3 Southland Residents Among Finalists In Doritos' Super Bowl XLIX Ad Contest

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — Several Southland residents are competing for a chance to feature their Doritos commercial during Super Bowl XLIX.

The company held the "Crash the Super Bowl" contest in hopes of catching viewers' attention by showing ads made by regular people.

"They give amateur filmmakers like myself, a chance to exhibit our talents," bartender David Horowitz from Santa Monica said.

Horowitz is one of three locals among the top 10 finalists.

His commercial, "The Lemonade Stand", is a 30-spot about auctioning off Doritos.

Scott Zabielski from Burbank, who currently works for the Comedy Central show Tosh.0, made his own commercial titled "Middle Seat".

"I fly quite a bit, and that's happened to me so many times where I'm on the aisle seat, you've got the middle seat next to you, and you're hoping that nobody comes along," he explained. "So I kinda wanted to play with the idea of like what if you were willing to do crazy things to make people not wanna sit next to you."

The third local finalist, Travis Braun is an assistant in Hollywood who uses his ad to poke fun at one of life's important moments.

"My mom has never been able to give me a straight answer on what my first word actually was, so I'm left to imagine what amazing thing I might have said first, and that's the premise for the ad," he said.

The 10 finalists were selected from nearly 4,900 submissions worldwide. Two of the homemade ads will air during the Super Bowl on Feb. 1 — one will be chosen by Doritos and the other will be decided by viewers.

"We're gonna be in the Doritos suite, and when everyone else sees the ad air, that's the first that we find out if we made it," Braun said.

The winner will also receive a $1 million grand prize and a job at Universal Pictures.

Check out all the ads and vote for your favorite through Jan. 28, here.