Fantastic Fest 2009 Bumper Results, Pt. 1!

And the winner is... DOGZILLA vs CATHRA by Team FOGAR!

It was an extremely close call between DOGZILLA and Parallactic Pictures' ICE CREAM!!!, and ICE CREAM!!! definitely earned more straight up views than almost any video we've had in any contest ever. But when all was said and done the score of DOGZILLA managed to be soooooo close to ICE CREAM!!! (and, it just so happens, Scab Farms' NIGHT OF THE MILK BEAST), and FOGAR! was the one team in the top scoring category who managed to bring their video in under the 30 second time limit.

Typically we're all about quality over being sticklers for the rules, and when Parallactic Pictures told us that they couldn't cut their masterpiece below 42 seconds I told them to go ahead and upload it, but warned that if it came down to a close call between them and a video that came in under time, we'd go with the one that managed to follow all the rules and still wow the crowds. FOGAR! came in a little bit below ICE CREAM!!!, but it was something like .002 of a percentage point, so our team of judges made the call to award them the grand prize.

And because I've seen a few people posting comments with questions about how the voting works, here's how FOGAR! won this Frenzy:

This award for this contest is based on viewers' votes. It's not a popularity contest at all, but having five people give your movie 8 stars is worth more than having one person give your movie 10 stars. The idea there is that it's really easy to give yourself a high score, then not tell anyone else to see your movie and hope that your vote is the only one we ultimately count. That's not really a fair system, either.

Likewise, if 1,000 people watch your movie, but most of them score it as a 5 star movie or lower, your extra views aren't going to help your score at all.

The contest was extremely close on this one, and all three finalists (and many more) were obviously awesome bumper creators, and I wish I had enough VIP badges to go around to everyone. ICE CREAM!!! managed to be the most viewed, but apparently may have been hit by some late in the game backlash for seeming to pull ahead early on.

Of course, ALL of these bumpers will be played before various titles at Fantastic Fest, and there will still be a jury prize awarded to ten more movies after our Fantastic Fest juries have had a chance to check them all out. We'll be announcing those winners at the Awards Ceremony of the festival as well as online here and on the Fantastic Fest site. For now, congratulations go out to FOGAR! and everyone else who managed to complete something as challenging as getting children and monsters to hang out together. That hasn't been done since Fred Savage's monster made that one kid drink pee.