EDIT: Should've made this pretty big and bold first time around.
I DO NOT PLAN TO START THE TOURNAMENT UNTIL SOME TIME AFTER AWA (Sept. 21-23). AGAIN, THIS IS ONLY AN INTEREST GAUGE.
It's about that time again.
So, I'm sure a great deal of you are probably quite unfamiliar with the Online AMV Iron Chef Tournament (I really do need to come up with a shorter name. OAICT just doesn't sound right). To give you some light background in 2003, I organized and hosted the first "official" online AMV Iron Chef Tournament. It consisted of 16 editors going up against eachother head-to-head in a bracket style tournament. Then in 2005, I organized and ran the 2nd tournament which consisted of 32 editors. Now that is is 2007, I figured that it is high time I got around to hosting yet another ridiculously big and crazy tournament. And this year, I think we can continue the trend of doubling the number of entrants.
What I'm looking for here is to get a rough estimate of how many people would be interested in taking part in a new Iron Chef tournament. This year I am looking for 64 editors to join :O
Not sure what the hell an Online AMV Iron Chef IS?
Two editors each have two hours to create an AMV using a specific anime source and specific audio source. Generally when an Iron Chef event takes place at an anime convention, the contestants already know their sources (minus a secret ingredient that is introduced right before editing) well ahead of time, and they bring their own audio to edit with, and they edit their videos in 2 hours in front of an audience. Well, with the obvious limitations of holding such an event online, certain rule changes need to be made as far as source is concerned.
So here's how a match typically goes:
The contestants schedule a time to do their editing. 24 hours ahead of time, I (or another tournament coordinator) meet with the editors in an AIM chat room. Privately, each editor sends me a list of 6 different anime or game sources (or rather, sources that by the definition of the Org, constitutes acceptable video source for an AMV). Each source is a SINGLE DVD (hence, not an entire series, but a single DVD from that series) or game. After I have each editors list, I roll a virtual 6-sided dice in the AIM chat room in order to determine each contestants source.
The editors then have 24 hours to rip their source, prepare it to be edited, and (I always recommend doing this) WATCH their source so the scenes are fresh in their mind.
20-30 minutes before the scheduled match time, we meet again in an AIM chat room, and I give both editors a link to a SINGLE audio track. They will both edit their videos to the same song, using different source. Once the 2 hour time limit is up, the editors export from their respective video editing programs, encode a high quality compressed version of the video, and upload to a location that I provide to them. I then rename the videos to a uniform naming system and send the video links to the judges who then make the decision on who wins. The judging is BLIND (meaning, the judges won't know who made which video). Once the votes are in, I update the brackets and post the official results for the match in the tournament thread.
As the tournament progresses, the rules begin to differ to offer more challenge and more excitement, but this is the jist of how the tournament's matches are handled.
Technical Requirements For Joining:
- You MUST own (or have access to) AT LEAST 11 sources (11 single anime DVDs or games. No fansubs/raws/etc.)
- You must be able to schedule the time for yourself sometime through the week to edit. Depending on the round, this is generally a MINIMUM of 3 solid hours (2 hours spent editing, another spent meeting online, getting the audio ahead of time, then encoding and uploading afterwards).
- You must have an AIM screen name. If you do not already have AIM and are very much against the idea of installing it to your system, you can use the free web-based client at Meebo.com. It works with AIM chat rooms perfectly fine and won't install anything to your computer.
- You (obviously) must have some form of editing software and the ability/knowledge to rip and prep DVDs to be edited with, and the ability to properly export and encode your final video into a high quality output, and upload to a designated location.
- You must have at least a somewhat high speed internet connect (Cable/DSL). Sorry dial-up users :\ Considering that the videos are going to be judged soon after the match is over, we really need you to be able to encode and upload your videos as soon as possible.
There ARE NO OTHER RESTRICTIONS ON WHO CAN ENTER! You DO NOT have to be experienced with Iron Chef in order to join!! I promise you, at least 90% of all of the editors who have participated in these tournaments HAD NEVER Iron Cheffed before the event. So do not look at that as being a strong hindrance. However, I DO of course recommend doing some kind of practice Iron Chef beforehand, simply to give yourself some kind of experience, but it is certainly not required.
Prizes:
I have promised certain prizes in previous tournaments but have had issues delivering on such promises, so for at least right now, I will say that there will be no tangible prizes. This may certainly change if people decide they'd like to sponsor some form of prize (DVDs, Manga, Editing Software, etc.), but for now, the main prize will be the title and prestige.
So that's about it. Basically what I'm looking for here is who is the most interested in joining this tournament. If I get a limited response, I'll only plan to do a 32 person bracket, but if I get a big enough response here, I'll go for the big 64 :O
KEEP IN MIND, RESPONDING TO THIS THREAD DOES NOT SECURE A PLACE IN THE TOURNAMENT!! THIS IS ONLY AN INTEREST GAUGE!! BUT PLEASE DO RESPOND IF YOU'RE INDEED INTERESTED!
(For reference, here is the Round One thread for the last tournament: http://www.animemusicvideos.org/phpBB/v ... hp?t=58672)
