Many thanks to Scott for making such a considerate post... I only have one question...
scottanime wrote:
Judges
...As for the judges awards being different from the viewers choice, well that's the point. the fans see videos and vote for enjoyment, the judeges are looking what we regard to as content, you can agree or disagree with our methods or judgements in awards we present, but if you attend the event, you have the right to vote differently form the judges. Certain things I accept, the fan base of Fanime demigraphic is age 14-23, where the youngest member of the judgeing staff this year was 26. sure that may have somethign to do with it, but in the end, it is the opinion of the judges, that is all.
Um, this implies strongly that the audience will not vote for a video that the judges vote for, which makes no sense to me. A well-made video can easily be appreciated by both audience and judges - just because the judging criteria are different doesn't mean that they're mutually exclusive. The audience is not unintelligent; they're just as likely to vote for a video that's obviously had a lot of work put into it as the judges are.
Anyway, that also makes it sound like the judges wait and pick their videos to award after the audience vote is taken, which also makes no sense to me - they would then be influenced by how the audience voted more than by the merits of the videos themselves. O_O
scottanime wrote:
content
In regards to "cry little Idol" video
Yes this video's creator did ask me if he should submit a censored version and after reviewign the material I said it wasn't nessisary.Part of that desicison is the region at atmosphere that Fanime is in. Had I been runnign the contest with the same pool of videos in a region like say, Utah, I would have DQ'd the video almsot instantly sicne it was appropriate for the region, or a more conservative con which has stricker policeies. however for the past few years fanime has been fairly laxed in this area, ( adult stars in dealers room, hentai and yaoi marathons ) While I keep certain things out of the AMV contest a few things I will allow for creative freedom. The video in question, while shocking, does not cross a legal barrier for PG-13 content. It comes very close, but not over it, another video in semis did the same for language. However I do agree that this needs to be address to the viewing audince and next year during my announcements I will add that this is an unrated event and some sequences may not be appropriate, but I will keep that a rateing system will be in place for submitted videos.
An announcement is a good idea. However, the hentai and yaoi stuff is id-checked over 18 only, and the adult stars in the dealers room aren't exactly demonstrating their profession in front of passers-by, so the point about CA being more relaxed than Utah that way doesn't make much sense to me. Also, I'd be pretty pissed if I waited hours to get in to an event with my kids only to be told, after being seated, that some videos that would be shown were not child-safe, so we'd have to leave. Stuff to keep in mind.
Regarding time: it was a four day con, and the events I wanted to go to were... all on Saturday. As a result, I did not attend Sunday or Monday (I tried to attend the AMV semifiinals on Monday, but the baby said no), and got pretty bored on Friday. So, I feel like time was not used well at the con. Even if the AMV finals *must* be on Saturday afternoon (which I don't agree with anyway - I'd rather go Sunday afternoon and get my money's worth for paying for four days of convention), I still feel that it's very important to have the semifinals before the finals. Given how few people really want to sit through five hours of videos, why couldn't they have been Friday night programming?
Okay, I think the second comment turned into a question... sorry...