Awards won't be announced till tomorrow, but here's my (brutally) honest review of the contest.
I didn't make the pre-show, but it was good to see that some people did, but however, why was there a video with the FUNimation watermark and subtitles in there? Was it leftover from last year's contest? Why the hell did it even get in?
First of all, I have to give props to Xstylus' intro video. That literally summed up most people's feelings on what happened this year.
As for the contest itself, it was one of the strongest contests in recent years, miles above 2008's and light year's beyond 2009's (I didn't see 2009's, but I heard it was awful), except one fuckup that literally made me go into Super Saiyan
NERDRAGE.
Drama was good for the most part. I still have to applaud AX's decisions for letting in drama videos that don't make me want to slit my wrists. Although I gotta admit that kitsuner's video was probably more suited towards AMTV.
Action started off great. I really liked Nighthawk's video which was a great way to set the standard for the action category. However, the biggest fuckup that happened was A BADLY EDITED DRAMA VIDEO WAS IN ACTION. WHY? WHAT.THE.FUCK? WHERE ARE THE EXPLOSIONS? WHERE ARE THE PEOPLE PUNCHING EACH OTHER? I couldn't hold back my NERDRAGE upon seeing this.
Ok, I'm cool now. But other than that, most of the videos were pretty decent, although some were a bit lacking. However, the drama category was much stronger.
Comedy was the strongest category this year, in fact, the strongest comedy category in I've seen in any con in recent years. But one thing: If you're gonna do lip sync, make sure you DO IT RIGHT or don't even bother doing it at all. The majority of the videos were great, although I didn't care much for the final one. It's good to see that comedy isn't a dying bread.
AMTV was decent, but nothing spectacular. There was an action video that could have easily overtaken that drama video in the action category. None of the videos were outright bad, but just not engaging for my tastes. I agree that this category really needs it's really suggested overhaul.
So did the contest blow my socks off as I was expecting? Not really. But it did give me some hope that things will change for the better. Aside from 2 videos, most of the encodes were clean (no "underwater" bad deinterlaced videos this time around). Not counting the terrible drama video in action, most of the videos were well edited.
I'll admit it right now, but yeah, I felt that I should have made it in and competed. I don't think I would have won due to the caliber of the comedy category, but I honestly think after watching most of the videos, I could have stood a decent chance.
I got a lot more to say, but people in my hotel room need to use the internet, and I'm kinda leeching the connection right now.
So props to DP for another technically sound contest, although the judging really needs a lot of work next year.