2008 Viewers' Choice Awards [OVER!]

[Autraya]

I've a bone to pick.

NC-17 is mentioned on the elligibility page... WTF is that? some kind of U.S rating system? that or North Carolina at -17 degrees

I and a lot of other people on the .org aren't from the U.S so how about using something more universal.
Like "may contain content unsuitable for people under the age of 18" or whatever suits your fancy to get the point across.

And yet you still understood that NC-17 meant the video wasn't suitable for kiddies...

google is my friend.
but I should not have had to look it up

[jasper-isis]

Autraya, sorry for the US-centric language, but the important part is the following blurb, since it gives more solid criteria:

If you're using off-site hosting because your video is too sexual or violent to be hosted locally, then we will have to disqualify the video if it gets nominated.

(And needless to say, if we find excessively sexual or violent videos hosted locally anyway, then the normal consequences apply.)

But I'll see if we can get a google link on the term.


Bashar: Can you elaborate a bit? What's the exact category description that you would write for "Most Improved Editor"?

Also, Orwell: Is that really a good idea?

[BasharOfTheAges]

Bashar: Can you elaborate a bit? What's the exact category description that you would write for "Most Improved Editor"?

"Someone that has shown the most improvement this year" as opposed to "Someone that has shown the most improvement within the year" like it is now. The semantic difference would be that the result of their improvement over years past would be seen in a video or videos they produced in the given year rather than requiring both bad and good to occur in the same year.

Real progress does take some time and often happens because you take your time at something - producing less is a direct consequence.

Also, note that this doesn't reduce the number of people qualified if worded this way, it just expands it.

[Brad]

Best Duo

There are some people who collaborated on a video, but there were only two collaborators, so this doesn't really count as a single effort, or as a mulit-editor project.

"Best Collaborative Project" encompasses both MEPs and two-person collabs, so both are eligible for the category. I know you probably have some concerns about the two being placed together, but for now I think that "Best Duo" would be too restrictive of a category for the VCA.

I've gotta side with Ileia here and promote the idea of having two separate categories for actual few-person collaborations and actual multi-editor projects. There's just such a huge difference between something like Never Fall Apart and Ayumix 2 (I'm talking of course about the structure/scale/intention as opposed to the content of each). Now of course I'm no programmer so I'm purely speaking out of speculation here, but it doesn't seem like it would be all that difficult to make some sort of filter that picks out videos with only.. saay.. 2-4 editors, for use in the nomination round. And then another filter for any video with 5+ editors is considered to be an MEP for the sake of nominations.

I understand that this is a slightly crude and informal way of approaching the labeling of collabs and MEPs, but at least it gives two very different entities their own arena for nomination. Because lets face it, if they're all lumped together, the chance of few-editor collaborations going up against massive MEPs (Hell 4, etc.) is simply minuscule at best.

Anyways, just an idea. I'd rather see some discussion and ideas being thrown about rather than simply saying "Nope, not gonna happen, move along."

[Nessephanie]

I agree with both Bashar's idea of changing the description on Most Improved, as well as seperating the collab and MEP videos (assuming this can be done without too much hassle).
As great as some of the collab videos were this year, being in the same categories as the MEP's they're completely overshadowed...And I think they deserve their own category, seeing as there seem to be quite a few.

[Tsunami Jones]

My primary concerns/thoughts about a "duo" category, for videos that consist of only 2-4 people:

How many of them are there really? (now, there could be alot; I don't have a filter or anything to look it up immediately). If there's only a few a year, I don't see the point in seperating them from the larger category (I can only even think of a few that came out).

Also, I would like to point out that a large MEP is more likely to be jack-of-all-trades master-of-none genre wise, compared to a smaller one which can look much more coherent. I think a video that say, only has two to three editors on it stands a much better chance in the normal categories.

So if they can possibly stand out more in the regular categories, and there's not that many of them, is there a necessity to seperate them?

Personally though, I really don't care how many people worked on a video together, and I don't think that just because someone got along with someone else well enough to make something decent with each other holds much merit by itself. So, really, I would be completely fine with abolishing the MEP category altogether

[Otohiko]

I hate to stir up the controversy over this, but wouldn't the two categories suggested by Ileia be pandering a little bit too much to the .org's "inner circle"?

Not to be too cynical, but I think both those categories actually mean something to a fairly narrow group of people, and against the background of people whining about cliques and all - perhaps it would be better to stick to the more general categories for now. To the average AMV viewer and even editor, I somehow don't think those two categories will appeal very much and will probably raise some of the old whining on the social dynamics of the .org again.

On the other hand, one nice thing about possibly having these categories is that it possibly might actually encourage people to collaborate more. Which in my view, would be a good thing. But somehow I don't think the wider community is ready for that sort of subtle hint yet and might take it the wrong way...

[Moonlight Soldier]

The requirements, of course, are that there are more than one member. It's pretty self-explanatory, I mean, there are certainly some studios that produced a huge amount of awesome videos (think of all the videos that will be nominated in the VCAs this year from VNS :O) and I think they deserve some recognition!

But isn't that in itself recognizing the talent of a particular studio? Honestly that seems a little redundant to me.

I like the duo idea though. It could use some fleshing out to make it a solid category, but I think there are definitely videos made by a few people that tend to get overlooked/overshadowed when it comes to collaborations (because it seems to imply a high number of people.)

[jasper-isis]

Re: improved category. Cool, I don't see a problem with your proposal. TJ?

Re: collab distinctions. Personally, I understand the rationale and I'm in favor of the idea, but the main problem is (as always) implementation. Making the distinction at 4 collaborators is still pretty iffy; who's to say that 5 or 6 or even 7 editors can't come together to do the same kind of collab? There is no clearly defined difference in number of editors, so the potential for mis-categorization is too great. We need 1) a distinguishing method that is less crudely defined and 2) a set of judging criteria that are easy for voters to understand.

The other thing that I have to stress is that we can't promise certain things because we're not the ones who have to potentially work our butts off to program these changes. It might be easy or difficult, but either way I can't just say "sure thing, let's do this" and then turn around and hand everything off to the programmer, especially at this point in the schedule.

[Kionon]

Making the distinction at 4 collaborators is still pretty iffy; who's to say that 5 or 6 or even 7 editors can't come together to do the same kind of collab? There is no clearly defined difference in number of editors, so the potential for mis-categorization is too great. We need 1) a distinguishing method that is less crudely defined and 2) a set of judging criteria that are easy for voters to understand.

How about this? Instead of focusing on number of editors, let's focus on actual production.

Takea video like VegettoEX and MeriC's "I want to save you" or RRomig and my "Heero's a Mess" and compare those to Conet, Hell, or Ayumix. The former are very different from the latter. The first two are "standard" one-track AMVs but have collaborating editors. The latter three are multi-track bohemoths. The difference is pretty clear.