DarkBasilisk wrote:I don't know, from the only a viewer perspective i'll chime in that not just contest amvs but stuff I watch in general it's usually uncommon for me to have a AMV I like that's over 3 minutes. It can be done, but especially during a extended contest it's a bit of a fight to keep the interest of people in the seat. I've seen some videos that had great starts, good editing, but after a while anything gets old. A good 5 minute AMV has to be either telling a compelling story, keep having new and eyecatching things happen, have a constant stream of varying comedy, or just generally be made for the upbeat/dance category and have some rocking party music.
Making a single tone/image/theme video doesn't work on the five minute scale, or at least really hurts your odds. It's not an absolutely bad move, it just puts a lot bigger burden on the editor to find a way to make much longer footage remain interesting, a challenge not everyone is up to. I think overall we had shorter AMV's this year and the contest was better for it. I usually leave dashes on the listing next to the AMV's I liked even if they weren't the one i was going to vote for, so i can look them up later. Last year it was mostly only the winner/runner-up that got that, this year the majority of the finalists have a dashSaying which ones didn't get one would be overly mean, but to further my point, if i glance at my card sitting here, the handful of one's not marked off are the mostly the one's that ran longer.
I agree with you, for the most part. I think videos get exponentially more difficult to manage the longer they get. The song I used in my AMV is actually a 5:24 song, but I cut it down to 4:38 because there was no way I could fill the remaining time. (That, and the rest of the song was unbridled guitar wankery.)











