The winners of the official Portal 2 "Exile Vilify" Music Video contest have come in! Here are the top 3 winners:

First Place
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Second Place
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Third Place
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Congrats to you guys! You can view the honorable mentions on the official site here.

Wow! These videos are professional quality.

I am, however, a bit puzzled why the sock puppet video won the grand prize.

I thought the second place video is the best, followed by the third place video.

satchmo wrote:
Wow! These videos are professional quality.

I am, however, a bit puzzled why the sock puppet video won the grand prize.

I thought the second place video is the best, followed by the third place video.

AGREE COMPLETELY

I honestly think that the sock puppet one shouldn't have even been considered for the top 3, I'm really disappointed in their decision. Number 2 was freaking amazing, anybody who has even attempted flash animation will understand how much effort was put into it.

I thought the puppet one sorta fit the mood of the music.Regardless they were all good.I liked the ending on number 3 too.

Like I said on Youtube:

AntiVector on Youtube wrote:
Most of the people bashing this video are entrants of the contest, so I can see where they're coming from. A lot of people entered this with very fine-tuned, serious entries, so it's confusing to a lot of them when a sock puppet wins. On the other hand, criticizing anyone's work, however light-hearted, is not acceptable. This video is certainly the most creative entry, and gives a nice contrast to all of the bleak & over-depressing entries. I consider this a deserved winner.

I think that covers #1

In my personal opinion, I would switch #1 and #2 just because #2 did such a beautiful job of bringing the Portal 1 1/2 comic (as I call it) to life. The way it used the scribble-flicker technique was phenominal, and its use of motion only when needed was fabulous. It presents a very nice way of taking something that Valve made just to connect the 2 stories and gives it its own world, which is why #2 is my favorite. It puts me in mind of a typography, but for the comic.

As for #3, it manages to do the reverse: it transmutes Portal 2 into our story. I've seen many of these live -acton ones, such as this one, but the third-placer actually made Aperture fit in the real world. Making it seem as though it was a real company that made those cubes. Nothing seemed out-of-place. Every little detail (even the Pyro drawing and the medic poster) felt like it belonged there in this world fused between ours and Aperutre's. All the little touches (right down to the ending) made this video a stand-out winner.

There are no undeserved winners here!

I think the winner won because it had nothing to do with Portal. People forget that The National isn't some fictional band created just for Portal 2. Odds are, they had a single written out without an album to release it on and through a series of events somehow ended up releasing it in pair with Portal 2. Even if the song was created specifically for Portal 2, I doubt they want to typecast themselves as 'that Portal 2 band'. It's hard to imagine a serious music video consisting of video game lore and gameplay. If you knew nothing about The National and this contest and you saw their video you'd forever associate them with Portal 2.

The song was honestly nothing but a little easter egg in Portal 2. It never played a huge role but I feel that with this contest, Valve kind of pushed it in a different direction. I strongly believe that the band/label had a big say in what video won and they probably wanted a non-Portal video from the beginning. The rules never said it had to be about Portal 2 and they actually pushed the idea that it could be about anything.

All of that said, I wish there would have been a lot more non-Portal videos to compete with the sock puppet one. It was a well-made video but there were probably a lot more interesting and unique concepts out there.

Does this mean they will stop wasting resources on stupid shit like VIDEOs and release our damn DLC already??? >:[

rellikpd wrote:
Does this mean they will stop wasting resources on stupid shit like VIDEOs and release our damn DLC already??? >:[

I'd be lying if I said I loved how Valve "fans" do nothing but complain when they don't get their free stuff immediately (free stuff which, by the way, would cost $$$ from most other developers).

Plus, the people who whine are usually the ones who finish the DLC straight away, not savouring it, and then whine for months on end about how the game has 'no replayability', and they usually can't even be bothered to try playing custom maps.

Rubrica wrote:
Plus, the people who whine are usually the ones who finish the DLC straight away, not savouring it, and then whine for months on end about how the game has 'no replayability', and they usually can't even be bothered to try playing custom maps.

Custom content is what keeps games going! Not to mention that Portal is a coop/single player game, not one that has endless amounts of online multi-player gameplay. If people solely relied on Valve to release stock DLC then it wouldn't last very long tbh.

Also I thought the sock puppet video was quite clever. Reading when they first posted the announcement for the competition they said that you could make the video with anything you like, 'even with sock puppets'. Who would have known that was the winner eh

Honestly, I get the gist of why people say the sock puppet video won. It's independent of Portal. Regardless, I still think that, though the sock puppet video is good (GREAT quality, out of the box, near perfect "lip" sync, if not perfect...) The other two were a little better, the second place one more so. The quality of the animation is amazing. To get that sort of quality the author must have put so much more time into it than probably anyone else. The particular talent of making animations is in and of itself extremely difficult.
I'm surprised none of the winners did anything about combustible lemons, though (I haven't bothered to check the honorable mentions yet, those might have a reference). Perhaps they didn't pick a video to win that did for the Portal reference, but lemons would've been a more esoteric reference, and normal people wouldn't associate something about lemons with Portal if they had no idea. They'd probably think it's just clever. And Portal players wouldn't feel like they were being tossed in favor of some other audience. I feel like it would sort of keep everything together and grow more attention.
Heck, the theme of life giving you lemons even fits with this song.

Wow, that winner video socks compared to the other ones.

My personal favorite was that one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5qHApLS ... r_embedded

Metafrank wrote:
Wow, that winner video socks compared to the other ones.

Was that intentional?

what do you think?

AntiVector wrote:
On the other hand, criticizing anyone's work, however light-hearted, is not acceptable.

Earth to AntiVector, Earth to AntiVector.
We've lost him.

"criticizing" was indeed the wrong word. "mindlessly chastising" is closer, but I was running out of characters on Youtube. No need for such antagonistic sarcasm.

I think the people who judged the video contest entries may not have a good idea on the composition of videos. The third place video should've been the winner. Great sense of composition and camera positions, and camera shots.

I also think that the 3rd one is the best. They are all very well made, but the atmosphere in the third-place video really matches the song well (even better than the sock puppet video) and the acting and camera work is indeed very good. Plus, they have just the right amount of Portal-themed things in it, so people who don't know Portal will not have the feeling that they are missing the context. Only the ending spoils it a bit IMO.

HMW wrote:
They are all very well made, but the atmosphere in the third-place video really matches the song well

That I totally agree with. When creating a music video, you have to have to be able to create a connection to the audience in the way that it makes them feel the true meaning of the song. This means that it's not just a 'video' and a 'song' played with each other, it's a 'music video' in the sense that these things are combined to be able to take the meaning of the video, and the meaning of the song...and create one new meaning.