Review: VeChain Community Video Contest 2020 - Finalists and Winners

Earlier this week the VeChain Foundation announced the winners of its second VeChain Community Video Contest.

Celebrating the second anniversary of the launch of the VeChainThor mainnet, the contest attracted a high standard of entries with its total prize fund of 3 million VET ($54,000).

Cointelegraph decided to cast a critical eye over the ten finalists and eventual winners.

A community of professional filmmakers?

The first thing that immediately strikes you is the overall quality level.

I mean, sure, these are the top ten hand-picked finalists, and perhaps the judges had to sift through a whole bunch of dross in order to get here. But going on these ten films it would seem that almost everyone in the VeChain community works for a professional film and motion graphics company.

The breadth of ideas on show is also impressive. From super-slick animations to artful drone shots, time-shifted conference footage, interviews, and even a VeChain-themed take on the Jeopardy game show.

The latter is one of the very few finalists which actually looks like it was created outside of a professional studio. It is a cool concept, although ultimately the implementation ended up just giving a bunch of fairly random facts about VeChain.

Spreading the word of the lord

The point of the competition was, of course, to spread the word about VeChain, and this was also tackled in a variety of ways.

We had informative, if perhaps a little dry, explanations of the major concepts, and conversational tones introducing this discovery as though to a friend. Some films focused on supply chain efficiencies, some on eliminating the risks of counterfeiting.

We had the benefits of VeChain from a business owners perspective, along with that of the consumer. One film went heavy on the hyperbole and described VeChain as creating the world’s first “truth machine.”

But though the message delivered differed across the entries, again almost all of the voiceovers sounded like they had been recorded by professional artists in proper studio conditions.

It seems that the 1 million VET top prize motivated entrants to pull out all the stops.

Back to the future... of technology

Perhaps bizarrely, several of the films share an obvious 80s influence, including the entry by Ionia Media, who first brought the contest to my attention and managed to secure one of the silver prize slots, winning 200,000 VET.

But several of the films brought to mind retro video games, the original Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy TV series, Deloreans, and the classic 80s Kelly Brock movie, Weird Science.

Films had to be under 10 minutes in length and ranged from under two minutes to just a second under the limit. Personally, I felt that some of the longer films stretched out the message a little too much and the sweet spot was between three and six minutes.

The overall winner was chosen from the ten finalists by the community through a VeVote. Is Your Business Using Blockchain by VeChain 101, was a short but sweet (and oh so slick) three and a half minutes of animation containing a strong message for business owners about how VeChain integration can improve their businesses.

A deserving winner amongst a very strong field, all of which are well worth a look.

When I first heard about the contest I thought it might be fun to enter the next one myself. But having seen the competition, perhaps it’s best if I just stick to writing about it?

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.