AMV Contest

Announcement & discussion of Anime Music Video contests
Genericon
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AMV Contest

Post by Genericon » Sun Feb 03, 2013 6:17 pm

Hey everyone,

There is a local convention, Genericon, in Troy, NY happening on the weekend of March 1-3. We have an AMV contest, with prizes, and celebertity judges, such as Uncle Yo and Kyle Hebert! The categories are comedy, drama/horror, action, and romance. To submit your video, please go to this link, http://genericon.union.rpi.edu/wordpress/?page_id=113 . The deadline is Feb. 9, so please hurry! The rules are posted on the submission site. We look forward to your submissions!

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drewaconclusion
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Re: AMV Contest

Post by drewaconclusion » Thu Feb 07, 2013 12:21 am

Wow, my local con posted on here. I guess I should stop flaking on entering. :sweat:
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Genericon
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Re: AMV Contest

Post by Genericon » Tue Feb 26, 2013 7:13 am

I am sorry, but due to scheduling conflicts. There will be no celebertity judges. Uncle Yo and Kyle Herbert will not be participating as juddges. I am sorry I got your hopes up, but our judges will be three members of the senior staff.

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BasharOfTheAges
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Re: AMV Contest

Post by BasharOfTheAges » Fri Mar 01, 2013 9:13 pm

I'm waiting with baited breath to hear drew's blow-by-blow account in long form. This level of fail has to be documented for posterity.
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drewaconclusion
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Re: AMV Contest

Post by drewaconclusion » Sat Mar 02, 2013 3:46 am

Well, I just got back from Genericon (and taking 2nd place in the Tetris tournament that lasted to 1:15am). As BasharOfTheAges alluded to, I was live-texting the status of the contest to him while I was in the audience since I knew he entered. So I'm going to quote those texts for posterity and for giving an idea of elapsed time, etc.

Me: 7:54pm: Going to Contest
Me: 7:59pm: A con horror story panel is just before the amv contest
Me: 8:00pm: The girl's bitching about the no restaurants at ctcon issue.

I got to the contest about three minutes before the contest was supposed to start and it was the tail end of a con horror stories panel (self-explanatory). The panelist does have a point about there being a lack of restaurants in the vicinity of Connecticon.

Me: 8:03pm: So far the people running the contest haven't shown

The contest coordinator still hadn't shown up so the horror stories panel just keeps right on going. There's probably about 50 or so people in the audience at this point with a few more trickling in.

Me: 8:06pm: Huzzah. They just arrived. Let's see how long it takes for the show to start

A trio of people enter in the back and work their way up to the front of the lecture hall (Genericon's held at a school), talk to one of the panelists. The speaking panelist announces that their panel is over and that the amv contest is next. There's some applause. About 10 or so people get up and leave. At this point they're fussing around with the computer/projector console.

Me: 8:09pm: They forgot to print the ballots.
Me: 8:09pm: Applause at the end wins it
Me: 8:09pm: 11 videos total

As they're fussing around with the console, the staff(?) member dressed as Carmen Sandiego announces that she forgot to have the ballots printed before the deadline, so the audience choice is going be decided by audience applause at the end. They will re-list all the videos played and then have the audience cheer for which ones they liked afterwards. It's then announced that they have 11 videos to show.

Me: 8:10pm: Not even two years ago was that bad

Two years ago, their submission system allowed all submitters to see who (and what) everyone else submitted. The night before the con, their system stated only six videos were entered. At the contest, they announced that they whittled down all the finalists to just the top six videos. There's more, but it's a story for another day.

Me: 8:11pm: Possible computer reboot
Me: 8:11pm: Whee
Me: 8:12pm: 5 people at the console...

The screen goes dark now and two more staffers show up and stand around the computer/projector console. I'm assuming they're rebooting the computer and waiting for it to come back up.

Me: 8:14pm: Can't play the videos
Me: 8:14pm: Debating playing lower quality or running off of a flash drive

They announce that they can't play the videos as things stand now. They continue saying that they're debating whether to try and run the videos off of a flash drive or just play the videos at a much lower quality. They send off a person to go retrieve the flash drive from their dorm. Meanwhile they continue to fiddle with the console.

Me: 8:17pm: They're telling mlp stories to stall

Now, to keep the audience entertained they invite the audience to come up and continue telling convention horror stories to keep the rest of the audience entertained. At the time, I thought they were just telling stories related to My Little Ponies. Anyhow, this guy's story involves him being staff at Bronycon and hitting on Lauren Faust while drunk.

Me: 8:21pm: 10 people just left
Me: 8:21pm: 30-40 people remain
Me: 8:21pm: Probably closer to 40
Me: 8:21pm: Still at the console
Me: 8:22pm: They're telling con horror stories now

At this point I realized they were telling horror stories and not stuff related to MLP. By this time, the audience was getting a bit more antsy and a number of people got up and left. I'm just watching the group at the console still just standing about and not really listening super carefully to the horror stories.

Me: 8:23pm: Looks like the flash drive arrived
Me: 8:23pm: 6 people at the console now

Another new staffer joins the crowd at the console and the guy sent off to get the flash drive returns looking happy holding the flash drive.

Me: 8:23pm: One of them just headdesked

One of the staffers puts his head down on the console desk. Another staffer, in a cosplay I don't recognize, puts their hand up in front of her face and tips her head down.

Me: 8:25pm: they're saying they'll fix the issues for next time

Carmen Sandiego announces that they'll have these issues fixed for next year, if the contest comes back next year. She continues that she'd like to have another contest next year. I don't remember what the crowd reaction was.

Me: 8:30pm: It's one guy at the console and 4 people looking at him and/or around

There's still one guy working at the computer console, meanwhile the other four people are standing there looking around. The con horror stories continue to be told.

Me: 8:30pm: They announced before that we can all tell this current situation as a future con horror story.
Me: 8:31pm: The horror stories are almost all about drugs/drinking stories

Anyhow, as one of the segways between horror stories, Carmen Sandiego announces that we can official tell the story of the current situation as a con horror story. Oh joy. At this point I also notice that a number of the stories being told have something to do with drinking, drugs or busting people for drugs. More of an observation than anything else.

Me: 8:31pm: They have a google drive on screen

They bring up Google and log into someone's Google drive.

Me: 8:32pm: They're showing the first few in lq and when the videos fully load, switch to hq.

They announce that they're going to start showing videos, but that until the videos completely load, they're going to show them in low quality. I don't catch what the video player they're using is and it doesn't look familiar. Doesn't look like Youtube's player either.

Me: 8:33pm: No sound!
Me: 8:33pm: Stopped the playing
Me: 8:33pm: Crowd is shouting suggestions
Me: 8:33pm: Of how to fix it
Me: 8:34pm: Surprisingly no one is leaving
Me: 8:34pm: Try 2 no audio

They start playing the first video and there's no audio. They close the video and set it up again. The audience begins laughing and shouting suggestions of how to fix it like “did you check if the cables are plugged in?”, etc. They start a 2nd time and there's still no audio.

Me: 8:34pm: There we go
Me: 8:35pm: first video was restarted
Me: 8:35pm: They have all the lights on

5 seconds later there's suddenly audio. They then restart the first video again. The lights are still on though, so it's hard to make out the video.

Me: 8:35pm: Nevermind

They kill the lights finally.

Me: 8:40pm: Macroblocking like whoa

As the first two videos play, they are plagued by large amounts of macroblocking. And first up was the action videos.

Me: 8:43pm: Black rock shooter in fullscreen

A Black Rock Shooter video comes on but it's being played as 4:3 instead of 16:9. There are several moon shots in the video and the moon is very noticeable squished.

Me: 8:44pm: All side letterboxing now

The next video up appears to be letterboxed on all sides. It also is horribly aliased. I should note that the video defects (and some audio defects) persist.

Me: 8:49pm: Now on drama/horror

Not much else of note other than the bumper for the action category was never shown. Oh, actually. Comedy only had two videos. One of which was only four seconds long and consisted of a girl offering another girl a box of razor blades in the guise of a candy box. The guy next to me goes ballistic and thinks it's the greatest thing ever.

Me: 8:55pm: On to romance
Me: 8:55pm: No show for you

Only two videos were in the drama/horror category. BasharOfTheAges' video wasn't shown.

Me: 9:00pm: Bumper in video
Me: 9:00pm: Still in lq

The first romance video has a very obvious MTV style bumper at the end. Also, the videos have yet to switch over to a higher quality and still suffer from macroblocking.

Me: 9:02pm: It's like poor fansubs

The romance videos are very fuzzy and blurred out. At some points it's impossible to distinguish the expressions on the characters' faces. Obviously, the video quality never picked up.

Me: 9:04pm: And it's over
Me: 9:04pm: Massive mic feedback
Me: 9:05pm: They're relisting the videos
Me: 9:06pm: But they forgot the video titles

The contest then ends with a massive amount of microphone feedback. The audience reels. They then proceed to re-announce each of the videos to remind the audience of what to vote for. Problem is, they couldn't remember the names of each of the videos, so they just marked each video by the footage source used. Note: the video title cards had the editor's real name, song and footage used. The video names were never mentioned.

Me: 9:08pm: Drabaz won audience choice

The audience cheers for the videos and Drabaz' DBZ video is declared the winner of the Audience Choice award. The staff at the console (there's still four of them there) ask if Drabaz is there and then proceed to say he can pick up his award at con ops on Sunday. They then announce that they'll declare the winner of the Judges' Choice award at the Masquerade Saturday afternoon.

Me: 9:10pm: The organizers all darted off

All the staffers that were at the console during the whole event took off through a back door before most of the audience is standing up. At this point I leave the room to take part in the Tetris tournament.
Last edited by drewaconclusion on Sat Mar 02, 2013 11:03 am, edited 3 times in total.
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BasharOfTheAges
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Re: AMV Contest

Post by BasharOfTheAges » Sat Mar 02, 2013 9:26 am

Yay Tetris!
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Radical_Yue
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Re: AMV Contest

Post by Radical_Yue » Sat Mar 02, 2013 10:30 am

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I feel embarrassed for them...jesus h christ, what a mess.

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Re: AMV Contest

Post by l33tmeatwad » Sat Mar 02, 2013 11:31 am

I have to say, it's almost a skill to screw things up that bad...I don't see HOW a contest could be so poorly organized...but maybe that's because when I prepare for stuff I have 2 backup plans...lol
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BasharOfTheAges
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Re: AMV Contest

Post by BasharOfTheAges » Sat Mar 02, 2013 12:06 pm

l33tmeatwad wrote:I have to say, it's almost a skill to screw things up that bad...I don't see HOW a contest could be so poorly organized...but maybe that's because when I prepare for stuff I have 2 backup plans...lol
I think that's 3 more than they had.
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GeneralGuyAmv
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Re: AMV Contest

Post by GeneralGuyAmv » Sun Mar 03, 2013 1:31 pm

Wow, this sure suck. Thanks for the feedback, it's always cool to know how a broadcast really went. Now, I don't want to blame anyone here, but if there is some good amv maker or people that actually dealed with a real amv contest near that con, it cost nothing to give some good tips for next year for them to do better than this.

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