MySpace has teamed with the Producers Guild of America to give amateur video makers a chance to make it big in Hollywood.

The Story Teller Challenge, like many of the current video contests going around, professes to be a way to shortcut the red-tape of Hollywood and get an audience with top studio executives – and an opportunity to make it big!

The competition is perhaps another sign that News Corp – which owns MySpace – is committed to investing in online talent. Another report suggests the company is producing a TV series exclusively for its social networking site.

What’s it About and What’s up for Grabs?

The focus of this competition seems to be on videos that can make it on television as a series. Naturally Fox Studios, also a News Corp company, will be the network looking to commission the new talent.

MySpace will setup a dedicated page to which hopeful film makers can upload their original five to seven minute TV series pilots. These videos will be available to all MySpace users to view and vote on.

The contest will close on January 6th 2008 and the producers of the top six videos with the most votes will head off to Hollywood to pitch their ideas to studio execs.

Finally, two eventual winners will walk away with $25,000 and an opportunity for a TV deal with Fox Studios.

[Article Link]

Crackle.com, the old Grouper recently re-launched by Sony as a streaming entertainment network, are currently running three contests for budding video producers who want to have a crack (excuse the pun) at the big time.

Winners of the contests are offered “career-making opportunities…that money can’t buy”, according to the triangle of fame (my name for it, not Crackle’s) which you’ll find on Crackle’s site. “Get in the game, get featured, get famous” are the steps – sounds easy!

The three contests cover different genres: Stand-up comedy, short film, and animation. Each contest also has different prizes that are more relevant and rewarding for the particular genre.

Choose the Contest for You

The “High Wire” contest is for the comedic talents out there. The winner will find themselves with the opportunity to perform a 15 minute set on one of the famous IMPROV stages in LA, New York or Chicago. Add to this the chance to pitch your talents to IMPROV Comedy Labs executives.

Directors and producers of short films should test their talents in the “Shorts” contest. The reward for the winner? A $15,000 development deal with Crackle plus pitching your film concept to Columbia Pictures. Very nice, I like (as Borat would say).

Finally, animation gurus can show off in the “Wetpaint” contest. The winner walks away with $15,000 cold hard cash and a 2-day lab at Sony Pictures Imageworks in LA. Sony Pictures Animation executives will also listen to the winner’s pitch for an original animated feature.

Get Famous

So that’s three good reasons to get your mates together and have some creative brainstorming. Or at least drink some beer. Check out Crackle now and get famous!

[Crackle Contests]

It’s Stage6 Day here on Web TV Wire and Web TV Hub (23/04/07). Learn more…

Keeping itself in line as a distribution platform for independent video producers, DivX is running a film festival for members of the Stage6 community. The festival is devoted to storytelling, creation and improving digital media.

Entries had to make a post about how to watch internet TV, and since Network2 were running the competition they liked a mention too.

The winner is: (an advert for Network2)

I’ve got two Joost invites left and Joost has emailed me today saying I need to get rid of them in 2 days or I’ll lose them as the company will now be moving to a new invite system.

I’ve already given out twenty two to WebTVWire readers in the past so if you haven’t had one yet here is your chance. Just leave a comment on this post. Preference will be given to anyone else who runs a blog\news site (especially if it’s web TV related).

Update: The two invites have been given out to the first 2 people who commented – please check more recent posts to see if I’m giving out any more

Winners of the video competition will be chosen by members of the BrioBox community where users can vote for individual videos. Given that the big community driven sites like digg.com have enough trouble preventing fake votes, BrioBox will definitely be in for a challenge.

One thing I definitely don’t like about the competition is that the site is selling pixel advertising on the BrioBox homepage. Yes that’s the same type of advertising that made Alex Tew of the Million Dollar Homepage rich.

Having a mishmash of adverts on the BrioBox homepage is not going to have the same quick rich effect that Alex Tew luckily got. It is going to be extremely off putting to users and what is worse BrioBox is selling these spots to people who have entered the competition. This is so they can increase their chances of being seen, getting votes, and subsequently winning. This doesn’t really seem like a fair way of running the competition because you can pay to increase your chances of winning!

you can pay to increase your chances of winning!

One small square is being sold at $100 each and there are a few hundred squares. So far no squares have been sold and if BrioBox are planning to use the money they make from selling these spots I’d be very worried if I were them.

On a slightly separate note BrioBox recently removed a video from the site that contained a child making racial slurs.

• Also See: The Network2 video competition for another web video contest.

The prizes are as follows:

• Grand prize: $25,000.00 US
• Second prize: $10,000.00 US
• Third prize: $5,000.00 US

There were over 60 videos submitted to the competition including submissions from a number of popular web TV shows including Viral (see entry below ) and Galacticast (see entry here ).

The winners of this contest will be announced on March 20th at Spring 2007 Video on the Net.

To give you a taste here is the submission from the web TV show Viral:

You can see the rest of the videos submitted to the competition here.

An affordable way of getting one way links by hiring a manual directory submission service

The 20 winners are listed below along with their correct answer. All winners should have already received an invite from Joost with the email you provided.

The Joost Invite Winners!

1. Nick
   http://www.searchvideo.com – video search engine
2. Andrew
   http://www.faganfinder.com/video – video search engine
3. Banjo
   http://www.blinkx.com – video search engine
4. Martijn
   http://www.vidmeter.com – community driven video aggregator
5. Trevor
   http://www.podzinger.com – video search engine
6. Hassan miah
   http://www.videosift.com – community driven video aggregator
7. Mark
   http://www.break.com – community driven video aggregator
8. Scott
   http://www.liveleak.com  - community driven video aggregator
9. Rob toole
   http://www.dabble.com – community driven video aggregator
10. Kimmie
    http://www.altavista.com/video/default – video search engine
11. Rickie
    http://www.netscape.com/video – community driven video aggregator.
12. Newt42
    http://videobomb.com – community driven video aggregator.
13. Ali
    http://www.purevideo.com – video search engine
14. William
    http://getfireant.com/ – video blog subscriber and player
15. Joe
    http://www.apple.com/itunes – video blog subscriber and player
16. Ethan
    http://dogpile.com – a video search engine
17. Darren
    http://www.flurl.com – community driven video aggregator
18. Allan
    http://www.clipblast.com – video search engine
19. Kirra
    http://www.alltheweb.com – a video search engine
20. Collin
    http://www.gotuit.com – community driven video aggregator

The competition brought out some interesting sites from the wood work. Many I have heard of but there were definitely some interesting ones that I hadn’t heard of, or didn’t know were working with video. Nice work everyone!

Thanks to everyone who took part!

For those of you that don’t know, Joost is a new internet TV application from the makers of Skype and Kazaa, you can see a full review of Joost with screenshots here.

I promised you about a week ago some Joost invites. Your chance has now arrived to get a sneak peek at the P2P program that is being tipped to revolutionize the TV industry.

I’m giving away 20 Joost invites to anyone who is willing to take part in this quick competition:

The Joost invite competition:

1. You must leave a comment to this post and state a SINGLE website that is EITHER a:
1. Video search engine
   A video search indexes videos from multiple websites and uses textual information — and sometimes the speech within a video — to assign meta data to that video. Videos can be searched for by keyword and results can often be filtered by a variety of criteria such as length, quality etc. An example is searchforvideo.com.
   Video sharing websites like YouTube or DailyMotion will not be accepted.
2. Community driven video aggregator
   A community driven video aggregator is a website where the community submits videos to the website from all over the web. The rest of the community then votes for the videos and the best videos get more exposure. An example is digg.com/videos.
   Video sharing websites like YouTube or DailyMotion will not be accepted.
3. Video Blog Subscriber and Player
   This is usually a piece of software that allows you to subscribe to any video blog that has an RSS feed. It will automatically download the latest video and organize it into your own video library. Then you can just watch the latest episodes from your favorite video blogs or internet TV episodes when you want to. An example is Instant Media.
   Regular RSS readers that download enclosures will not be accepted.
2. You must state the URL of the website and whether it is a video search engine, a community driven video aggregator, or a video blog subscriber.
3. If someone has already posted that website correctly then you won’t be entered into the competition, so the earlier you leave your comment the easier it will be!
4. The competition will close at midnight (EST) on Sunday 4th March and I’ll select 20 winners at random and email them a Joost invite.
5. Only one entry per person.

Click here to leave your comment and enter the competition.