Question #1: If you could have one major change in this contest (anything is fair game), what would it be? If you could keep any one thing about this contest the same, what would it be?
I would get rid of the bonus points; each round's videos should be evaluated on their own merit. You end up with a rich get richer scenario, where the good editors don't have to try as hard because their scores are being padded. For an example of why bonus points are dumb, we have a tie in the finale because of them.
Question #2: From here on out, I will be letting the contestants and viewers to submit themes that will be used in future OrgEditor contests. Therefore, if you could have any theme(s) added to our contest, what would it(they) be? Keep in mind that themes should be capable of being done within a week's time and themes involving more than one person is not always the best idea. You may submit as many ideas as you want, but I reserve the right to "trim" certain themes or alter them slightly to be more editor-friendly.
I don't have any specific suggestions for themes, but when prepping for next year I'd suggest grouping themes into "broad" and "strict" or something similar. That way you can easily alternate between broad and strict, instead of giving us two very broad categories (seasons and distant future) back to back, followed by an incredibly restrictive one.
Question #3: Do you feel as though the judging critera is fair, or should there be a re-write?
I feel the judges need stricter guidelines on objectivity as seen in the numerous arguments early on in the contest. Displaying the scores individually by category helps a lot, since it forces the judges to justify why they're giving a really good or really bad score.
Regarding the specific judging criteria, Audio/Video and Editing/Sync are both fine. I'm not sure we need Theme and Concept categories though; your video's concept should be an extension of the round's theme. If you make a video that had an excellent concept but didn't match the theme AT ALL you should just be DQ'd instead of getting a 20 Concept/0 Theme so I'd probably just roll those two categories together. Overall is another highly subjective category, and to me should just represent an average of the above. I realize it lets the judges weight videos in cases of "Everything is well done but I just didn't feel it" and "There were a lot of problems but it all came together well"; if that's the intended purpose of Overall let's just be honest and call it Opinion or some such. Basically my issue is that having 40% of the judging objective and 60% subjective allows way too much wiggle room and results in the wild score disparities between the various judges we've seen in this year and previous POE's.
Question #4: Did you feel as though you had (a) enough time to edit (b) too much time to edit (c) not near enough time to edit.
Enough time.
Question #5: How would you feel if deadlines were only on weekends and due during the daytime (around Noon-1PM)?
I like the rotating deadlines. Having deadlines always on Saturday (for example) would either shorten editing time to ~5 days or create week-long breaks in between rounds, neither of which I'm in favor of. I've no opinion on the time of day entries are due.
Question #6: Is there anything you'd like to see added/removed from the subforum?
Something that would be cool is a fan-favorite vote each round in the form of a poll, and maybe another poll for contestant's favorite; nothing with prizes just something fun to do.
Question #7: Would you prefer that judging remains blind, or perhaps open up the gates and allow contestants to upload their entries to a-m-v.org once finished?
Blind judging.
Question #8: The following changes are being seriously considered for season 4. What are your opinions on these changes?
+ (Rule Addition) Utilization of any material from a previous AMVs without the owner's consent is a disqualifying offense.
I'd go so far as to say utilizing ANY material from a previous AMV should be grounds for DQ, with or without consent. The challenge of the contest is to edit a video within the timeline, and using pre-edited footage seems like cheating.
+ (Formatting Change) Changing the style from a 32 person tournament to a 64 person tournament, and utilizing a two-group system similar to "The Quickening", with the same elimination/theme standards as previous contests, just split in two. This will provide editors with a larger break (since only one group will edit at a time until the semifinals), and provide with more AMVs for the general public to watch/enjoy.
I don't like this one. If you want to add more people, go for it, but keep the level playing field: everyone competes against everyone on the same themes.
Question #9: Put anything not mentioned above that you want to talk about here.
Make sure all of the judges are able to submit their scores on time, every round. It's unfair (and stressful) to the editors to hold up the contest because a judge couldn't get their scores in on time; and for all the complaints about editors dropping we had at least two cases this POE of judges failing to submit scores for a round at all, including the FINALS.







