Omnitrans Rules The School With D.I.Y Student Video Contest

While Metro awarded Miss Traffic her tiara and t-shirt, San Bernardino County’s largest transit operator, Omnitrans, announced the winners of its D.I.Y. TV Student TV Commercial Contest earlier this month. The contest, which had local high school students competing to create a commercial promoting Omnitrans, had significantly higher stakes than Metro’s Miss Traffic. A grand prize package of $1,000 cash, a new laptop computer, a year of free bus rides, and the honor of having the winning commercial played on local television and in local movie theaters surely motivated these Inland Empire kids to come up with creative ways to promote something most teenagers might dread, riding the bus.

The online votes were tallied and the grand prize went to Trevor Stevens of Redland High School for his spot, “Save Gas Use A Pass“. The commercial pits transit user against car driver in a turtle-and-the-hare race, where the bus rider comes out victorious because high gas prices and an empty wallet stop the car driver in his tracks. Trevor, who according to the Inland Empire newspaper The Sun has plans to embark in a career in TV and film production, chose to focus on the money savings that come from riding public transit because “the biggest issue for students right now is the price of gas”.

Some of the other finalists videos are really great as well. I really enjoyed “Omni Help“, which did a great job showing how transit offers a stress-free alternative to the private automobile. My personal favorite, “Go Omni“, takes the ecological route, but packages it in a whimsical Michel Gondry-esque vision of stop motion animation. I really appreciate the high production values and humor in the musical spot, “Ms Omnitrans“. The spot “More Reason to Ride” easily matches the production quality of most of Metro’s commercials, and comes off as more sincere.

I gotta give these suburban kids props for working so hard to come up with such creative videos promoting public transit. Omnitrans gets equal props for putting together such a contest that speaks to the YouTube generation so effectively, with a great concept and an even better prize package. Let’s hope the winners and finalists all move onto great media production careers and continue to work to promote transit with their skills.

Elsewhere:

• D.I.Y TV Contest List of Winners
• The Sun: Omnitrans names TV commercial winner
• The Press-Enterprise: Student video directors compete for bus advertising