The Film and Production Club hosted a Super Bowl advertisement contest for dorms and clubs to display their merits last week.
Junior and Club President Truman Kjos said the club, which had put on a film contest some years ago, wanted to get dorms and clubs involved in a new contest.
“We said ‘Super Bowl ad’ to give a feel to it so that people didn’t think they had to make an actual advertisement,” Kjos said. “We wanted it to be a fun contest.”
Each advertisement could be about any theme promoting the club or dorm but had to fill 60 seconds: long enough to develop a story, but short enough not to be intimidating, Kjos said. The prize at stake is a $75 gift card to a business like Handmade for first place, $50 for second, and $25 for third.
There were six submissions in total: two from clubs and four from dorms and housing groups.
Junior and Resident Assistant Andrew Feiger helped with Simpson Residence’s ad after hearing about it from a dorm mate.
“Little did I know what that meant,” Feiger said. “He texted me asking how fast I could throw on the white suit, which is a dorm relic passed down to me from Andy Walker. I threw it on, and we started filming!”
Feiger said the best part was the fun of throwing it together.
“Benching in a suit was also certainly a highlight,” he said.
Senior Rachel Warren, head RA of New Dorm, said her dorm takes Homecoming competitions pretty seriously, and that it was no different with this project.
“When Truman said, ‘You have proven yourselves more than capable during spirit week,’ and Colton Duncan said, ‘Niedfeldt is going to win,’ we had to at least participate!” Warren said.
Sophomore and New Dorm RA Marina Weber said she volunteered for New Dorm’s ad because she had some experience from making the New Dorm video for Homecoming.
“The RA team decided to make our ad sentimental and cute, replicating styles of ads we had seen from Apple,” Weber said. “We ended up asking our residents to describe New Dorm in one word, which for some was difficult. The ad ended with the catchphrase, ‘New Dorm. One word just won’t do,’ which we thought perfectly encapsulated how dynamic the dorm is.”
Junior Kenton Baer said really wanting to cash out on the Handmade gift card caused him to enter an ad promoting his home, the Triplex.
“It is a realist depiction of the consumerist degeneration we see in our society today,” Baer said. “I got the inspiration for this ad because it depicts exactly how my house is. If you entered on any given Saturday, the commercial is what you would see.”
Baer said the hardest part of making the ad was convincing his friends that they did not have to act.
“They literally just had to be how they always are: lifeless,” he said.
Kjos said he is working on getting a group of professors to judge the films and decide on the winners. He said he hopes to do an award show in the TV lounge to reveal the winners.
Warren said she hopes this becomes a bigger competition in the future.
“I’m excited to see the other videos that were submitted,” she said. “Homecoming week offers great competition among dorms in the fall, but having something like this as a spring competition was very fun.”