What an amazing round! Ten great films to judge, ranging from the serene to the surreal—with a dose of potty humor (and I mean POTTY humor) to keep us young. We’ve had a blast, thanks to the great filmmakers who submitted films and everyone who joined in the feedback. You are all winners. You are all GIFTS.

Special thanks to Chris Barcellos and “Marty Henderson” for the hilarious call out to filmmakers early on. It worked, and gave us a great laugh.

So who provides the house for this party? Many thanks to Chris Hurd for that! DV Info Net continues to be *THE* place for all things DV, and we appreciate all Chris does so that we can have a great place to hang out, learn, and share our work. Thanks, too, to Jeff Kramer for all the publicity on Facebook and Twitter! Loved it, Jeff!

More thanks to Dylan Couper of the DV Challenge and Meryem Ersoz of the UWOL Challenge for making the joint charity challenge a reality. Hope we can gather again next December for another one!

Then there’s a huge “Thank You!” to our sponsor, Guy Cochran of dvcreators.net (http://www.dvestore.com) for going all out on this bash with a truckload of prizes!

Take another look at what Guy offered:

To the winner!

RODE NTG-3 Shotgun Microphone!
RODE NTG-3 Shotgun Mic at DVcreators.net (http://www.dvcreators.net/rode-ntg-3-shotgun-mic/)

AND

KATA MC61 Camcorder Bag!
KATA Camera Bag MC61 at DVcreators.net (http://www.dvcreators.net/kata-camera-bag-mc61/)

And also to the winner if the entry was shot on a Canon 5DM2 or Canon 7D!

7" Marshall LCD Monitor, complete with monitor mount, cable, battery and charger!
Marshall Electronics 7″ LCD Monitor at DVcreators.net (http://www.dvcreators.net/marshall-electronics-7-lcd-monitor/)

PLUS the incredibly cool trophy pictured below!

New to the challenge, a prize to the winner of the Best Newcomer award!
A LitePanel Micro!
Litepanels Micro and MicroPro at DVcreators.net (http://www.dvcreators.net/litepanels-lp-micro/)

Wow, Guy—much appreciation for all the great prizes!!!

Now let’s remember the big reason why we gather every December for the challenge. That’s right: CHARITY. Our donation total was down this time but it’s been that kind of year. Still, some great charity of the winner’s choosing will receive a donation of $296, and I’m sure it will be appreciated. “Thank you,” to all of you who were able to give.

Okay, enough ado; let’s get to the winners!

Here we go! As mentioned earlier, you are all “gifts” to the challenge and to this DVi member, and because you submitted a film you are all winners. But you and the donors voted for the top films so here they are:

Honorable Mention:

Bill Thesken “The Miracle”
Ben Robbins & Cole Seidl “Merry Christmas, Craig!”

2nd Runner up:

Andris Krastins “True Gifts”

1st Runner Up:

Dick Mays “The Red Side”

Congratulations, guys! Great work--great films!!

The WINNER of the 2nd Annual DVC/UWOL Charity Challenge:

Chris Barcellos “Aunt Matilda’s Present”

Congratulations, Chris!!! Your entertaining story and fine attention to detail earned you a much-deserved win! Please send the info for the charity you want to receive the donation to Dylan. We’ll get your email address to Guy so he can contact you about your prizes. You even take home the Marshall monitor!

Marty will be very pleased…

And finally, the Best Newcomer award goes to:

Ben Robbins and Cole Seidl!!

Way to go, guys! We look forward to seeing more from you. Guy will be contacting you soon.

Well, that’s it for now. Have a great year making films, everyone, and we’ll plan to see you right here next December!

Awesome! :) Congrats to everyone! :)
And thanks to DVinfo staff for organizing this contest!

Congratulations everyone for all the effort, and to the staff who made this all possible.

Also Congrats Chris, your short was well deserving of the win, the trophy, and the truck-load of prizes that went with it. And to Ben & Cole, wonderful first win, now that you have tasted glory get out there and shot some more, as we shiver with anticipation!

Hopefully 2010 will be full of fun & exciting DV and UWOL challenges for us to hone our skills for next year's charity challenge. I know I'll be there and I expect some good competition as we all continue to improve our skills.

Wonderful job everyone! Congratulations Chris, I really enjoyed your short! And congratulations to everyone else for submitting!

We really appreciate what you folks here at the DVinfo community do, and we thank you for recognizing our work. This is a really helpful, mature community that I hope to be involved with for quite some time. Thanks again everyone, and congratulations!

Congratulations to Chris and his beautiful grandchildren for a well deserved victory. I'd vote that bugeyed dog as best actor and give Chris the sweep if we had that category. Looking forward to a rematch next year, as this was my best finish ever in a challenge.

I don't want to start the trash talking for next year, but anyone notice how the narrative films cleaned the house???? I was surprised as I thought there were some really beautiful nature film. Next year I will have a talking rock...

WOW.... is all I can say. I really want to thank EVERYONE for support on this film- your votes are greatly appreciated. All of the films were great in this competition, and I am honored. My grandkids also rescued me for this competition, and I had a lot of fun making this project with them, and I thank them too.

I talked about it with them, and we think in light of the ongoing problems there, it is appropriate that the donation go to a relief program for the Haitian earthquake victims. I will locate the appropriate Red Cross fund and forward that information to Dylan, as indicated by Lorinda.

I have been involved with these challenges now for several years, and have always enjoyed making films for them, both on the UWOL and the DVC side. Last year I played with the idea of concentrating on other projects, like local film festivals, and in fact started out to do so. But a new camera, and some other things kept me going in both venues, and I am glad I did. There is nothing better to help improve your production values than doing these things on a regular basis.

By the way, during the contest period, Kassie, the oldest of the four grand children, went to a spur of the moment audition of a local musical theatre group, and got selected to play and sing the lead part of Belle in their spring production of "Beauty and the Beast." She has been active in her high school drama department playing key parts in plays both her freshman and sophomore year. I think the years of working on this kind of thing with each other gave her the confidence to go out and do these things.

Again, thank you all for your kind words and support ! And thank you Guy for the prize donations that give us the extra incentive to participate ! And finally, thank you to Lorinda, Dylan, Meryem, Chris Hurd, and all the other behind the scenes people, as well as all the competitors that make these competitions interesting for all of us. Lets keep making films !

Congratulations Chris! and to all the others. That is a great story about Kassie as well, I'm so glad to hear it.

Congratulations to the winners.
And congrats to everyone who submitted a film. Many great entries this round.

I'm already looking forward to next time. :)

Congratulations Chris. A well deserved win. A fun film carried off very well technically.

We wouldn't want to forget about the unofficial sub-challenge, would we? Here's my vote. ;)

videos :: forDickMays.flv video by ljeanne - Photobucket (http://s12.photobucket.com/albums/a215/ljeanne/videos/?action=view&current=forDickMays.flv)

Hope you don't mind that I lifted one of your photos for this, Dick. About the colored rocks, I planned to incorporate them into my plan B film as an homage to the story you told us in one of your posts, but when that plan didn't work out...

We wouldn't want to forget about the unofficial sub-challenge, would we? Here's my vote. ;)

videos :: forDickMays.flv video by ljeanne - Photobucket

Hope you don't mind that I lifted one of your photos for this, Dick. About the colored rocks, I planned to incorporate them into my plan B film as an homage to the story you told us in one of your posts, but when that plan didn't work out....

LOL. My Dad would love those painted rocks!!! But I don't know, I like Trond's rock, as much as I tried to disqualify him for it being part of a mountain!

Yes, that was a huuuuuge rock. :)

On another note, I just edited the first post in this thread to include a shout out to the DV Info "behind-the-curtain" guru, Jeff Kramer. He gave us lots of publicity on Facebook and Twitter. Much appreciated, Jeff!

congratulations, Chris, great work...and I'm glad to hear that you're looking into donating your winnings for Haiti relief...

very nice job, everybody!

And the BIGGEST THANKS of all to Lorinda - who kept this Charity Challenge alive and really deserves all of the credit for pulling it together for everybody.

Congratulations Chris, I had a feeling you would win. A great and funny story well told, with amazing actresses, (and bugeye). It kind of opened my eyes to what is possible, and what needs to be done to make an impact that lasts beyond the first watching of a flick.
Plus my kids liked it.
Now you'll have to push it up a notch to better this fine effort, and we all really need to crank up the creativity to match you. Hope to see you in the next challenge!

I'd also like to thank everyone involved that made donations to the charity pool, the prizes, and the film makers, I watched each one at least a couple of times.

Congratulations to everyone involved in this contest. It was really an impressive bunch of videos, and I feel that I have improved from analyzing all of them. This was a wonderful contest.

Congratulations!!

Great Job Chris, well earned win!!!!!


Much appreciation to everyone else who participated! I felt there were a several that could have been called on for the first slot!!!

Thank you Linda for orchestrating the challenge.

Huge "Thank You" to our sponsonr for being so genreous!!!!! Just, WOW!!!

Only a 11 months to the next one!!

Congratulations to the winner and all the runner-ups...

Nice crop of films...I had a very difficult time making my choices for the vote...

Well done!

Huge "Thank You" to our sponsonr for being so genreous!!!!! Just, WOW!!!

Only a 11 months to the next one!!


I have to reiterate that same thank you to Guy at DVCreators. These items donated and/or arranged by him at DVcreators.net are just what the doctor ordered in terms of improving my film making capability. A big thanks to Guy again !!

Dale, on theDVChallenge side, we do 4 or five of these contests a year, so it is not something you have to wait that long for !! Its not that big a jump from documenatary to narrative !

Chris, add my congratulations to all the others. I thoroughly enjoyed watching your entry, being one of the few in my family who could even tolerate fruitcake I got quite a chuckle our of it.

And your designation of where the charity funds go is most appropriate.

Bruce Foreman

Congrats Chris, it's a great film and had me laughing from start to finish. Good entries all round people - I'm hoping to try some more narrative based shorts this year, and I know where to come for some good competition :-)

Cheers,

Rob

Congratulations. Nicely done! It's great to see everyone getting out there and producing. We're glad to know that we can help people learn the craft by *doing*, not just reading. We all learn something new and improve our skills with every finished film. I'm really happy to see the new people getting involved and sharing their projects. Congrats to everyone that participated. I'm looking forward to the next one.

Here is a snapshot of the engraved trophy with Chris' name all over it! You rock Chris!

Again, thank you all again for you kind comments and congratulations.

And again, thanks Guy !! I feel like we can't thank you enough for your support in promoting these competitions.