Location: Piteå, Norrland, Sweden
Member Since: October 2009
Biggest Win: $ 3,500
Lifetime Tongal Earnings: $5,000
In the second installment of our new Tongal Twelve interview series, Tongal’s own Caleb Light-Wills had the pleasure of interviewing Erik Andersson, 1st place winner of the $10,000 How to Make a Loan on Kiva Instructional Video Contest. There are a couple of things that make Erik an exceptional Tongaler. First off, he’s from Piteå, Sweden, making him the biggest International winner in Tongal history. Secondly, Erik is the perfect example of someone who entered a previous video contest, lost, but didn’t get discouraged and instead came back to take the $3,500 Kiva grand prize and an additional $1,500 for Most Viewed. We think he deserves every penny.
Caleb Light-Wills – How and when did you first find out about Tongal?
Erik Andersson – I found out about Tongal from an Internet forum called dvxuser.com where I usually hang around and read about filmmaking. My first competition was the LendingTree contest. Our shoot went horribly: the script said that we had to get into knee-deep water, but it was way too cold. Neither our photographer nor our actor could stand it so we have to give up, go home wet and cold, and without some of the essential shots that we needed for the commercial.
CLW – Were you apprehensive about Tongal, or was it something you understood immediately?
EA – I understood it immediately. I was very happy to see that people outside the U.S. could participate in the contests.
CLW – What has been your favorite Tongal contest so far?
EA – Since we won, I’d have to say Kiva!
CLW – Was Kiva a company that you were already familiar with or did you have to do some research to see what they were all about?
EA – Actually it was all very new to me, both Kiva and the whole micro lending idea. I had to do all the research from scratch to find out what I was getting in to.
CLW – Your Kiva video was pretty mind-blowing. How did you come up with the concept for “Pedro’s Story?”
EA – I surfed around on Kiva’s website and got this idea in my head that I wanted to show an example of how your money can help a specific entrepreneur. I think that’s what Kiva is all about. You see who you lend to, you see what they do for a living, and you see how YOUR money helps them finance their business. So you can say I wanted people to get the same insight with Pedro as you would with the real people you actually lend to on Kiva.
CLW – How did it feel to win $3,500 for two-minute video?
EA – It felt great! It was just before Christmas. My parents had told me not to buy any gifts for them since they know how little money I had as a student. But when I found out that we had won $3,500, I went out shopping for some Christmas presents for the family. By the way, it’s still total darkness here. I live just below the Arctic Circle, so this would be a perfect place for vampires to live, if they dig -22F…
CLW – How long did it take you to create Pedro’s Story and what was your process like?
EA – This was actually a last minute thing that I decided to enter. From deciding to enter the contest to submitting the video it took 4 days. This is how we did it:
EA – I wrote down a narrative script of the story and then requested voice over artists to record it for me on a website called radiodaddy.com. I found a great voice over artist named Jason Mayoff that was just right for the job. I told him it was a competition and that he would get $100 if we won any money.
EA – When I had the story and the V.O. recording, I pitched the idea to my friend and graphic designer Anton Malm and asked him to draw Pedro and his family on paper (at this time I was going to do a stop-motion animation). Anton jumped on the project as soon as he heard the voiceover and we started immediately drawing the pictures. I told him conceptually what he needed to create and then he used his imagination to draw these amazing images. When the drawings were down on the paper, I realized that we wouldn’t have time to do a stop-motion animation. So instead, I photographed all the pictures and opened them in Photoshop. In Photoshop, I color corrected each one so they were perfect black before I imported them to Adobe After effects where I did all of the animations.
CLW – What is your production / animation background like? It is your day job or more like a hobby?
EA – I think this was my first fully animated film, actually. I have done compositing jobs before with VFX combined with live-action footage, but never a completely animated video. Right now, I’m a senior student in TV-production and I just started my own production company, so I can’t really say it’s my day job yet. But soon…
CLW – How excited are you going to be if you rack up that extra $1,500 for Most Viewed?
EA – On a scale from 1 to 10, I would say 1,500!!!
CLW – What are you going to spend the money on?
EA – First of all, I split all the money with Anton Malm. He just bought a new guitar with his portion. I think I’m going to buy a new camera for future productions!
CLW – What is your favorite thing about Tongal?
EA – My favorite thing is that you truly feel like your work is appreciated.
CLW – What types of contests would you like to see on Tongal in the future?
EA – I really like commercials, so even if it’s mostly commercials on Tongal I’d like to say more commercials for products, just like the Binaca® Have A Blast Contest that’s coming up. I’m really excited about that one!
This interview was conducted via email on January 21, 2010.
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