The Copysnatcher Competition News Posted by Jonathan Capps on 7th October 2007, 21:06 I claim my prize, my lord. And, before you start, the name is actually an incredibly clever and witty pun. IT IS. You’ll see. So, some of you might remember last year’s Beat The Twats competition to tie in with the release of Beat The Geeks. We thought that went brilliantly with loads of people entering, so this year we’re doing the same – only this time you have a chance to win one of two copies of The Bodysnatcher Collection! It’s about now you should suddenly realise why our competition title works so well as a pun. It really is quite astonishingly brilliant. Because you’ll be ‘snatching’ a ‘copy’, you see. So, anyway, what do you have to do? Well, to tie in the with Remastered theme we want you to ‘remaster’ Red Dwarf yourself! Just grab a screen shot and spray your creative juices all over it. The full rules and details (including some sample screenshots for you to use, if you want) can be found by visiting the competition page… HERE …or by clicking on that nice picture on the front page. As with last year, thank you to 2|entertain for generously donating a copy to the competition. Thank you 2|entertain. Thu|entertain. Hurry along, then. We can’t wait to see what you can all ‘come up’ with!
The way I see it, Ted, is you must take a screen grab from an episode of Red Dwarf (one of the ones they supply or one of your own – they ain?t fussy) and ?remaster? it to your liking. Use whatever tools you feel appropriate and do whatever the hell you choose. For authenticity, why not use MS Paint, the principle tool used in the actual remastering process!
I see you decided to use one of the better CGI shots from the remastered series for the picture in this article.
> So, how many entries so far? Enough to allocate both prizes. Although, it goes without saying we need MORE. I’d say the amount of entries (and, indeed, the quality) at this early stage is very encouraging.
Yes, you sarcastic chumps, I can read. But what are we talking about here? Are you looking for someone to make RD look “better”? (That’s what remastering usually means.) Or just draw some stupid drivel that might raise a smile? What’s the criteria for pete’s sakes? It’s not uncommon for competitions to feature such things! In short: How are entries to be rated? Are the “Beat the Twats” entries still around so I can see what we’re talking about?
Beat The Twats was a quiz set up, just before I joined up. it was a really fucking hard quiz to coincide with the ‘Beat The Geeks’ quiz DVD. I did really really really badly. I can’t quite remember what WAS written on Dona DiStefano’s brother’s cousin’s nephew’s auntie’s Gravestone epitaph. I was told I was damn close, though… Right, To answer your question and to iron out any problems with the idea of what to submit. Given that the Red Dwarf 1 – III remastered were a really bad idea. We thought it’d be funny to let people loose on ‘remastering’ Red Dwarf in a way they would like to see. It can be as funny as you want. It can be as serious as you want. The only criteria we’re giving you is that it has to be based on a screenshot of Red Dwarf. Add things, change things, move things, composite things, alter things. Remove things if you want. Anything goes. If anyone feels as though they might not be able to get across what they did to their submission without explaining, that is what the description box is for. Get cracking!
I dunno, is it me? I thought the rules were clear enough (in that, really, there are no rules for the creative side of things – just do whatever the hell you want) but I might be wrong and this might be one confusing mess. I realise the screenshots we’ve supplied are fairly limited, but if you have a DVD drive in your PC, some decent DVD playing software then you should be able to get some screen caps of whatever you want. If anyone needs a hand with that or whatever just give me a shout.
Yes, you sarcastic chumps, I can read. But what are we talking about here? Are you looking for someone to make RD look ?better?? (That?s what remastering usually means.) Or just draw some stupid drivel that might raise a smile? What?s the criteria for pete?s sakes? It?s not uncommon for competitions to feature such things! Tell me, what does the W stand for?
Johnny : The remit of the competition is deliberately wide in order to encourage as much creativity as possible, and you can interpret the word “remaster” in a number of ways. If you capitalise it, then you can “Remaster” the episodes with the same level of excellence (i.e. none at all) that the first three series were done with – so you might suggest taking a ludicrous decision to unnecessarily “improve” (read: downgrade) some effects, or replace an actor, or cut a joke, or change what’s happening in a scene. I don’t want to give too many suggestions, because the whole POINT of the competition is that you’re supposed to think for yourself. But have you seen the G&T April Fool gag that inspired the idea? That should at least give you an idea of the sort of “humour” we like. Alternatively, if you really want to, you can choose a scene that you genuinely think could do with improvement, and soup it up in a totally serious way. If it’s done well, it’ll be well-judged. It’s difficult for us to say exactly how we’ll mark the entries until we’ve actually got a good idea of the overall quality and nature of them. We haven’t got any kind of rigourous system of points and scoring. Essentially, we’ll pick the ones we like most – this might be because the idea makes us laugh even if it looks crap, it might be one that looks amazing but isn’t very funny or clever, it might just be staggeringly original, it could be ANYTHING. You seem to think that having an incredibly wide remit is a problem. To us, it’s the whole point of the competition.
> Given that the Red Dwarf 1 – III AAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa gggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oh, bloody blasted buggery bastard bloody bugger! I forgot to note down the number it gave me when I sent in my entry. Ah well, I probably won’t win anyway Shall I post it here, so you all know it was me who made it?
No! We’re not going to let ourselves know who entered what, so don’t mention when you posted it or anything! We’ll just have to trust you if you end up being a winner and you email to claim.
Chances are you won’t be having several people emailing you who *all* claim to have lost their codes :)
Yeah, I guess if people lose their codes we’re going to have to rely on honesty. We’ll post the winning pictures and it’ll be up to the winners to quote their codes to us in private, so if only one person emails saying “that’s mine but I don’t have my code!” then it should be safe to presume they’re being genuine. Besides, if turns out they’re not being honest, I’ll break their thumbs.
He can’t do that because then it’d be obvious which entry was his. We’re trying to keep it anonymous so we can’t be accused of any bias. In the future, though, if anyone does forget their code, resend it anyway… just don’t say it was you!
Since the entries are anonymous, are there any rules on entering more than once? Not that I have one decent idea yet, let alone two.
It’s a tough one, cos I don’t want to restrict entries, but it could turn out to be unfair if someone hugely talented AND prolific floods the place. Then again, that’s quite a fanciful scenario. So, erm, I dunno. What does everyone else think?
I think you should allow for several entries (can’t prevent it really anyway) but only one prize per person. If one person happens to win #1 and #2, just give the second DVD to #3… or something… in my opinion.
Yeah, I’d rather not have someone enter one idea, then come up with a fucking brilliant one that they can’t submit due to a technicality. The only way we could police it anyway would be to check IP addresses (and that would only work if they were static), although if the same person won twice we would of course then know. So, yeah, I think an “enter as many times as you like, but only allowed to win one prize” is the way to go. Yeah, no, that’s definitely the way to go.
