Just three more days before the Crunchies Awards kick off at the Herbst Theatre in San Francisco. Most of the tickets are now taken – a few left over that were being held in reserve will probably be released on Thursday.

One thing we put a lot of time into was the award that will be given to the winners. We wanted it to be significantly more interesting than the standard engraved glass blobs that are so often given at events. We were, in particular, looking for something that might be a little more of a conversation starter. Something like MTV’s video music award, for example.

We hired Clockwork Apple, which specializes in high end awards (see the modelmaking section of their website), to lead the effort. After some back and forth, we came up with an idea, admittedly a bit out there, that was inspired by the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Clockwork Apple was just fine with this – their founder is a Stanley Kubrick fan and named his company as a variation of A Clockwork Orange.

We’ll have a final image of the award itself to share on Wednesday or Thursday. But in the meantime we’re sharing the movie clip that gave us the inspiration (the monolith, angry monkeys using bones as tools/weapons (technology) for the first time, etc.). See below.

The award only makes sense if you’ve seen the movie. And even then it’s, like I said, a bit out there. But it’s big (14 inches tall) and beautiful, I’ll say that. Clockwork Apple does great work.

http://www.youtube.com/v/hBevNxyEW5M