A few students (full-disclosure: author created the video) from UMBC have entered a music video contest sponsored by popular iPhone application creator Smule. The contest was inspired by their wildly successful iPhone application “I am T-Pain” which has been featured on national television. The concept of the contest is simple: make a parody video of the Saturday Night Live sketch “I’m on a Boat” by The Lonely Island featuring T-Pain, utilizing the “I am T-Pain” iPhone application. There is one winner every week for 10 weeks until mid-December and an overall grand prize winner is chosen out of the 10 finalists. Finalists are chosen based on lyrical and video creativity as well as YouTube view count of the video.

The parody video, “I’m on the Phone” (warning, explicit lyrics) is shot entirely at UMBC and is receiving much attention online — it was in the top 100 comedy videos for November 13, 2009. The weekly winners will be announced every Monday evening during the Smule Webcast, where you’ll be able to find out if the UMBC team has won. There is also a Facebook event to keep those interested updated. Every view helps get these guys closer to winning. Good luck