Sponsors of the contest included Mendo Lake Credit Union, Savings Bank of Mendocino County, NCO North coast opportunities as well as Ukiah Valley Community TV.

The winning submissions for the Ukiah Shop Local Video Contest:

#1 Honorable Mention: Best Cinematography, Ryan Morris and Ariel Blandford; “a picture is worth a thousand words, echos of the 1937 film, soft and hard focus”:

#2 Honorable Mention -Best Script/Humorous: Lexi Jenne ; “funny, entertaining”:

#1 Overall Winner: David MacDonald; ” met all the criteria, made with love and humor, good scene composition, sound track and tempo were fun, graphics re-inforced the message”

Localization Film Project Summary
At the end of 2008, Spencer Brewer and 30+ business people from the Ukiah Valley convened an action group to examine how to generate an awareness of the benefits of spending more of our shopping dollars in our own communities within Mendocino County.

Motivated to change local people’s spending habits, this group tallied numerous benefits:

• most obviously, local owners of businesses where purchases are made
• local ancillary services and products that those businesses use,
• local government tax dollar funding
• youth sport teams
• local non-profits and community events and organizations (who regularly benefit from local business contributions to a far greater degree than other businesses)

During the initial strategy sessions in February 2009, education about the dollars and cents of shopping locally and the less tangible, community-building contributions were highlighted as major goals of the localization efforts of this group.

Young people were one target audience that was mentioned repeatedly. A number of strategies were suggested for consideration, including finding a school curriculum to use for youth education and developing a video project to involve teens and young adults in “following the money”.

In July 2009, news reached the Shop Local group that a film on shopping local had been created in 1937 as a trailer at the Ukiah Theatre. A subcommittee of Mendo Loco located that old film and began brainstorming about how we might use it as part of the Shop Local efforts. From those sessions an idea emerged to hold a film festival of 3 minute shorts created by youth, at the Ukiah Theatre.
Members of the organizing committee:

• Kate Magruder
• John Glasco
• Cathleen Moller
• Kirk Fuller
• Jesse Burnett
• Mary Anne Landis
• Jennifer Wright