Anime Destiny 2005 AMV Contest Official Results

[Therax]

This is mostly a verification of the unofficial results posted by suberunker over in this post, with a bunch of additional comments.

First, although I've said it before, the entire judging staff was blown away by the consistently high quality of submissions this year. This uniformly high level of quality was also reflected in the audience voting. Every single video shown got at least one vote for Best of Show. Even more impressively, 3 of our 5 categories, as well as Best of Show, were decided by margins of less than 5 votes each.

Selecting the recipients for the Judges' Choice awards was grueling, and there are easily a dozen or more videos we would like to have been able to recognize. The discussion on which videos of these would actually go home with a trophy was long and contentious.

Truly, there are no bad videos among any of the finalists shown, and I would have been happy to bestow an award on any of them. Winner or not, they are all worth a download, so go check them out.

Thanks go out to all the creators who submitted their videos. You make these contests possible. Thanks also to the convention attendees who spent two hours watching the videos and giving their honest opinions and votes. And thanks to the judges and staff of Anime Destiny 2005, who gave up their weekends to bring this whole event off with admirable smoothness.

And now, although you likely already know what they are, the results:

Audience Selections:

Best Action / Horror:
Sail On by ManyLemons Productions [by 2 votes]

Best Sentimental / Romance
Mai-Yuuichi by Sojiro

Best Trailer / Parody
Daioh Fantasy A+ by Mr. Panda (Panda Productions) [by 3 votes]

Best Dramatic / Serious
Eyes of a Child by ScoobINSMDBZ (ScoobsNet Studios)

Comedy / Upbeat
(Orochimaru's) Young Mutant Criminal Association by Sarinthesky [by 4 votes]

Best in Show
Azumanga DIE-OH by Roll the Stampede [by 3 votes]

Judges' Choice Awards:

The Curse of Saturn by Allegretto Productions

This video drew us in with its well-crafted atmosphere, and held our attention with its gripping pacing and story. The video was so well-crafted from a storytelling perspective that at one point one of the judges wondered aloud whether large portions of the video had been taken directly from an episode of the source anime. Of course, they hadn't, but the editing and storytelling were so immersive that it was easy to believe they could have been. We were further impressed by the audio track, which the editor had seamlessly created by editing together multiple tracks from the Card Captor Sakura OST, and accented and enhanced the mood and pacing of the entire video. For the excellence in editing and storytelling, we present this video with a Judges' Choice award for Achievement in Originality.

Elements by Pwolf

In just under 90 seconds, this video convincingly tells an emotional story of meeting, betrayal, and redemption, using nothing but still frames linked by simple fades to black. Also perfectly timed and paced to acoustic guitar, Elements shows that you don't need fancy effects, a popular song, or, in this case, even motion to create a powerful video. For this exemplary creation, we award the Achievement in Simplicity.

Angelic Requiem by zamato666

Simply beautiful. This describes the Air TV series and Sarah McLachlan's Angel, and applies equally well to this video that so magnificently pairs the two. With its careful, deliberate pacing and consistent visual theming throughout, watching this video is like taking a trip into another world. The story unfolds slowly through the scene choice and lyrics, subtly shifting mood and drawing in the viewer. Technically, this video also impressed us with advanced compositing techniques that always added to, and never distracted from, the rest of the video. For reducing us alternately to awed silence and to tears, we recognize this video as Best Artistic.

A Time for Us by Koopiveska (Random Destination Studios)

This video starts simply enough as a romance, at first making us wonder why this video was represented as a drama. But then, as the song builds and shifts, the video likewise builds into a sweeping, encompassing masterpiece that captures the characters and story of the source material, and moves beyond even to social commentary, all in just over 3 minutes. Moving, poignant, perfectly paced and visualized throughout, we award this video Best Portrayal of a Series.

As I said before, we wish we could similarly honor many of our other submissions. Saiyan Pride amazed us with his dramatic technical improvement over his submissions just a year ago, particularly with Some Safe Shit. We thank Perfect-Blue for livening up the Action category with Quatro nAVI System CODE FACTOR, an unusual video that is an unabashed technology demo. Vlad G Pohnert's A View to a Kill may well be the best new video of the year, although it is unlikely to garner much audience recognition, and easily deserves its win at AWA Pro, as does AtomX's Love Burns Brighter. Silver_moon's Get This Party Started shows that a "fanboy action video" can excel. Tarentella's My Dog is a piece of thematic genius, and always put a smile on our faces.

I could go on and on, but the upshot is, every video on our finalist list is deserving of your attention and appreciation.

Go. Download.

Watch.

Now.

References:
Contest announcement - http://www.animemusicvideos.org/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=57093
List of finalists - http://www.animemusicvideos.org/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=59093

edit:
Added links to contest announcement and finalists.

[Pwolf]

congrats to all, again


Pwolf

[Osakaness]

Congrats All.

[ScoobINSMDBZ]

Wow


Congratulations to all!!!

[Vlad G Pohnert]

Congrats to everyone and all the winners.

The best news is that it sounds like the audiance really enjoyed the contest. It's always a treat to have a greast contest. I was more than happy just be be shown

Vlad

[zanmato666]

Congrats to everyone and all the winners.

The best news is that it sounds like the audiance really enjoyed the contest. It's always a treat to have a greast contest. I was more than happy just be be shown

Vlad

I agree with Vlad. Thanks to the Anime Destiny staff for all of their hard work since it seems they had their hands full and congratulations to all of the participants and winners.

[Pwolf]

Congrats to everyone and all the winners.

The best news is that it sounds like the audiance really enjoyed the contest. It's always a treat to have a greast contest. I was more than happy just be be shown

Vlad

x2

Pwolf

[Therax]

Audience response was really quite excellent. Most of the videos got cheers, laughs, or respectful silence, as was appropriate.

One in particular I remember was when Pwolf's Forgiveness closed out the Sentimental / Romance category. Immediate responses were the "Oh no, not another FF7:AC video," but by the end it was received in dead silence (it's not a long video), and it was probably 30 seconds to a minute before the talking started up again after the closing bumper showed. For that kind of video, you can't really get better response than that.

[jade_eyed_angel]

congrats!

[TaranT]

The list is up with links (here).
Actually, four contest lists went up today.

[Devil^Shin]

Congrats to everyone

[Inertia]

Congratuables to all!

Just wish I could've been there, sounds like it was quite the event o.O


- 'Nert

[Sojiro]

congrats to all

[jasper-isis]

Oh wow, thanks so much for the judges' award. I thought it was going to be like those goofy guest awards that some contests give out, but it looks like you guys put quite a bit of thought into this. Thanks again, and congratuations on a successful contest.