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When the Hollywood big shots line up to receive their inevitable swag bags full of goodies at the Sundance Film Festival this month, inside they will find a little present from Toronto filmmakers Ben Goldenberg and Jason Gossbee, courtesy of YouTube.

Each bag will contain a DVD copy of White Collar Criminals , the five-minute short film written and directed by Mr. Goldenberg and Mr. Gossbee that took second prize in YouTube's Project:Direct competition.

Just a few short weeks ago, the pair were lamenting the fact they thought they didn't have the time to craft an entry for YouTube's online competition.

Today, they're booking tickets for Park City, Utah, and getting ready to hobnob with celebrities at Sundance, all thanks to a film that was written in three hours, assembled in three days and cost only $200 to produce.

“I've never had more than 200 people watch a film that I've made,” Mr. Goldenberg, 26, said. “Then we had 150,000 people watch our movie in a week. It's pretty crazy.”

White Collar Criminals was one of 10 films selected as finalists from hundreds of entries submitted to the second annual contest from YouTube, the popular Internet video-sharing website owned by search-engine titan Google Inc.

The film almost didn't make it. In fact, the directors submitted it at 11:58 p.m. on Dec. 14, exactly one minute before the deadline.

On Dec. 11, an actor friend came to them with a twist ending he thought might work in a feature film. Although they didn't see the idea as feature material, the pair agreed it might prove to be a solid base for a short film, one that could be entered in the YouTube contest.

That night they sat down and wrote the script. Filming began the next day. Together, they edited the footage while shooting was still taking place. The actors they had recruited for their first film agreed to work for free, although Mr. Gossbee said that about $120 of their $200 budget went to feeding the cast and crew. The rest was spent on a fake severed ear and three masks; two “Conehead” disguises and one of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Shortly after the film was submitted and posted on the Project:Direct page at YouTube, Mr. Goldenberg checked in and noticed that more than 2,000 people had watched it.

When the film made the contest's Top 10 and was posted on the YouTube.com home page, a friend called to tell him that the number of viewers had jumped to more than 18,000. By the time Mr. Goldenberg could get to a computer to see for himself, the number was up to 25,000. And it kept growing.

In total, more than 150,000 people watched the film and more than a million viewers logged on to the contest's home page to sample the entrants, by far the biggest audience the two filmmakers have ever had.

The grand prize winner, a film called Perfecto that was produced by a Charlotte, N.C., man, will receive $2,500 and be shown at the festival. Mr. Goldenberg and Mr. Gossbee will split $2,500.

For Mr. Goldenberg, who attended the New York Film Academy's California campus but spent his undergraduate years at York University, the first taste of success is a bit overwhelming.

“I'm not really sure what it all means,” he said.

“A lot of filmmakers who haven't made it in the industry get these hopes. … You meet with a producer who tells you something's going to happen, and then it doesn't happen. We get these small hopes that don't come through and this is the first thing that is permanent and is actually going to happen. So that's really exciting.”

YouTube has set up a page devoted to White Collar Criminals, and now the two Torontonians are receiving dozens of e-mails from fans asking when they plan to post new movies.

Mr. Goldenberg is hoping that some day soon he'll answer his cellphone – the last four digits of which spell out FILM – and he'll be speaking to someone from Hollywood who wants to see more of his work.

Mr. Gossbee, 25, has only one regret when thinking about the studio heads who will be watching his film in the coming weeks.

“I want them to get a copy of the polished version,” he said. “I can't lie, I'm nervous. I think it is a really good film, but I wish we had a chance to polish it before we gave it to them.”