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












