CHICKEN DUNIYA

Four students of R V College of Engineering have made it among the 24 finalists of an international video-making competition. Online voting for the winner takes place today . Cast your vote now ....

Nigel Anthony, Minhaj Hassan and Preetam Gupta, studying III year Mechanical Engineering course, and Eraj Hassan, studying Computer Science - all in R V College of Engineering - are going places. Their crankiness has got them to the final round for a competition titled YOU ON YOU hosted by YouTube.
They are among the 24 finalists selected from thousands of videos submitted from all around the world They have already won themselves a laptop and a cash prize of $ 2500. But they want to do the country, and of course themselves - not necessarily in that order, as they wryly and endearingly confess - proud by winning the grand prize of $40,000 (Rs 1.5 crore).
Today will be a defining moment in their lives, as the winners will be decided by online voting. Now, they are a step away from winning the competition and are appealing to people everywhere to check out their video and vote for them on YouTube.

THE CONTEST

The contestants were asked to pick a few things about themselves and create a short video that told their story in a unique way. The catch was that contestants could not show their faces. Nigel while browsing YouTube chanced upon the announcement and decided to take a chance.
Their creative journey lasted for 100 hours. We did not sleep or come out of the room till we finished the video. Initially we thought of taking pictures but as everyone chickened out to pose for the camera, it was decided to use some characters in the video instead of a person, explained Nigel.
We intended to show there is much more to the life that one can have and also wanted our video to relate to individuals. So we went back to the basics of stop-motion animation and created a chicken as the protagonist. Later, more than 150 images were carved out and pasted on to the white board. More than 400 photographs were taken and the animation was made, recounted Preetam. They used the flickerbook concept to shoot the video.
Over the 2,000 videos sent from across the world, their one-minute video made with minimum technology is now the cynosure of most eyes. The viewers made them hot favourites to win the competition.

SUPPORT THEM

Log on to www.youtube.com /hp and sign in with your youtube account. (G mail users can also vote) Among the 24 videos that appear on your screen select the video titled MAKE IT HAPPEN . When it starts playing, click on the thumbs up button on the right of the player. You can vote till Sept 13





source BANGLORE MIRROR, Sept 13, page 4