Anime NYC 2024 AMV Contest - Now Accepting submissions!

[Mango]

Hello everyone! Mango here again with the announcement of our 2024 AMV Contest! Fun fact, this will be my 5th year coordinating Anime NYC's AMV Contest!

This may seem earlier than usual, and you are right! Anime NYC is now officially a Summertime convention occurring on dates August 23-25 but that’s not all that’s new!

For the past few months, I’m proud to share, we have been exploring the idea of including captions on the AMVs at our AMV Contest to provide better accessibility to those who are either deaf or hard of hearing. At Anime NYC we really wish to spread the love of AMVs far and wide, we want everyone to find enjoyment and have a place in this hobby, whether it be an audience member or an editor. We hope that you continue to support us in this new venture! Tentatively we will be showcasing the contest both captioned and un-captioned, but our main priority is captioned.

For more details on what we will be captioning and how, please read below! Under the section labeled "Tentative Captioning Guidelines.”

Otherwise, the deadline to our contest is June 4th, 2024 by 11:59 PM Eastern, our rules for Anime NYC are unchanged from last year. But please refer to the official Anime NYC website and submission page for specific details: https://animenyc.com/applications/amv-contest-2024/

Our categories for this year are

• Trailer • Action • Romance-Sentimental • Drama • Upbeat • Comedy/Parody •

And of course our AMV Shorts Showcase will be coming back for its 3rd year!

Tentative Captioning Guidelines

We understand there may be hesitations of videos being altered or tweaked without the editor’s input so we wish to go in-depth on what we will be captioning and how to alleviate those concerns. Keep note that matters are subject to change as this is a new venture for us.

For AMVs that make it into our contest, we will be captioning everything that we believe necessary for a deaf or hard of hearing person needs in order to have the same or similar experience as one who can hear with no issues.

Each video will be slightly shrunken down and subtitles will be located in the “blank space” either above or below the video. Currently, we are exploring which option would be beneficial to our audience where seating is on a leveled ground. Captions located at the top of the video may better support visibility, however the bottom is the universal standard of captioned media. Nonetheless, the reason for shrinking down the video is to prevent subtitles from covering portions of the video.

Below you will find examples featuring our more common aspect ratios 16:9 and 4:3 showcasing the placement of where these captions will be potentially located. Other aspect ratios will follow styles similar to what you see below, but the specifics are not guaranteed as we, the AMV team at Anime NYC, continue to discuss and review.

Captioning Standards

• For every AMV that contains a song with audio lyrics, those lyrics will be transcribed into captions that will be placed in the aforementioned [tentative] location.
• Whenever possible we will be basing our captioning off of official sources that contain the lyrics of the song or audio in question.
• We will only caption one verse / one line at a time to prevent overbearing the scene / video with words.
• Character dialogue that the audience is expected to understand will be captioned. Examples include the character speaking English, or using common Japanese words that should be decipherable to an audience of fans.
  e.g. “sayonara,” “ganbatte,” “gomenasai” and others, will also be translated or the romaji will be kept intact.
• Character dialogue that the audience is not expected to understand will not be translated/captioned to maintain the editor’s integrity, Examples include comedic videos that falsely translate the dialogue to serve the intention of the video.
• Sound effects which are meant to be the focus in an AMV will also be closed captioned. Example captions include “Door slamming,” “Tire-screech” and others. This also includes character dialogue that is not meant to be understood/translated, but is intended to be indiscernible (such as “incoherent screaming” or “shouting in Japanese”).

If an editor wishes to caption their AMV themselves and send us their subtitle track, we will gladly take them! We will accept .ass (preferred) or .srt files. We will not accept these captions if they are “hard-subbed” onto the video, unless it was already included as part of the editor’s original concept. We may alter the provided captions file to fit our contest standards as necessary as we wish to make every video have a consistent style of captioning and placement at our convention!

For those interested and curious, we are currently investigating ways to have non-captioned, and captioned content being played simultaneously in the same room, to create the most enjoyable contest for all our audience members! But please understand once again, everything may be subject to change.

And finally, here is the submission page for those that are interested again we hope you all continue to support us! https://forms.gle/bhsqN7CRLwZhCNhk9

To get an idea of how many AMVs we received and in what category, look here!

As a friendly reminder, those who make finals do get a free badge to any one Anime NYC Year, we hope to see you there!

[MadMegatax]

Hey everyone! I'm Tex, the AMV Panels Director at Anime NYC! For those planning to attend the con, I'm looking forward to sharing with you some exciting content that we have planned!

[this post is reserved for finalists/winners]

[Ileia]

This is such great news! Appreciate that you accept the editor's .ass/.srt and explain your process so we can caption accordingly.

[espressoyourself]

It might be worth checking in with the con’s disability accommodations on the caption front, if you haven’t already. If the con gives disability passes that include priority seating and if they include Deaf/HOH as a disability for the purposes of the passes, then they’d be given priority seating presumably reserved for them in front. If that’s the case, then standard bottom screen subtitles would probably be adequate. Just a thought, if it’s something you haven’t already looked into.

Thanks for thinking of us!

[END films]

Submitted my one current AMV that qualifies.
This push for captions is pretty cool though my AMV won't be involved with that as it has no lyrics/lines to caption. X)

[Mango]

It might be worth checking in with the con’s disability accommodations on the caption front, if you haven’t already. If the con gives disability passes that include priority seating and if they include Deaf/HOH as a disability for the purposes of the passes, then they’d be given priority seating presumably reserved for them in front. If that’s the case, then standard bottom screen subtitles would probably be adequate. Just a thought, if it’s something you haven’t already looked into.

Thanks for thinking of us!

Thank you and I will inquire about it! But the reason actually why I was considering subtitles at the top of the screen was because of an experience I went through hahaha.

I attended a live premiere of Delicious in Dungeon (Dungeon Meshi) where Anime NYC aired the first 2 episodes before the anime officially released on both live TV and streaming sites. The show premiered in Japanese with English subtitles, and I could not see the subtitles clearly without craning my neck in an uncomfortable angle due to many taller people sitting in front of me. I was actually miserable afterwards. I got the idea to put captions at the top due to this.

That way, everyone in the audience, whether they are deaf/hoh/have a disability pass or otherwise, can "access the accessibility" hahaha.

But we may be in a different room from last year [the room which was where Dungeon Meshi Anime premiered] so if the screen is higher up to prevent tall people's heads from blocking the captions. It will most likely [definitely] be at the bottom. Or if people dislike the captions at the top too much, because of it's non-standard layout, every following year it will be at the bottom.

[Mango]

Submitted my one current AMV that qualifies.
This push for captions is pretty cool though my AMV won't be involved with that as it has no lyrics/lines to caption. X)

Thank you for supporting us nonetheless!

[MarshmallowGoop]

So happy to see this announcement! All the thought you've devoted to making a good captioned contest is really heartening. Slightly shrinking down the video and putting the captions in a blank space above or below is a great way to handle it; I know I've run into trouble subbing MEP parts, where the standard YouTube placement for captions can cover up an editor's typography placed at the bottom of the screen, and I've altered the placement of some of my subtitles to the top to avoid that. Having the subtitles off the video entirely completely eliminates that problem!

I also love that we can submit our own caption files! My only question at this time is related to stylistic preferences. Is there a preferred font size, type, etc. for captions? Should atmospherics be placed in parentheses? I'd like to minimize the amount of tweaking that needs to be done to any subtitle file I send!

But very excited for this! Thank you for all your hard work.

[Mango]

So happy to see this announcement! All the thought you've devoted to making a good captioned contest is really heartening. Slightly shrinking down the video and putting the captions in a blank space above or below is a great way to handle it; I know I've run into trouble subbing MEP parts, where the standard YouTube placement for captions can cover up an editor's typography placed at the bottom of the screen, and I've altered the placement of some of my subtitles to the top to avoid that. Having the subtitles off the video entirely completely eliminates that problem!

I also love that we can submit our own caption files! My only question at this time is related to stylistic preferences. Is there a preferred font size, type, etc. for captions? Should atmospherics be placed in parentheses? I'd like to minimize the amount of tweaking that needs to be done to any subtitle file I send!

But very excited for this! Thank you for all your hard work.

Thank you for your excitement! I would very much appreciate it if you send us the captions how you prefer them even just so we can use them as a reference of how editors might appreciate how captions are written / transposed. I can't accurately tell you what we intend to do because so many factors that are subject to change unfortunately. For example I can't tell you what font size we will be going with because we do not know, accurately, how much smaller will each video be shrinked down to, just that they will be shrinked.

If you have not noticed, our deadline is June 4th, but the contest isn't until August 23rd. We plan to use the interim between selecting our finalists and the contest date to review and assess what style works best. Also I myself didn't consider putting atmospherics within parentheses and it's now something else I / we have to consider. Apologies as this probably isn't the answer you wanted to hear.

Lastly, I want to make something clear, although I will be captioning some AMVs at our contest and potentially other AMV events. I am not the one in charge of that / making the call of the captioning guidelines for our contest. I / we will be leaning on someone who has experience with captioning media, even AMVs at an AMV contest, who is better suited than I to make final calls.

We do plan to be transparent after our contest is over on what we did, how, and why. But as of right now I wish to be tightlipped because I don't want to make promises or insinuate what we are doing [aside from of course that we /will/ be captioning media, and that we /will/ be shrinking down videos to better acomodate those captions] and at a later point decide to not go that route and risk losing the trust within the community.

I can understand if this will prevent you from submitting this year, until you can verify we will adding captions in a way you approve. But nonetheless thank you for inquiring!

[MarshmallowGoop]

Thank you for your excitement! I would very much appreciate it if you send us the captions how you prefer them even just so we can use them as a reference of how editors might appreciate how captions are written / transposed. I can't accurately tell you what we intend to do because so many factors that are subject to change unfortunately. For example I can't tell you what font size we will be going with because we do not know, accurately, how much smaller will each video be shrinked down to, just that they will be shrinked.

If you have not noticed, our deadline is June 4th, but the contest isn't until August 23rd. We plan to use the interim between selecting our finalists and the contest date to review and assess what style works best. Also I myself didn't consider putting atmospherics within parentheses and it's now something else I / we have to consider. Apologies as this probably isn't the answer you wanted to hear.

Lastly, I want to make something clear, although I will be captioning some AMVs at our contest and potentially other AMV events. I am not the one in charge of that / making the call of the captioning guidelines for our contest. I / we will be leaning on someone who has experience with captioning media, even AMVs at an AMV contest, who is better suited than I to make final calls.

We do plan to be transparent after our contest is over on what we did, how, and why. But as of right now I wish to be tightlipped because I don't want to make promises or insinuate what we are doing [aside from of course that we /will/ be captioning media, and that we /will/ be shrinking down videos to better acomodate those captions] and at a later point decide to not go that route and risk losing the trust within the community.

I can understand if this will prevent you from submitting this year, until you can verify we will adding captions in a way you approve. But nonetheless thank you for inquiring!

As long as the captions are accurately conveying the information, I don't think there's a "wrong" way to caption! I wondered if it'd be too soon to ask, but I thought I'd inquire just in case there were standards already in place so that I could help minimize any work. Still would definitely love to submit, and I'm looking forward to the event and future events! I really appreciate what you and your team are doing here.