“Beyond The Still” contest wins Silver Lion at Cannes!

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Wow.  Pretty stunned, flattered, and honored to see this happen – but the Canon/Vimeo “Beyond The Still” video contest has just won a Silver Lion at Cannes!

To those not in the advertising world – these awards are loosely the equivalent of a Grammy/Oscar/Pulitzer in other industries.  In other words this a really big deal – not just some other award.

I find it particularly relevant in that it shows how the world of advertising is changing very quickly.  Producing slick campaigns will always be relevant – but finding ways to DIRECTLY connect with an audience is key.   When the advertiser (Canon) Agency (Grey NYC) AND the audience (those who entered the contest) all benefit – hey – that’s the definition of a ” Win/Win.”  Well it’s in fact a “Win/Win/Win” – isn’t it?

Congrats to the amazing team at Grey Advertising NY, Canon and everyone who helped this little dream of ours come true.  This is definitely one that will go toward the top of all of our resumes.

As I mentioned in a previous post–  I went to meet Grey a little less than a year ago and told them I wanted to find a way to harness the excitement behind this new HDDSLR craze.  I had experienced success from “Reverie” and “Nocturne” and wanted to find a way to share it with others out there.   I told them that going out and producing yet another film for myself wasn’t going to cut it, as I wanted to find a way to SHARE my experience of the past two years with other filmmakers out there.  I threw a few ideas at them that I had at the time – and the creative team at Grey and I worked together on morphing those ideas into something that we could get Canon excited with – and ultimately we created the Beyond The Still contest together…

I know many of you have found the contest very rewarding (it’s still ongoing BTW!!!!  There are still two more chapters!!!!) –  it’s nice to get this type of recognition to say the least.

The best thing is:  WE’RE NOT DONE YET!  And I can’t wait to see what we can do for the FINAL CHAPTER with the 7 winners… needless to say this contest will now not just wither away… as it’s just gotten much bigger than any of us could have imagined.  Expect a lot more attention to be put on this contest  – not to mention the final chapter that I and the 7 other winners will collaborate on together in the fall.

Thank you Tor, Ari, Stephen, Elinor, Rick, Chris, Melinda, David, Melanie, James, Luiz, Nick, Madhuri, Rob and Chris for all of your efforts in making this project come together – not to mention the entire cast and crew who helped launch the initial chapter!

Here is a description of the campaign as it was entered by Grey to the Cannes Lions on their site: