A&E FYI: UWS student wins second national video contest

Ryan Leer, a University of Wisconsin-Superior student studying video production, has won his second major online video contest, this time by conjuring a Star Wars-style “light saber” to dispense Carmex lip balm.

Carma Laboratories, maker of Carmex lip balm, announced Jan. 12 that Leer is the grand prize winner of its “Share the Tingle” video contest. Leer’s video was judged the best among 70 entries in promoting the company’s distinctive yellow, tingling lip balm. The junior from Eden Prairie, Minn., will receive a new video camera, $5,000 and a five-year supply of Carmex lip balm.

Leer won the contest by writing and producing a short video he titled “Share the Tingle with Caution.” It features an inventive young man who offers to use a glowing, buzzing “Carmex saber” to apply lip balm to his friend’s chapped lips. The video takes a zany turn as the man accidently slices a lamp in two while trying to nonchalantly convince his friend that the Carmex saber is perfectly safe.

At UWS, Leer is majoring in communicating arts with a concentration in video production. He also produces sports videos for the university’s athletic office. He plans to pursue a career in video production after graduating in 2010.

Leer was characteristically modest about his latest award-winning production.

“I was just sitting at my buddy’s house and editing a video,” he said. “I don’t know where the light saber idea came from. I was just trying to think of an element that no one else had thought of.”

Two of Leer’s friends, Mike Miller and Alex Foster, were dubious about the idea but agreed to do the acting. They shot the video in one night because Foster had to return to college in Oklahoma.

A plastic pipe wrapped in red tape served as the light saber. After taping the skit, Leer used computer editing software to go through the video frame by frame to replace the pipe with a glowing yellow beam of light. He then added the light saber’s characteristic buzz to the audio track. Leer said this video was his first major effort in special effects.

Leer’s video, along with the first- and second-place videos, can be viewed at www.sharethetingle.com.

This is Leer’s second big video contest victory in as many years.

Last winter he won cash and a Super Bowl party by producing his “Way Too Hot” video that promoted Kentucky Fried Chicken’s new Hot Wings product. In that video, Leer leapt into UWS’s swimming pool and did the “chicken dance” underwater to win the prize.

~Information courtesy University of Wisconsin-Superior