AWA 2010 - Pro downloads active; Expo 4 days left, August 20

[jingoro]

At the risk of needing to invest in horse meat processing stock, I give you my thoughts.

1) Nobody is ever expected to watch something they're not interested in watching. Ever, for any reason. Tagging content known to be quite adult is our attempt to accomodate those who have no desire to watch adult content, while in turn not censoring the artistic endevours of our participants. It's a compramise, and like all compramises it's not perfect.

2) I made a decision all the way back at AWA 1 not to censor submissions for any reason whatsoever. A participant can send us anything. We may be unable to /screen/ it for a variety of reasons (good taste, law, etc.) but we'll accept and judge the entry, and in the case of Masters or Expo, if in our judgement we deem it worthy, it'll win an award.

3) That decision has an impact with the Professional Awards in that all submissions /are/ included in the distributed judging materials, since we do not censor submissions. If we did, we'd be imposing (by definition) our personal interpretation of what is right and appropriate from an artistic perspective. Generally, in the case of blatant, realistic Hentai and Adult content, there would be little argument... but what about those videos with big black dots or garden snakes over peoples crotches... do we cut those too? Some are quite funny and stand a good run in a 'comedy' category. The only way not to draw an arbitrary line is not to draw a line at all.

At AWA we have always tried to err on the side of artistic expression and integrity. We do this because we consider our AMV participants to be artists in their own right. That they are not just mashing up other people's work, but that in the process they are expressing their creativity and producing something that is greater than the sum of its parts. As long as I am in charge that won't change.

That said, I refer everyone back to point #1 above. Nobody is ever expected to watch something they're not interested in watching. Ever, for any reason. If you don't want to see it. Skip it. You're not obligated to nominate it for any category. If a video you don't want to watch is nominated for a category you're voting, I have no problem with you continuing to vote the category on whatever basis you choose. You can even vote the Adult category based on nothing but the title of the videos submitted. I can't stop you, nor would I try.

What I've seen in this conversation is something that has disappointed me since I got into this fandom, almost 20 years ago.

This is a hobby. We, all of us as far as I know, do this in our spare time becasue (I assume) we love the music. Because we love the shows. Because we want to share something unique we see in our source material with other fans in an artistic fashion. We submit to contests not for the lump of plastic or piece of paper we take home. Please, I beg you, if any part of the contest scene is making this not-fun for you... stop. Life is too short to work this hard at something not to feel better about yourself and the world when all is said and done.

And if there is something we can do to make things more entertaining, more fun for you as a creator, please let us know. We'll always listen and consider it. I would even consider bringing back the "Hour That Does Not Exist" contest (as we had at AWA 6) next year for explicitly adult content if that is really what the AMV community is interested in at our convention. We are a creator-focused venue, just let us know, directly please. You can reach the VAT director, whomever it is, at videoart@awa-con.com. You can reach me at jingoro@jingoro.net.

Thank you for continuing to send us your video endevours,
Daric "Jingoro" Jackson
Director, AWA Music Video Contests 1-5
Director, AWA Video Art Track 6-7, 15-16

[Kireblue]

so I guess that the last post, and the thread godix made specifically for pro contest discussion ended this little debate.

Anyway, am I'm the only one that cares about expo? I haven't heard a single word about it from anyone. But then again, what is there to say? I'm just so excited about my entry this year. Right now, I'm trying to crank out a full beta for it.

[kholaras]

Heh, speak of the devil. Processed the latest batch of stuff and your video came up missing =) Request a reopen of the ftp when you're ready to go.

For everyone else, get yer Expo stuff registered on the site by Friday. I'm printing off a copy of the lineup Saturday morning on the way to the first judging session and it sucks having write in entries on the judging list. Rather, on the back of the last page, where you're very likely to be an afterthought and risk us forgetting about you. REGISTER EARLY!

As for uploading, I'll close out the uploads late Sunday night as before, but don't push your luck. I'd much rather the majority of the entries be done and uploaded for me to have in hand Sunday morning. We've really only got the two weekends immediately following the deadline to get everything watched and judged and it's much more reassuring to go into the next Saturday with no concerns but to leave with a winner's list rather than watch yet another round of vids. There's some stupid con with a shotgun spread of topics on that third weekend that all our staff seem to want to go to every year...

[Kireblue]

Heh, speak of the devil. Processed the latest batch of stuff and your video came up missing =) Request a reopen of the ftp when you're ready to go.

sure thing

There's some stupid con with a shotgun spread of topics on that third weekend that all our staff seem to want to go to every year...

[AimoAio]

Anyway, am I'm the only one that cares about expo? I haven't heard a single word about it from anyone. But then again, what is there to say? I'm just so excited about my entry this year. Right now, I'm trying to crank out a full beta for it.

Me too Still got around a minute left to edit...>__>

[Reoer]

If I entered a video in Expo last year and didn't get shown, is there any reason to resubmit it to this year's?

[kholaras]

If I entered a video in Expo last year and didn't get shown, is there any reason to resubmit it to this year's?

The Macross Frontier vid to Muse? I can't find my play logs nor do I have access to the paper scratch sheets but I see no reason that wouldn't have been played. I remember it very vividly, comes to mind almost everytime the local radio station plays a Muse song.

Technically, as far as resubmits go we discourage them in general (unless it's a fairly extensive rework) but allow it as long as it didn't win previously and is in no other contest concurrently at the con. It's in the archive though so if you are at the con (or a friend), make a request during the open request blocks and we'll get it up on the big screen while you (or they) are in the room.

[Reoer]

If I entered a video in Expo last year and didn't get shown, is there any reason to resubmit it to this year's?

The Macross Frontier vid to Muse? I can't find my play logs nor do I have access to the paper scratch sheets but I see no reason that wouldn't have been played. I remember it very vividly, comes to mind almost everytime the local radio station plays a Muse song.

Technically, as far as resubmits go we discourage them in general (unless it's a fairly extensive rework) but allow it as long as it didn't win previously and is in no other contest concurrently at the con. It's in the archive though so if you are at the con (or a friend), make a request during the open request blocks and we'll get it up on the big screen while you (or they) are in the room.

Yeah, that's the video. Thanks for the positive comments. There was another AMV that played that spanned all of the Macross series, and I guess maybe they didn't want to have 2 Macross videos in the award show...? Or maybe it suffered from the "not enough votes in a single category" thing, or else maybe it just didn't win. I don't know.

Yeah, I figured there's not much point in resubmitting it; it was seen, and judged already. Thanks.

[outlawed]

What I've seen in this conversation is something that has disappointed me since I got into this fandom, almost 20 years ago. This is a hobby.

To me personally I see more positive than you or Vlad I guess? I don't know why some people are wound up about "drama" because the discourse was courteous and respectful for the most part. I don't think the AMV community of 1999-2004 would have anywhere near this level of maturity to discuss these issues. It would have just been 100% potshots.

In fact we should praise the amount of open discussion and critique of videos there has been regarding Pro this year as well as in the recent past. This is also something that simply did not happen back in my heyday of 1999-2004 and the current community should be VERY proud of this.

That being said. I should apologize to Jingoro on behalf of the 2002 AMV community. This issue was supposed to be brought up and taken care of back then by some dumbass Overfiend video but apparently some people thought it was a horror video and a few even voted for it.

Nobody is ever expected to watch something they're not interested in watching. Ever, for any reason. Tagging content known to be quite adult is our attempt to accomodate those who have no desire to watch adult content

I hope people were not taking what I said in that light. I don't think most of the discussion in this thread indicated as much "you must watch this even if you don't like it" that people took out of it. Some seem to advocate a watch and stop if it's offensive to you.

I want to re-iterate my main position in case it was lost in the back/forth with Pwolf where I used the 18+ stuff as an example. The main thing that set off my first post is that the spirit of the judging process should be important to us as a community and I was lamenting that some people these days don't even know this was a main goal. This has since been cleared up. But we, the AMV community, often set ourselves back on our own. Had people who felt something was off brought up the spirit of judging in the past the newer members of the AMV community would have better understood this was a goal. The same goes for 18+ content. If no one was voting on the stuff then had the community resolved the issue on its own earlier it could have stopped things from coming to a head in this thread. The more the community self addresses issues like this the better IMO.

There also lies the issue of decorum. In days of yore before the in your face attitudes of the internets and 4chan and the like even if someone could make an 18+ video they may very well have not sent it to AWA because maybe personally they felt it was not the right venue for it or because the community attitude toward Pro might have been perceived as hallowed ground which you do not shit on, troll, etc. Things change over time but if people notice no one is really judging certain entries then the community is indirectly sending a message and it might be a good time for open discussion like we had in this thread.

Personally my other position is that I do feel if the community believes content and some of its members are getting out of hand they should voice their opinions on offending videos. It may egg some people on (which may be what some want) but others may tone things down a bit because you helped them realize they are not hitting their target goal. I doubt most people submitting actually want to force people to feel uncomfortable or unwelcome. I have even heard one of the 18+ entries this year is an edited version adjusted for Pro. Earlier in this thread I talked about watching the videos and then making informed commentary if you think they are a problem. I realize this is not a popular opinion from quite a few though. Most would rather just maintain status quo and let everyone do their own thing. That's just not my style though. I say it's best we are open and if stuff has crossed the line and is counter productive we don't need to hold behind the theory that well it's OK cause Pro accepts anything. While it might accept anything Pro does not supersede AMV community standards and goals. If the community makes commentary then everyone better understands where they lie and we won't run into these problems of dammit people vote on these ultra-violent/hentai/etc videos because everyone will know both the spirit of the contest and the limitations of the community.

I wrote a lot in this thread because I care not because I was trying to force something on the community other than open discussion. If you wish to discuss this with me personally please feel free to PM me but just remember I have a tendency to post or reply duke nukem forever style just like those old ACen finalist lists.

[kholaras]

To Reo:

Well, keep in mind that we show a LOT more videos over the weekend than just the ones that were in the main events awards show. Do you attend the con? It varies a bit from year to year, but we usually have at a minimum 4 hours dedicated (scattered across Friday and Saturday) to showing nothing but Expo entries, and two hours on Sunday for Pro entries. Our goal every year is to show at least one video from each entrant in each contest (if applicable), though obviously those dedicated blocks are not big enough to show EVERYTHING we get. But add in the request blocks, and if the number of requests are a little low we sneak in extra Expo vids and end up at the close of the weekend showing 90% or better of what we get.