER MADE".

AWESOME! Thank you for that! Now... ONLY if we can get Ben aka Hollywood Hoist to post the 2010 video. I believe it won 3rd place that year and it was classic!

joevill wrote:

El Duque wrote:Here's the BotCon 2012 Fan Filmfest first place winner "Starting Them Young" by Ben Harpold. Own our podcaster jON3.0 took second and third place with his entries "Green Energy" and "The Best Transformers Botcon 2012 Fan Film Thingy EVER MADE".

AWESOME! Thank you for that! Now... ONLY if we can get Ben aka Hollywood Hoist to post the 2010 video. I believe it won 3rd place that year and it was classic!

I asked him about that too so I'm hoping he'll upload that as well.

Great job! Congratulations on the win.

You have GOT to be fucking kidding me, that crappy imovie family home video is the winner of the Botcon filmfest? Seriously, no one should even bother entering.

People and their kids... keep it to yourself! The other videos showed seriously TALENT and VISION. I call for a ban on the filmfest next year. No wonder I don't waste my time at botcon in that room.

Starscream wrote:You have GOT to be **** kidding me, that crappy imovie family home video is the winner of the Botcon filmfest? Seriously, no one should even bother entering.

People and their kids... keep it to yourself! The other videos showed seriously TALENT and VISION. I call for a ban on the filmfest next year. No wonder I don't waste my time at botcon in that room.

I thought it was cute! I wished I had thought of using my cutest kids!

Using his son for his own gain..... how despicable. I think he's my hero. But the problem with that video is now Hasbro are going to think they're right to whore out Bumblebee and Optimus toys every way they can.

I loved jON3.0's videos. They really made me laugh. Nothing funnier than taking characters away from their usual type of behaviour and I think he nailed it. Seeing Ravage's paws in the stop-motion got me giggling, and his general down-and-out attitude was brilliant. His jealousy over Laserbeak in PRIME was genious. Bumblebee and Soundwave's hug was really creepy. Reminded me of slash fiction.

I have to say that I don't agree with the results though. When a home-movie montage comes ahead of two videos that have clearly had so much work go into them I have to question whether the judges are taking their roles seriously or whether they're being objective.

Anywho, they're great videos dude, and congratulations on the two podium positions. Bravo!

I thought the point was that his kid was less interested in Bumblebee than the other characters even though he pulled out the fancy Bay-bees. Was that not the joke? There were no judges. They use a decibel reader and let the audience yell for their favorite. Fair and square. Although I think whomeever gets the majority of the female vote eventually wins because their higher-putched screams register louder than male screams do on the decibel reader. And I have TWO younger children of my four and one is a girl! I should've used puppies and kittens too. Haha!

I loved Green energon it made me laugh out loud!
The best bit was Shockwave "Your all idiots" This should have won!

Starscream wrote:You have GOT to be **** kidding me, that crappy imovie family home video is the winner of the Botcon filmfest? Seriously, no one should even bother entering.

People and their kids... keep it to yourself! The other videos showed seriously TALENT and VISION. I call for a ban on the filmfest next year. No wonder I don't waste my time at botcon in that room.

I hope your being sarcastic.

I loved the Green Energy movie.

Honestly, for anyone who has been to a few of these film fests, it's not about production values (although they do matter) as much as being entertaining. It's a FAN filmfest, we're not talking about needing super duper high tech production here.

Ben consistently makes entertaining videos and has been doing this for a long time (I think at least since 2008) so I am glad he finally broke through and won.

It would be interesting to see how Jon would have fared had he just had one video and not has his fans have to choose between the two.

Personally, I liked the Ravage vid a lot more than Green Energy, mainly because I'm not the kind of guy who laughs a lot at stoner jokes. I also liked how Jon even took a shot at himself and his Prime Reviews in his own video, I wasn't expecting that.

In all fairness, Ben placed in 2009 or 2010 but yeah, I've thought his videos were better than some that placed in years past. I don't have any problems with him beating me out for first place. I personally don't have anything to do with weed or drugs and until I was hanging out with a producer who used it legally from a prescription bottle while I was in LA, I had never even been around the stuff. I just got the idea after watching the G1 episode "Microbots." And the reason why I had two entries is becase last year they said "and we're allowing two entries per person" so I made a second one and just slapped together a bunch of videos I already had made minus a few clips. Oh, and to be fair, the Ravage doing a bad review bit was a parody of 2011's 1st place winner "How to do bad Transformers reviews" but it was kinda ripping on myself as well... actually Ravage trying to do an impression of Optimus Prime during the CG scene was supposed to be making fun of myself.

jON3.0 wrote:Oh, and to be fair, the Ravage doing a bad review bit was a parody of 2011's 1st place winner "How to do bad Transformers reviews" but it was kinda ripping on myself as well... actually Ravage trying to do an impression of Optimus Prime during the CG scene was supposed to be making fun of myself.

Right, that's what made that so funny. You could have done Ravage doing any kind of "bad Transformers Review" but doing it the way you did was classic. That was probably the single thing I laughed at the most during the film fest.

I'm amazed at the winner. I don't understand it at all, I didn't even watch the whole thing. As for the other two videos: excellent stuff, well made, well scripted. They should have placed better than the awful winner.

One other thing that should be noted is for whatever reason the vid quality seemed a little better at BotCon than on youtube. Not sure if that is something on my end.

Mykltron wrote:I'm amazed at the winner. I don't understand it at all, I didn't even watch the whole thing. As for the other two videos: excellent stuff, well made, well scripted. They should have placed better than the awful winner.

The videos definitely have very different styles, but calling it "awful" probably isn't being very fair. We all have different tastes.

Starscream wrote:You have GOT to be **** kidding me, that crappy imovie family home video is the winner of the Botcon filmfest? Seriously, no one should even bother entering.

People and their kids... keep it to yourself! The other videos showed seriously TALENT and VISION. I call for a ban on the filmfest next year. No wonder I don't waste my time at botcon in that room.

If you're not being sarcastic, nasty comments such as this needn't be written at all

Delicon wrote:One other thing that should be noted is for whatever reason the vid quality seemed a little better at BotCon than on youtube. Not sure if that is something on my end.

Mykltron wrote:I'm amazed at the winner. I don't understand it at all, I didn't even watch the whole thing. As for the other two videos: excellent stuff, well made, well scripted. They should have placed better than the awful winner.

The videos definitely have very different styles, but calling it "awful" probably isn't being very fair. We all have different tastes.

He's brand-new to YouTube believe it or not. I gave him a few pointers about the rendering process to make the videos play more smoothly. I had the same trouble when I first started. And I agree with the comments about his video. As much as I appreciate the compliments, I wouldn't say things like that about his video either. We both had different ideas and his video had the cuteness factor and I went in another direction completely. Different tastes indeed.

I guess I should step in and defend myself. Starting Them Young is my film, and I'm proud of it. The quality on youtube is not the quality of the finished product on my computer, Jon is correct I am new to youtube and am working on getting a better quality version uploaded.

A little background I attended film school, worked on a feature film in the art department/set design, have shot my own productions on super 16mm film, have worked on productions in various capacity including script supervisor, 2nd assistant camera, producer and editor. I never could make a career out of it in Seattle (not enough paying productions to sustain a career), and I wasn't willing to move to L.A. or Vancouver, my family and friends are here and they're more important than a career in film.

So in defense of my film or crappy imovie as some say . I have a dozen or so ideas each year and focus on 1. My son is 2 1/2 and has a pretty amazing memory for Transformers names as well as dinosaur names (approx 30 he can pronounce correctly). I felt if I was going to have some fun with my son and put him in one of my films this would be the time, plus it would be great to show off my amazing kid (even though some would rather not have my child shoved down their throat). I went for the cuteness factor, I have finished 3 out of the 4 previous years, but never achieved first. Competing against people like Dr. Smoove (the first year) and Jon, I felt like I don't have the production values to compete so I go much more loose and cheesey with my films and try to make them silly as possible. Each part of the finished film was planned was half planned half improvised. I put my son in the situation and filmed what he would do. Such as feeding Devastator a plush bananna, was my idea, what he said and did with it was pure Statler. I liked the spontaneous feel of the film and never made him do a second take as I didn't want to "direct" him. In the end I have a film that I will cherish more than any other film I have ever produced, because it was my son being himself. He loved seeing himself on the tv screen. He and my wife attended the year previous, which also happened to be the one year I didn't win a prize, but I didn't feel it would be right to enter this film 2 or more years down the line when they could be in attendance.

Jon's films are MUCH higher quality and I have lost to him every year pretty much, and as far as I'm concerned it's an honor to lose to someone like Jon, he's an amazing guy, friendly and just down right fun to talk to and to accept an award along side him is well... humbling. I actually felt like the response was louder for his films, but he's right the female vocal register is going to play with their volume measure app.

The number of people that came up to me during the Botcon weekend was greater than every year combined, so that says something for what entertained the audience.

These days I focus much more time with music than film, but I still love messing around with it and as long as Botcon continues to have film fest I'm sure I'll continue to enter them. Perhaps teaching grandma about transformers as a sequel, I'll call it Never To Old.

Thank you to all those defending me and my film on this site, I have met many Seibertronians at Botcon and though the main site I post on is tfw, I find the people from Seibertron much more approachable and warmer than those I have met on other sites.

Please continue to critique the film as this is all about expressing opinions. I'm far from a great film maker, but the films I have done seem to entertain some people and that's all I can truly hope for.

Mykltron wrote:I'm amazed at the winner. I don't understand it at all, I didn't even watch the whole thing. As for the other two videos: excellent stuff, well made, well scripted. They should have placed better than the awful winner.

My film was all about the ending that's why you didn't understand it

There really isn't much to understand, a cute kid playing with Transformers and... well that's it. It struck a chord with the audience, so I guess it couldn't be that awful .

My competition in previous years have been Dr. Smoove, who has a huge fan base, Jon, who is an amazing professional voice actor with contacts, and a few others who are much more established in the Transformers community than I am, so in order to have a chance in hell in winning anything I had to use my kid.

Just like in Botshots where melee beats gun (I think), cute kid beats professional voice actor.

Hollywood Hoist wrote:Jon's films are MUCH higher quality and I have lost to him every year pretty much, and as far as I'm concerned it's an honor to lose to someone like Jon, he's an amazing guy, friendly and just down right fun to talk to and to accept an award along side him is well... humbling. I actually felt like the response was louder for his films, but he's right the female vocal register is going to play with their volume measure app.

I appreciate it and I didn't mind losing to you. I really enjoyed your video. I knew as soon as I watched it that you were going to get first. He's a really cute and a REALLY smart kid and I loved the joke about trying to force him to like Bumblebee even by using Bay-Bumblebee. The one I REALLY want to see is "Sharing" (I believe that was it) from last year! That has probably been my favorite one of yours that I have seen and I can't wait to see it up on YouTube! I honestly thought that one was going to take first that year. I seriously connected to that one because I'm a big kid too and my wife gives me a hard time pretty much the same way. As far as going years without winning, I feel your pain. I have yet to win first. In the grand scheme of things, it's about making entertainment for fellow fans and as long as people enjoy them, just to place at all is an honor for me. ...still next year, I'm using my 4 year old, blue-eyed daughter and puppies and kittens!

Jon & Hollywood Hoist - classy and respectable cats. Congrats on the contest to both of you.

Ben, it's great to see you finally on here. Don't be a stranger!

Delicon wrote:Ben, it's great to see you finally on here. Don't be a stranger!

I agree! I've found the majority of folks here to be very friendly and civil people compared to quite a few experiences I've had on TFW although I visit there every now and then because that's how I was first introdced to the TF community. But I like it much better here. I hope the couple of negative Nancies here didn't put you off. I apologize about them.

jON3.0 wrote:

Delicon wrote:Ben, it's great to see you finally on here. Don't be a stranger!

I agree! I've found the majority of folks here to be very friendly and civil people compared to quite a few experiences I've had on TFW although I visit there every now and then because that's how I was first introdced to the TF community. But I like it much better here. I hope the couple of negative Nancies here didn't put you off. I apologize about them.

No the negative nancies didn't put me off, I respect their opinion, I wish it was a bit more constructive, but it's the internet, so what can you do.

U can flaunt your 1st place prize to get their goat! Lol!

Green energon = win

Ravage = fail