AnimeUSA: Winners determined by judges or the audience?

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Postby Warheart » Fri Sep 26, 2008 10:09 am

Actually I would just use both. Judge for the actual important prices and then special audience prices. Niotex used that method on the Acon 06 worked pretty well in my opinion.

And in case you have to chose, always the judge's one due to the fact they at least know what's important. It's sad to see how stupid the results of the audience desicion happen to be.
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Postby Brad » Fri Sep 26, 2008 10:50 am

dwchang wrote:
Brad wrote:I realize that doing my idea does set a certain "weight of importance" on the judges, but don't we do that already when we're talking about judge-exclusive contests? I mean basically, it's always been one or the other for individual awards (I realize there are contests that have judge awards and audience awards and I'm all for that). So for the awards where it's just pre-selected judges, we're already giving them that voting weight. I'm just saying, why not try to combine the two different aspects to see what kind of results you get. You'd be melding the opinions of more experienced judges with the general audience vote to come up with a (hopefully) more well-rounded pick. I just think it'd be interesting to try.


Well this is me just theory-crafting, but I've rarely seen a video win by a margin larger than a few hundred votes so theoretically after just that a few judges voting will be enough to pick the 'real winner.' In essence, the audience's vote still didn't matter.

Take this for an example:
500 total votes (I'd say that's a reasonable mid-level contest)
5 judge votes worth 500 votes.

Video A: 120
Video B: 80
Video C 200
Video D: 20
Video E: 80

Theoretically if just two or three judges voted for Video D or another video that's pretty far down in audience tally to win.

I guess what I'm saying is although you're 'averaging it out,' you're still giving heavier precedence to judges and from a mathematical standpoint, you still effectively make the audience vote meaningless. In fact, in some cases, we shouldn't even have to count them since the Judges can overrule any total by the audience. Frankly I've seen that happen at places (including ACen) and it's a bit disconcerting.

Again I realize I'm just theory-crafting, but to me it shows an inherent problem of fairness in the system. Then again, a lot of the times I disagree with the audience, but to a larger degree the convention itself is for fans and the contest is to show them things (even if we submit) so I just don't like the idea of devaluing their opinion.

Like I said, I like Vlad's solution of letting both sides have something (i.e. ownership). People like ownership and feeling like they made a difference.


Well I'm obviously not interested in making the audience vote "not count" otherwise what would be the point in the first place? o_O I don't know what the best weighting system would be, but I think some kind of mix of the two to pick the same award should be attempted. The kind of scenario I'd be looking for is when the audience REALLY rallies behind one video in a category where the judges are split on and are unenthusiastic about any one video. In that scenario, the audience would be the deciding factor. And in other scenarios obviously the judges helped make the main decision. It'd just be a way to mix it up.
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Postby Bauzi » Fri Sep 26, 2008 11:11 am

LantisEscudo wrote:I like a twin system like Anime Boston uses. Audience vote determines the category winners and the Best in Show, a judging panel chooses Best Editing, Best Concept, and Judge's Choice awards.

Both major viewpoints are covered that way.


Yeah. For me as editor Viewer Choice Awards are most of the time just annoying especially when all the categories are mixed together (I mean: videos that held the places 1-3 win). In general you just don´t stand a chance against Fun vids when it comes to "Audience: Best Of Show".
It´s not really the fault of the audience. The audience sees tons of vids and what do they remeber out of so many vids? Right! The vids that have an impact on them. I don´t want to say that you can´t have an impact for them with other genres, but I´m the opinion that it´s much more easier with a funny vid. Often you need concetration, practice and a second look to see the true value of an amv.

It´s alright to have audience judged contest/categories, but please please let some judges choice events in it. Just for the sake to not annoye editors. Every point of view should be pleased.
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Postby Adv1sor » Fri Sep 26, 2008 11:21 am

Is this a show, for the fans, or is this a showcase for the editors?

If it's a show, for the fans, then let the fans decide the winners.


I say, let the fans decide the winners of each category and you, as the contest coordinator, award one AMV with the "coordinator's choice award." Or the Vic Bond AUSA trophy :)
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Postby VicBond007 » Fri Sep 26, 2008 11:40 am

Adv1sor wrote:I say, let the fans decide the winners of each category and you, as the contest coordinator, award one AMV with the "coordinator's choice award." Or the Vic Bond AUSA trophy :)

I believe that this has been tried already...
http://www.hookiedookiepanic.com/comic.php?ID=29
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Postby dwchang » Fri Sep 26, 2008 1:54 pm

Brad wrote:I don't know what the best weighting system would be, but I think some kind of mix of the two to pick the same award should be attempted.


Well in that case you're gonna have to do some testing with numbers and weights to find the right one. I can be down with that if it leads to a better system, but again I have my reservations since it'll be tough to find the 'right' weights where everything works out fairly. That's my main concern (if you hadn't noticed :P).
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Postby Pwolf » Fri Sep 26, 2008 3:33 pm

honestly they each have their flaws.

I like audience voting because you have a larger base. To me, winning an audience vote is huge. When you have a room of 3000-5000+ (AX and Otakon mostly) people watching and voting for you video, it means a lot compared to a panel of 5-10 people. I don't like audience voting because people can make videos that will pander to the audience to get votes by using popular sources. You can make an action video with 50% or more comedy in it and the audience will vote for it because it was funny and didn't have to be a good action video. I think for an audience vote to be the most effective, you have to clearly label each video and the voting ballot. I've been to more then one contest where you couldn't tell which video was which on the ballot. I poorly designed ballot will force the audience to vote blindly, literally. Also take a break between each category to give the audience a chance to vote for the best video in the previous category. Also play a short replay of the categories videos. AX did that and I thought it was really effective.

I like judge voting because the panel of judges can look for other things that make a video better then the rest and not just because it uses source that are popular. But that depends on who's judging. You can get a panel of audience judges and that only brings you back to the above but on a much smaller scale. Or you can have a very strict technical panel that will tear each video to pieces. Acen tries to put both audience members and amv editors on the judging panel but honestly I don't like that. The amv editors on the panel are either in the contest or have close friends in the contest. Not saying that any of them would rig the contest in their or their friend's favor but I think that having that bias does make someone judge differently. Plus, you have the amv editors with the non-editors and that can be intimidating so they might not vote the same either. A judging panel has to be blind and limited to people who aren't in the contest for it to be effective and fair IMO. I think the best way to do it is to get editor judges to judge the videos before the weekend of the con, then select willing and random audience member during the contest to vote (non-editors).

I like the way Scottanime has done it with Fanime in the past: separate audience and judge awards. best (and worst) of both worlds.


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Postby Adv1sor » Fri Sep 26, 2008 4:51 pm

VicBond007 wrote:I believe that this has been tried already...
http://www.hookiedookiepanic.com/comic.php?ID=29

Well, I'd have to see the trophy first but...
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Postby Miracle_Falcon » Fri Sep 26, 2008 5:52 pm

Okay, a little bit more awake than when I first posted, let's see if I can get out something a little more intelligible

In all truth, you're never going to get people who are all unbiased from friends and know the best techniques for making AMVs, and have also seen every anime out there so that they won't like a video more just because they know the anime. So there's a problem right there.

Audience voting, I feel, is like that on crack, to the point where, the way AUSA did it last year, it was an excuse for the vast majority of comedy/upbeat (I don't remember all that well) AMVs to get a different type of recognition each. There may have been an exception to that rule, but if there was, I can't recall. That, I feel, is unfair in that it forces all other AMVs to be ranked much harder. It's near impossible for a good drama to beat a decent comedy by audience participation standards, I think.

So, to mitigate that problem, what if you were to have audience members vote for best in each category, and also have the judge's decide a best in each category? When the two had the same opinion, the judge's could use their second pick as their choice. Whether or not that should be made clear to the audience is up for grabs, though I think it'd be interesting to know for the contestants, just to see if there was (and how big of one there was) a disparity between the audience and the judge's on the higher ranked videos. For best in show, I say it should be judge's pick under this model, just because the judge's would be ducking out the rest of the time if the audience picked their video. I dunno, maybe that's a dumb build, but I thought it was worth throwing out there.
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Postby Vlad G Pohnert » Fri Sep 26, 2008 6:52 pm

There is no perfect system. Everything has its good and bad points.

Although having both judges and audience awards for each category or title seems the best, it too is not perfect. For one thing, it makes for a lot more winners and as most cons have prizes or some sort of trophy, etc, and thus a lot bigger budget, or else a lot less categories of winners. (i.e. 6 categories or types of awards, you need to have 12 for each side). I myself an not too keen on duplicating the types or categories either and if you end up with a lot of awards it makes the winners a lot less unique to the contest in some respects, especially at small cons.

One thing for sure, it's nice to have variety and each contest be different as it would be boring to have al the contests judged the exact same way anyway.

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Postby CorpseGoddess » Fri Sep 26, 2008 7:33 pm

Vlad G Pohnert wrote:There is no perfect system. Everything has its good and bad points.

Although having both judges and audience awards for each category or title seems the best, it too is not perfect. For one thing, it makes for a lot more winners and as most cons have prizes or some sort of trophy, etc, and thus a lot bigger budget, or else a lot less categories of winners. (i.e. 6 categories or types of awards, you need to have 12 for each side). I myself an not too keen on duplicating the types or categories either and if you end up with a lot of awards it makes the winners a lot less unique to the contest in some respects, especially at small cons.

One thing for sure, it's nice to have variety and each contest be different as it would be boring to have al the contests judged the exact same way anyway.

Vlad


That being said, I really like the Coordinator's Award you introduced to AE last year. I think that's a great concept. :D
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Postby Vlad G Pohnert » Fri Sep 26, 2008 8:22 pm

CorpseGoddess wrote:That being said, I really like the Coordinator's Award you introduced to AE last year. I think that's a great concept. :D


I added that to award a video that did not win anything but should of, or should get recognition.

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Postby aquastar831 » Fri Sep 26, 2008 9:35 pm

When I was at Tekkoshocon and Anime Mid-Atlantic, I think both were done by audience vote, and there were judges awards too. I didn't really think about pros and cons of each. Though I would tend to lean more towards the audience vote system more.

It is true that there may be bias in either type of system, and some examples include say people voting for an AMV just because it's from a popular series, or voting for friends and such, and that may well be the same case in a judge based panel, with the downside of a possible disagreement from the audience.

One thing that might be a fun idea is if you do integrate a judge based system in some way to maybe have the guests as judges, though it might be difficult since they have their own panels to do and may not have time to sit for an AMV contest.

A category that might be fun would be for newcomers to AMV creation where they have their own category and would strictly be for those who have never submitted an entry to a contest. Might be fun to encourage more people out there to try their hand at making AMVs.
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Postby JaddziaDax » Fri Sep 26, 2008 10:27 pm

AMA does judges and audience >.>

However, I've advised Gene for future contests that if something wins best of show, it shouldn't take the category as well... while i like my 3 AMA trophies, I didn't like that the runners up in my category didn't really "win" anything though and it felt like I was "getting too much" for it (2007)..
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Postby Silk_SK » Fri Sep 26, 2008 10:56 pm

What we need are a British guy, a black guy, and a woman. I dare anyone to disagree.
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