The OnVidi.com Student Film Contest asked for students to submit an original, three-minute or less film, video or digital production that fell into one of five categories—comedy, action, drama/romance, music video or documentary.  First-place winners from each category would be awarded $10,000, and one entry would be selected as the best overall submission, winning a grand prize of $50,000.

7:20am | With all that went wrong during the shoot, Cal State Long Beach (CSULB) student Leah McKissock, 22, has been awarded the grand prize of $50,000 in the OnVidi.com Student Film Contest for her 2-minute, 22-second music video entry featuring Israeli artist Mika Ben-Yami as the best overall submission in the competition.

The video is conceptualized through one-shot, meaning the video was filmed in one take with no edits — primarily because the song is unusually short. McKissock noted that the words “every morning” are sung repeatedly throughout the chorus, and this made her imagine the artist, Mika Ben-Yami, getting out of bed at the start of her day—the opening scene of the video.

“After that I became obsessed with a visual idea of her waking up in a bed in the middle of a beach,  probably because I love when in surrealism a person or object is completely displaced,” McKissock pointed out.

The actual production of the video, however, presented some real challenges. First, McKissock said, Ben-Yami insisted the video be done in the time frame of one month, which she added is the shortest amount of time in which she has ever made a video.  This gave the team little time to prepare.

After days of high winds and usual weather caused her to lose some crewmembers, most of the crew was able to come back — most. McKissock lost her steadicam operator, a crucial crew member since the entire video was supposed to be one single shot on a steadicam.  She found a replacement steadicam operator, but in the end, he wasn’t up to the task, so they ended up letting him go.  Finally, as the production was running out of daylight, the cinematographer stepped in and shot the entire video handheld.

Isn’t it ironic that the song is titled, “Nothing is Wrong”?


22-year-old senior film and electronic arts student Leah McKissock, from Long Beach State.