Enter the 2010 Special Olympics video and photo contest today. Submit your best photos and videos about the Special Olympics and its events held across the world.
The competition is open to college and university students internationally. Entries will be judged by a panel of industry leaders in advertising, television, multimedia and photography.
Why should you? Make cash! The Special Olympics will award cash prizes for each of the five categories.
Introduction
The mission of the Special Olympics movement is to provide year-round, worldwide sports training and athletic competition in a variety of Olympic-type sports for individuals with intellectual disabilities, giving them continuing opportunities to develop physical fitness, demonstrate courage, experience joy, and participate in a sharing of gifts, skills, and friendship with their families, other Special Olympics athletes, and the community. The ultimate goal of Special Olympics is to help persons with intellectual disabilities participate as productive and respected members of society by offering them an opportunity to develop and demonstrate their skills and talents through sports training and competition, and by increasing the public’s awareness of their capabilities and needs.
Objective
Submit your best photos and videos about the Special Olympics and its events held across the world.
The categories of the contest will include video and still photography. Cash prizes will be awarded to the first, second, and third place entrants in each category as judged by Special Olympics and the University of Miami, with final judgments made by a panel of industry leaders in the fields of advertising, television, multimedia, journalism and photography.
The video category will award first, second and third place cash prizes for the following categories:
- Vignette – a maximum three minute piece that tells the story of an athlete, coach, family, volunteer or anyone else involved in Special Olympics.
- Public Service Announcement – a 30 or 60 second PSA that uses the Be a fan® messaging to promote Special Olympics (Example 1, Background)
- Music Video – a maximum three minute piece using music and visuals to tell a story about Special Olympics and share and promote Special Olympics messaging
The photo category will award first, second and third place cash prizes for the following categories:
- Photo Essays – maximum 15 photos, each topic is a separate category of entry
- Tell a story of the impact of and/or need for Special Olympics
- Tell a story of a Special Olympics athlete
- Tell a story about a Special Olympics Competition
- Single Photo – Individually submitted, entrants can use one photo from a photo essay submitted simultaneously, but must submit specifically to the single photo category.
Entries will be judged based on the following criteria:
- Motivation and inspiration
- Creativity
- Message clarity and relevance
- Overall impact
Prizes
Cash prizes will be awarded to each winning project. Any sharing of prize money is left at the discretion the project team.
For each category there will be a cash prize of:
- 1st place: $1000
- 2nd place: $500
- 3rd place: $250
Rules
- The competition is open to college and university students internationally.
- To be eligible for contest prizes, the final submission must be new.
- The submission may be in any language but the Contest Operators reserve the right to add sub-titles to entries which are not in the English language.
- Entries will be judged by a panel of industry leaders in advertising, television, multimedia and photography.
How to enter?
You may enter the Contest by completing the entry form found on the Knight Center and Special Olympics website and submitting an electronic viewing version that conforms to the relevant specifications:
Video requirements:
- .mpeg/.mpg (MPEG-2, MPEG-4), .flv/.f4v files
- 500MB max file size
- 640×480 for standard definition 4:3 video, 853×480 for widescreen DV, or 1280×720 for high definition.
- 30-60 second video runtime for the PSA category, or a maximum three minutes for the Vignette or Music Video categories
Photo requirements:
- jpg format
- Photos numbered in sequence ( johnstory_1.jpg, johnstory_2.jpg, johnstory_3.jpg, etc.)
- Each image file less than 1MB
- Captions stored in file metadata
- Up to 15 photos for the “Photo Story” category (for a possible total of less than 15MB max)
