In this Tongal Of The Month, Tongal’s own Caleb Light-Wills interviews four-time 1st place winning video creators and current #2 All-Time Leaderboard ranking, The Norman Invasion. For those of you who have been living under a rock (or just joined the site), The Norman Invasion dominated Tongal from May through August of last year – placing first in three consecutive video projects, assuming the 1st place position on the Tongal All-Time Leaderboard, and racking up well over $10,000 along the way. Then, mysteriously, The Invasion slipped quietly into the digital abyss, leaving in their wake a gaggle of stunned creators and a portfolio of unparalleled renown.
It’s that time of the year again and The Invasion is back with a new big win under its belt ($9,500) for its most notable client to date (Benjamin Moore). With Tongal’s new Tournament Style Projects and a reel like theirs, you can expect to see a lot more of these guys on the site in the near future.
Caleb Light-Wills – You’ve been on Tongal for a while now, but how and when did you first find out about and start participating on the site?
The Norman Invasion – First of all, Tongalers of the Month! Woohoo! Thanks guys! We’re totally sending this article to our mothers immediately, btw.
Anyway, we found out about Tongal through a friend in Fall 2009, and shortly thereafter started trying our luck at the concept phases and predicting the winners (we did terribly) and made our first video for the site a few months later.
CLW – Were you apprehensive about the Tongal process or was it something you understood almost immediately?
TNI – The process is pretty self-explanatory, and by the time we started getting into it, there had been enough contests/winners at that point that we knew it could be trusted.
CLW – So who is The Norman Invasion?
TNI – The Norman Invasion is a masked vigilante army of crime-fighters-turned-filmmakers. We stopped crime-fighting when the masks got too hot. Mainly it’s myself (Colin Duffy) and Aaron Moorhead, but we’ve kinda expanded our team a little over time to include a fairly regular group of crew members and actors.
CLW – What role does each of you play in the production of your videos?
TNI – Usually the way it goes is I handle the prep (concept, script, casting, organizing the shoot) and direct it, while Aaron does the cinematography, and handles the post-workflow (editing, vfx, color timing, delivery). Of course those aren’t set in stone. We’ve co-directed a couple, and we’ve done a few projects where our friend Brian Barrow did a lot of the shooting, and I’ve edited a couple of them, and on the most recent one, we had an outside producer, Gio Orellana (of Anchorbolt Studios) which was a first for us. We aren’t too territorial.
CLW – What is your production background like?
TNI – Aaron and I are Florida State University film school grads. And for anyone wondering, the answer is “Yes. Miami sucks”, and “Yes, our school’s fight song contains the phrase “scalp ‘em”.
Both of us have steady work in the film industry these days. Aaron has been finding very consistent work as a DP, VFX artist, and Colorist for the past couple of years (too steady to always be available for my shoots, I might add, annoyed), while I am currently in the Directors Guild of America Producer Training Program, and trying to build my directing reel/resume in my down time. For me, making commercials is more like a side-job for now, but it’ll get there.
CLW – What was the first Tongal project you participated in and what was the result?
TNI – The first Tongal project we did was for the Kiva: Loans That Change Lives contest. It was actually before Aaron got involved and it was the first thing I’d directed in about a year. We got beaten pretty soundly in that competition, and I didn’t have the heart to compete again until Record My Calls came around like 8 months later. We learned some lessons on Kiva though.
CLW – Flash forward: Benjamin Moore marks your 4th (and largest) 1st place win on Tongal, making you the only creators on the site to ever do so. It also pushes your lifetime earnings over that $20,000 mark. That’s got to feel pretty good, right?
TNI – Oh definitely. We were stoked. We were putting a lot of pressure on ourselves to come back strong after not competing on Tongal for a while, so this was a big win for us. Tongal has been kind to us.
CLW – Were you nervous about the competition?
TNI – There are always nerves before the winners are announced, just because it’s so subjective, and sometimes the judges are looking for something so specific in the brief, and if you don’t have that, or don’t hit it as well as another video, what might seem insignificant to you could cost you the competition.
CLW – Was Benjamin Moore a company that you were already familiar with or did you have to do some research?
TNI – I was familiar with it, because my parents are both Architects, so they knew all about it and they were quite excited that their son was finally doing an ad for a product they actually use.
CLW – Your commercial was based on Carrie Hunter’s Concept but you definitely made it your own. What made you choose that concept and how did you adapt concept to make it work for you?
TNI – Gio (the producer) just messaged me one day and told me he thought we should do that one (which just happened to be written by fellow FSU film school grad Carrie Hunter). He figured “no one else will have an ice-cream truck”, and found out what it would take to get one for our shoot, and just made it happen. As it would turn out, EVERYONE had an ice cream truck somehow, but obviously his instinct to go with that pitch still worked out well for us.
CLW – How long did it take you to shoot Live The Legend and what was your process like?
TNI – It was about ten hours of shooting, and a day and a half of editing. I wrote/directed/edited, Gio produced, Brian Barrow shot it, Rocky Collins did some booming, our wonderful composer who we use on everything, Dan Martinez, did the music, and Aaron did the color timing and logo replacement.
CLW – What sorts of techniques did you employ to make your story more effective?
TNI – I figured the more epic and serious and beautiful, and emotional the build-up was, the funnier it would be when we tore it all down. That and have guys scream like girls.
CLW – What equipment did you use to shoot and edit the piece?
TNI – We shot mostly on the Canon Rebel T3i, with the occasional 7D as b-camera, recorded sound on the Zoom H4n, cut in Adobe Premiere (due to our PC, MAC, and After Effects workflow requirements), and finished in Color.
CLW – Any funny stories?
TNI – You can’t tell at all in the final video, but when everyone is standing around getting the paint at the truck, that whole group was improvising and shouting the most absolutely insane lines, while looking as happy as could be. My favorites “I want the purple stuff!!” “This one will be great for your washing machine!!” and “I can’t hear what the director is telling us!!” For the record I was telling them “cut”.
CLW – Your commercial was beautifully cast, I even noticed a few familiar Tongal faces are those people professional actors, friends, fellow tongalers?
TNI – Everyone (with the exception of Brian, Gio and myself), are actual trained actors; all really talented. Gio helped cast our narrator and the narrator’s wife, while pretty much everyone else had been in other commercials that I’ve done. Rocky Collins, aka the guy reading the newspaper, has a solid Tongal record with his business partner Gio, so he’s no stranger to the online ad competition world. If anyone is in LA and wants to use anyone they’ve seen in our ads, message us on Tongal and we’ll put you in contact.
CLW – Even though it didn’t place, I would argue that “Finding The One” was one of the best videos produced for the Winepicks Project. Do you guys have a favorite video that you produced for the site?
TNI – We agree! Haha. We got $200 for like 7th place, but we were definitely hoping for more. I think the Benjamin Moore one might be the best one we’ve done on Tongal, but our Winepicks: Blanc et Noir ad was really the turning point for us creatively, where we started to understand how far we could stretch a pitch and have fun and be creative and still make something that advertisers would want.
CLW – What has been your favorite Project on Tongal so far?
TNI – I think maybe Winepicks. Those were fun shoots, and we ended up with two commercials that we’re proud of, and it vaulted us to #1 on the site. All of the Binaca movie competitions are hilarious as well. We didn’t compete, but we watched the winners.
CLW – What are some key factors you take into consideration when figuring out whether or not to participate in a project?
TNI – I think Aaron thinks I’m a little nuts for trying, but I actually spent about 10 hours working on a really complicated excel formula that calculated how worth it it is to enter a competition. I mean, it isn’t perfect, and I wouldn’t use it to base my decision off of, but that being said, I made it like a week and a half before deciding to do the Benjamin Moore competition, and it showed it as being slightly worth entering. So it was right. I guess. Haha.
CLW – Proprietary algorithms aside, what would you say is the single biggest factor?
TNI – I think the biggest factor is always the number of competitors. When everything is being done for no money/or spending your own money, and you’re having to call in favors, you have to think about the odds first and foremost. Usually the decision to enter or pass is made about a week or so before the deadline when we see how many people have entered, then you have to figure that the number of submissions will increase by a couple per day, and then always more than double in the last 24 hours.
More and more though, we’ve been selecting competitions based on how cool the product is, and how open to interpretation the briefs are. If it is a very limiting brief, for what we see as a boring product, the prize would have to be astronomically high, and the competition very slim for us to consider it.
CLW – Has Tongal helped you professionally, like has it helped you build a usable portfolio, get gigs, jobs, etc?
TNI – Absolutely, They were not only good no-pressure crash-courses in “what are advertisers looking for?” and how to be concise and creative and informative in 60 seconds, but they’re still things that I have on my reel, and are helping us get more work and attention in the commercial world as we speak.
CLW – What do you think sets Tongal apart from other video contest sites?
Aside from it being the only site we know of where people can make money without having to have a camera and a crew and having to go out and make a video, there is also more of a sense of community on Tongal than on other sites., and I think a lot of that comes from how you and the other administrators treat the filmmakers.
Doing any work on spec is somewhat exploitative in its nature, and Tongal is the only site I know of that doesn’t take that for granted. You are obviously working hard to appease the clients with the pitch phase and suggestion phase, but more importantly for us, we feel like Tongal has the backs of the filmmakers. For instance, you are the only site that creates a deadline for the advertisers to make a decision, and you promise the fastest turnaround of prize winnings once the competition is over. There is nothing more disheartening than working so hard on a video, and struggling to make the upload deadline, and then be told that a decision will be announced sometime in the next eight weeks, and then if you win, they say they’ll send the money out in another six to eight weeks. And for anyone who’s gone on these other sites, they know that is not an exaggeration.
Contestants on Tongal should know how well they are treated here, and I think the people who come here really appreciate that when they go somewhere else.
CLW – What are you thoughts on the new tournament process, that is, the ability to put a Pitch together, secure a production budget and be guaranteed a prize for producing a video?
TNI – We just saw that, and it is really cool. We’re kinda wondering how it’ll work in practice, but it’s just one more way that illustrates how you guys are always trying something new in an effort to inspire better work, and to reward those that do it.
CLW – What have you spent your earnings on?
TNI – Hmm. I think it’s more like “how many crappy jobs have we not had to take as a result of the winnings?” The winnings have allowed us to stay focused on the things we want to do, and to go ahead and keep trying to make videos and spec commercials and write. That, and we bought a pony and named it Tongal. It was a mistake in retrospect.
CLW – What is your favorite thing about Tongal? We’ve gotta be doing something right, if you’re still around, right?
TNI – Caleb, you’re our favorite thing. Also, the big paragraph we wrote for question 12 about respect for the filmmakers. Respect, and Caleb Light-Wills.
CLW – What is your ideal Tongal project?
TNI – A really well-known brand with a super cool product, a large prize purse, a totally nonrestrictive brief, with the option/risk/ability to do a video based on a pitch not selected in the competition. Also, no other competitors. Please hire us?
CLW – What would you say has been the single best improvement on Tongal since you started using it?
TNI – The brands have definitely gotten stronger and more recognizable. It feels good to be working for something that we’ve all heard of.
CLW – What’s next for you on Tongal or otherwise?
TNI – This month is I’m doing a short for my friends’ show Backyard Effects (www.indymogul.com). I’ve also got my first music video coming out on Vevo in this month (check out the teaser on my site) and am directing another music video next week. I’m pretty excited—it’s going to have ghostly dancers, an alien spaceship, a relationship drama—epic stuff. I’m also trying to get a pilot episode shot of a webseries I’ve been developing in my head for a while. Hopefully I’ll get a couple of small commercials squeezed in there, and maybe a spec commercial at some point as well.
Aaron is furiously editing away on a feature he just got done shooting and co-directing in San Diego, and then as soon as that is done, is scheduled to shoot another feature. In the meantime, he’s also squeezing in VFX and coloring gigs here and there. He’s a very busy guy. Too busy? Never.
CLW – How can people stay up to date with the Norman Invasion?
TNI – One of these days we’ll get the Norman Invasion website going, haha. Until then, check out my site colinhduffy.com or Aaron’s site: plpfilms.com. Also look us up on Vimeo or Youtube.
CLW – Anything else you’d like to add? Questions I should have asked, etc?
TNI – Favorite colors: Colin’s: Blue. Maybe Green. Teal is for idiots. Aaron’s: Black like his soul/ the hair of an Arabian princess
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