2008 Viewers' Choice Awards [OVER!]

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Tsunami Jones
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Post by Tsunami Jones » Fri Jan 18, 2008 1:29 am

My primary concerns/thoughts about a "duo" category, for videos that consist of only 2-4 people:

How many of them are there really? (now, there could be alot; I don't have a filter or anything to look it up immediately). If there's only a few a year, I don't see the point in seperating them from the larger category (I can only even think of a few that came out).

Also, I would like to point out that a large MEP is more likely to be jack-of-all-trades master-of-none genre wise, compared to a smaller one which can look much more coherent. I think a video that say, only has two to three editors on it stands a much better chance in the normal categories.

So if they can possibly stand out more in the regular categories, and there's not that many of them, is there a necessity to seperate them?

Personally though, I really don't care how many people worked on a video together, and I don't think that just because someone got along with someone else well enough to make something decent with each other holds much merit by itself. So, really, I would be completely fine with abolishing the MEP category altogether :|

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Otohiko
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Post by Otohiko » Fri Jan 18, 2008 1:37 am

I hate to stir up the controversy over this, but wouldn't the two categories suggested by Ileia be pandering a little bit too much to the .org's "inner circle"?

Not to be too cynical, but I think both those categories actually mean something to a fairly narrow group of people, and against the background of people whining about cliques and all - perhaps it would be better to stick to the more general categories for now. To the average AMV viewer and even editor, I somehow don't think those two categories will appeal very much and will probably raise some of the old whining on the social dynamics of the .org again.

On the other hand, one nice thing about possibly having these categories is that it possibly might actually encourage people to collaborate more. Which in my view, would be a good thing. But somehow I don't think the wider community is ready for that sort of subtle hint yet and might take it the wrong way...
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Moonlight Soldier
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Post by Moonlight Soldier » Fri Jan 18, 2008 1:47 am

The requirements, of course, are that there are more than one member. It's pretty self-explanatory, I mean, there are certainly some studios that produced a huge amount of awesome videos (think of all the videos that will be nominated in the VCAs this year from VNS :O) and I think they deserve some recognition!
But isn't that in itself recognizing the talent of a particular studio? Honestly that seems a little redundant to me.

I like the duo idea though. It could use some fleshing out to make it a solid category, but I think there are definitely videos made by a few people that tend to get overlooked/overshadowed when it comes to collaborations (because it seems to imply a high number of people.)

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jasper-isis
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Post by jasper-isis » Fri Jan 18, 2008 2:20 am

Re: improved category. Cool, I don't see a problem with your proposal. TJ?

Re: collab distinctions. Personally, I understand the rationale and I'm in favor of the idea, but the main problem is (as always) implementation. Making the distinction at 4 collaborators is still pretty iffy; who's to say that 5 or 6 or even 7 editors can't come together to do the same kind of collab? There is no clearly defined difference in number of editors, so the potential for mis-categorization is too great. We need 1) a distinguishing method that is less crudely defined and 2) a set of judging criteria that are easy for voters to understand.

The other thing that I have to stress is that we can't promise certain things because we're not the ones who have to potentially work our butts off to program these changes. It might be easy or difficult, but either way I can't just say "sure thing, let's do this" and then turn around and hand everything off to the programmer, especially at this point in the schedule.
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Post by Kionon » Fri Jan 18, 2008 3:30 am

jasper-isis wrote:Making the distinction at 4 collaborators is still pretty iffy; who's to say that 5 or 6 or even 7 editors can't come together to do the same kind of collab? There is no clearly defined difference in number of editors, so the potential for mis-categorization is too great. We need 1) a distinguishing method that is less crudely defined and 2) a set of judging criteria that are easy for voters to understand.
How about this? Instead of focusing on number of editors, let's focus on actual production.

Takea video like VegettoEX and MeriC's "I want to save you" or RRomig and my "Heero's a Mess" and compare those to Conet, Hell, or Ayumix. The former are very different from the latter. The first two are "standard" one-track AMVs but have collaborating editors. The latter three are multi-track bohemoths. The difference is pretty clear.
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Corran
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Post by Corran » Fri Jan 18, 2008 3:42 am

Kionon wrote:The difference is pretty clear.
To a human, yes...

A lot of the categories are programed based on existing information in the database. Genres, date of membership, date of premiere; these are all things that a computer can sort and categorize. What you are suggesting is not something the system can distinguish.

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godix
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Post by godix » Fri Jan 18, 2008 6:29 am

Know what the difference between a hell 4 type of MEP and a two person collab is? Hell 4 can have up to 62 people voting for themselves while the other thing has at most two people voting for themselves. In the finals I doubt that's much of an issue but in the initial stages I suspect there's few enough votes all told that this can really make a difference. I do remember several years ago when four of the five dance finalists were MEPs.

Of course there's also the visibility issue. A MEP like hell 4 or ayumix gets almost daily exposure on the forums for months on end while it's being put together and has most members pimping it when it's released. So it's just a lot more likely that forumites have heard of a large MEP than a two man collab even if the two man thing is better. I suspect forumites make up most of the initial stage of voting and I know for a fact being suggested in the VCA forum, even multiple times, doesn't lead to people watching a video. So that seems to also give a bias towards large scale MEPs and another reason to separate large meps from smaller projects.

So I entirely disagree with TJ's idea of abolishing the MEP category altogether and I can see the value of separating large MEPs from small collabs. As an alternative we could just make it so a person can't vote for themselves which would largely negate part of this. I honestly don't know why people can vote for themselves anyway, I know of no other serious contest where that's acceptable practice. Well, besides the US Presidential elections but those are a joke anyway.
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jasper-isis
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Post by jasper-isis » Fri Jan 18, 2008 1:45 pm

I understand the reasons for wanting a separate category and I understand the distinctions between the two, but the problem remains that we don't have a foolproof way of implementing this within the database right now. Unless somebody thinks of a clever way of translating these intentions into code, the only way of doing this right now would be for TJ and I to watch ALL of the qualifying collabs and manually separate the MEPs from the group projects. Given the amount of time that we're already putting into the contest this year, I really don't think this is something we can also take on. (Not to mention that it would pretty much go against the purpose of the VCA.)

Unless accompanied by a solid way of executing it, an idea is just an idea. We don't want to be like "Nope, not gonna happen, move along" as AtomX/Brad put it. We want to help out the site and its members as best as we can, so we'll think about the ideas critically and post our own opinions and argue with you guys all day long about the merits of the idea, sure. But at this point in time, with the nominations round starting in three days, what you need to do is bring us is a workable plan, not just an idea by itself.
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Brad
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Post by Brad » Fri Jan 18, 2008 2:02 pm

I completely understand your guys' viewpoint and pretty much figured that thats how it'd end up, because as I said, I know that defining a collab as simply x number of editors IS a rather crude and informal way of doing it, but I was mainly suggesting it as a starting point. I think the only fullproof way to do it would be to add another category checkbox for video profiles called "Multi-Editor Project" that would be defined for the bigger MEPs. There could easily be some kind of floating tool-tip for the checkbox to actually give people some insight as to what loosely defines what an MEP is (ie; how it differs from a video that simply has more than one editor as a collaborator, as we've stated is typically quite a different type of video).

Obviously, what I'm suggesting is pretty late in the game to be implemented for these awards, but it's something I'd like to see maybe for next year. It'd make it easier for new members of the site to find different MEPs that they may have never heard of before.

And TJ, as far as the number of collabs this year go, I don't know the exact number either, but I bet if that 2-4 filter was put in place, we'd be able to see quite a decent number.. Or a miniscule number, who knows :P
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dwchang
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Post by dwchang » Fri Jan 18, 2008 3:24 pm

Otohiko wrote:I hate to stir up the controversy over this, but wouldn't the two categories suggested by Ileia be pandering a little bit too much to the .org's "inner circle"?

Not to be too cynical, but I think both those categories actually mean something to a fairly narrow group of people, and against the background of people whining about cliques and all - perhaps it would be better to stick to the more general categories for now. To the average AMV viewer and even editor, I somehow don't think those two categories will appeal very much and will probably raise some of the old whining on the social dynamics of the .org again.

On the other hand, one nice thing about possibly having these categories is that it possibly might actually encourage people to collaborate more. Which in my view, would be a good thing. But somehow I don't think the wider community is ready for that sort of subtle hint yet and might take it the wrong way...
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