Ecospot: Grand Prize Winner: Sky is Falling

Excellent job! Congratulations!!

Very well done! This PSA is very well thought out, creative, and unlike your normal boring straight talk to the camera kind of PSA! KUDOS!

Very creative and effective, and can be understood by all ages without scaring children. Very well done.

im totally with you man ..wounderful job on the video!

I voted for you it rocked!!!

This is a unique PSA, using the art of animation with a clever metaphor to make a powerful impact. It's gratifying when the best actually wins! Congratulations!

I'm sorry your page got hijacked by a discussion about the contest. Really nice job! Congrats! Using the metaphor "the elephant in the room" was brilliant, and will always make me smile. Thank you.

This is a work of Astral genius...congrats!

Yeah I voted for this! The best by far.

wonderful job!!!
I think the more simple and graphic the better we understand things...

Nice.

liked the pod pity about the politics in the post..... elephants eh? I wonder how many cats and dogs that would be.... have heard it raining cats and dogs...never elephants..... intriguing....

THIS IS AWESOME BECAUSE IT GIVES A CLEAR DEFENITION IN THEOTRICAL WORDS OF WHAT EXACTLY GLOBAL WARMING IS, AND WHAT IT'S ACTUALLY DOING.

fantastic job! congratulations on the win!

That's a fabulous metaphor. :] Good job. I wish real elephants would destroy corporate factories... that would be very appealing.

A really stellar job. It was most enjoyable. I love the story about you in the Canadian Rag "lifeinthefastlane" it really tells the story. You have great work and deserve what they wrote. Best of luck to you.

Don't love it. Don't think it's that original... Hope this comment isn't deleted because it's expressing a negative viewpoint.

Brilliant.

Not sure I like it. My daughter who just became 7 didn't care for animals falling on humans. She said it made her sad. I checked out your website Dave. You have some really good stuff there. Not sure if your spot is original however it is effective. I may get the bat zapppp for saying that!!!

Like terry said, I think it's a lot of gloom-n-doom...
My personal opinion - positive messages make people think like they can do something about global warming... negative messages like this one make people think the problem is way too big for any one person to solve.

Hello everyone-

I have decided to break my silence. For the last three days, I have been mocked, pointed at, and in some cases abused. Both on here and a Canadian blog. Three days ago, I posted my only response on my blog. www.blog.schlafman.com, but I feel the need to break my silence here.

Since then, people have continued to say I'm a fake, phony, unoriginal, etc. This couldn't be further from the truth. My name is Dave Schlafman and I am a 28 year old animation artist living in Boston. I love my job and I love creating original artwork professionally for a number of companies. Most of the work I do is child-related as I have directed educational shorts for Between the Lions, and I'm co-developing a kids animated show for WGBH. I love what I do.

I created this spot before I knew about the contest. A friend of mine runs an animation festival in NYC and he urged me to make something for it. I agreed and I thought about it for months, but nothing stuck. One day last spring while making my commute from Providence to Boston, I was stuck in traffic. The car in front of me reeked of exhaust. I thought about the Carbon Dioxide stats I read about when researching for the PSA. It hit me instantly, like most ideas do...how much would that weigh in elephants? I thought about elephants raining down. That's the truth. I went home that night and doodled in my sketchbook. You can see the original sketch on the Bostonist Blog. I NEVER saw the so-called hippo movie and I also NEVER saw the previously posted film (which was posted May 27th...a month after I started production).

I went on to create the short with three friends and the it played at the film festival this summer. A month later, a colleague of mine recommended that I enter it in to a couple contests, so I did and this happened to be one of them.

When I found out I was a finalist I sent emails to my friends, posted things on myspace/facebook, contacted the Boston Globe, and a number of Boston blogs. I spoke to 900 students at Swampscott High School and another 500 at North Andover High School. A friend of mine who works as an art teacher in CA had all the art classes in the school watch not only mine, but all the shorts. I also visited Massachusetts College of and spoke to all the animation students as well as the SIM program. I worked hard for two weeks to spread the word, much like Eric.

I now know what happened to "The Little Things" and I am truly sorry, Eric. I had nothing to do with your downfall, nor would wish what happened to you on anyone else. I am saddened that people have equated your loss to me.

I feel I have been attacked by random folks for no reason. The accusations have hurt me to my core and I would never wish them upon my worst enemy. I am a little guy who just wants to make my animations for others to enjoy. It's really that simple. I never had any visions of driving a hybrid. I made the film for one reason...it's what I love to do.

This will be my final response universally. Thank you for your time.

-Dave

Great post Eric ,although the powers that be will zapppp you. Dave another original idea posting after Eric. You should post in the Canadian paper where there is real freedom of speech!!!!!

Can i ask what is so original about the "little things" video? It first of all uses someone else's quotation and on top of that is basically like every other PSA i've ever seen. How many ads/PSAs have people spelling out a word or phrase? Talk about originality.

I'm sorry I really like The Sky is falling however there is no doubt the idea was someone else! But this is over so lets move on!!!!!

I feel you Eric. I am trying to believe you Dave. Both spots were good.

wow - what is this a fantasy football message board? i've never seen so much whining about nothing. i mean, who cares who won as long as people wake up and start making a difference with their day-to-day recycling, etc.

all the spots were good, but obviously something fishy happened with "the little things" and because of that they were disqualified. so to the makers of that film, swallow it and stop complaining, all you're doing is making your film and the people involved with it seem immature for pointing fingers at everyone.

i don't know any of you people, but i bet a million bucks that the filmmaker of "sky is falling" has nothing to do with who lost and who won, all they did was make a quality film like the other 20 contestants. it seems like the friends of "little things" are all ganging up here in some weird smear campaign via this message board, so please stop pretending that "the sky is falling" did something wrong because "the little things" didn't win.

with all the numbers and quotes that "little things" is throwing out, it makes it pretty obvious that they did cheat since they're trying so hard to cover something up by blaming the world - but isn't it the world you guys are trying to save?

hypocrites and sore losers.

-h

Not sure if the sky is falling is that good however his heart was in the right place.

silly idea but effective however not very original.

great job guys. Loved the coverage lifeinthefastlane gave all the winners...

OK but not my fav..

Not my cup of tea too tragic. Loved 2nd place though. It was funny.

This contest demonstrates the enormous power of the internet, both to do good and to harm. The idea and execution of this contest up until this point was wonderful: to allow anyone with the motivation to create a PSA to inform and inspire people to do something about the spiraling damages to our planet. There were celebrities involved donating their time, and a generous sponsor donating an environmentally responsible automobile to the winner. Yet this same technology that allows anyone- a trained artist or someone holding a camera for the first time- to submit a piece- also allows people to comment without factual evidence when things don't go their way, attacking someone that can be read by thousands of people.
I know the artist who created this spot and he is one of the most honest and committed people I have ever met. I also have faith in the integrity of Current in this situation, in part due to the knowledge that Dave did not do anything dishonest. A small minority disgruntled with the results of this contest are using the internet to malign someone’s character without knowing him or knowing all the facts. This is serious. The messages attacking Dave here and elsewhere are often poorly written, misspelled, inarticulate, and have no basis in fact, yet they have the power to hurt an honest individual and Current's reputation as well. Please think before you write and comment on the work on the basis of its own merits, not the person because of hearsay.
I hope the Dave's ecospot and any others can be used to promote positive action on behalf of the environment.

You scream 25 years of higher education and yet show very little on your part. You are doing the very same thing you claim others are doing. Let us not accuse anyone. They were all good.

I agree who ever 25 years of allege higher education really is should show some decorum. I loved them all.
P.S. I notice you misspelled a word on another site.

we would love to speak with you individually about your concerns in this matter. however, several people in this thread have registered with invalid email addresses, which makes it very difficult for us to reach out to you. if we have deleted something, and you feel it was unfair, please email us at yourfriends@current.com so that we can speak one-on-one

Hi all--

If you have any questions about the judging of this competition, you should email us at ecospot_us@current.com.

Any posts that are personal attacks on any other member of the community, which includes speculation about the judging of this competition, will be removed immediately.

Repeat offenders will be given a warning via email. If you continue to post inappropriate content, your account will be deleted. If you've given us a fake email address, so we can't contact you, your account will be deleted.

However, general criticism of the spot itself, as long as it's discussing the merits of the video and not personally attacking the producers, are not violations of our standards and will not be removed.

Not good for kids. 2nd place seem more fun to watch.

both my sons (12 & 9) and i loved this! it's to the point, attention-getting and funny. i love comparing the weight of carbon to the weight of elephants. makes it a lot harder to ignore.