AMV League Feedback Thread

[Pathos Prime]

You didn't answer the question at all. Why would you expect anyone to help out a system that's actively working against their own interests? Because it produces less entertaining contests?

This is why:



Know what that is? The number of videos submitted to the org, by year. The trend is pretty obvious.

The AMV community is drying up, despite the fact that barriers to entry are basically nonexistent now. I'm not going to say there aren't ANY newer editors. Through the League, we've gotten to see some amazing newer editors - folks like Shorisquared, TritioAFB, and Unlucky Artist - grow through the years into veterans of their own accord. But this is the exception now. And there are probably a lot of reasons for this. Anime just isn't as popular as it was 10 years ago. Music artists and Japanese producers cracking down on Youtube.

It's not that the interest isn't still there. We see this at every convention we go to. AMVs are a work of art like no other, and they are still a major draw, even though more and more cons see the AMV contest as relatively unimportant. People come up to us after every contest and start talking with us about how to get started making AMVs and do we have any tips.

It's that the new barrier to entry is the fact that contests are dominated by veterans. That every contest is the same. That unless you have been editing for years and years, you have no chance of having your video shown to the public. And people are never taking up the art or quitting immediately.

And while that might be great right now for the 30 or so of y'all who make all the top-tier videos, compare that to the thousands of cosplayers that participate in convention contests. Then imagine that Jessica Nigri and Yaya Han flew to every single convention in the country and won every single award. No one would even bother competing anymore. And you all see where the trend is going. Contests would eventually end completely.

Lesser known, lesser skilled, and lesser experienced editors need to be encouraged if AMVs as an art form are going to flourish.

Look at it this way: AMVs have already become unimportant enough to most conventions that about a dozen of them - some of them very large and prestigious - care so little that they're letting two relatively complete nobodies handle their entire lot of AMV programming. And if it WASN'T for these two complete nobodies, a lot of these cons wouldn't have contests at all.

We weren't kidding when we said one of our goals with AMV League was to make AMVs important again.

We can't do it by ourselves, and this isn't about us anyway.

[Pathos Prime]

Veteran or experienced doesn't necessarily mean anything. By anyone's measure I'm a veteran, and I have almost two decades of experience in editing. I also remain unpopular and obscure. By my experiences of most contests, as stated, I expect to lose. What would I learn from AMV League feedback? Is there any more likelihood I'd win in AMV League? What would I get out out of participation?

Here's an example of feedback we've provided to another editor:

The timing in this video was great, and the idea of including original audio from the anime was really creative and fun. Good use of zooms.

Pretty poor video quality – possibly webrip footage? This video would look a lot crisper and cleaner with DVD or BluRay rip footage.

It’s really hard to pull off a “random cool stuff happens” AMV – this really needs some sort of overarching theme that could tie all these different anime together to make this video seem less random (e.g. thriller anime, characters with ice powers, etc).

Overall, a very ambitious and creative video that just lacks some polish and planning.

Is there any more likelihood you'd win in AMV League? If you took our feedback to heart, and know just what we are looking for in a video, I don't see how it COULDN'T improve your chances.

And as for what you'd get out of participation, that's something that's kind of hard to answer until you actually participate. We've got Anime St. Louis and A-Kon coming up, btw.

[Kionon]

One of the many things that used to bother me as an editor was that I didn't really "get" the logic behind most contest outcomes. If a video of mine didn't place as a finalist, I couldn't figure out why, because oftentimes I'd go to these contests and see AMVs that I thought were far crappier but that had managed to place where mine hadn't. Hell, even if I wasn't participating I'd be confused as hell why Video X won "Best Comedy" when it was nowhere near as funny to me as videos Y and Z, which had only gotten "finalist" status.

Back then, if someone'd actually offered to tell me why they didn't like my vids ("Your lipsync sucks", "You don't use any effects" etc), or even if there was anything about my AMVs they did like, ("Cool concept!", "Good timing on cuts", etc), I would've been able to improve more easily.

No, see, I get that, but I also know that my style of video editing isn't popular, but that won't ever stop me from editing that way. My goal is, "if I rewatch this in ten years, will I still enjoy it?" The answer has mostly been yes.

There's technical issues, certainly, but those seem to me to be facts. You either followed some rule for filtering footage, or you didn't. You either had the correct aspect ratio, or you didn't. You either found a good compression, or you have compression artifacts. Those have nothing to do with the artistic nature of a video, and everything to do with mechanics. Some of my favorite videos have serious technical flaws. The editor did them "wrong." Factually. But they're still ones I enjoy because I just do. Lots of editors seem not to watch their own videos once they finish them, which I find odd, since I only got into editing to make the AMVs I wanted to watch.

Is there any more likelihood you'd win in AMV League? If you took our feedback to heart, and know just what we are looking for in a video, I don't see how it COULDN'T improve your chances.

I do. Unless you're telling me that your opinions drastically differ from the majority opinion.

I often feel like a still-life painter being judged by neo-impressionists, and advice from a neo-impressionist won't make any sense for a still-life. If someone tells me, "You don't use any effects," well, no, I don't, nor do I have any interest in doing so. It won't make my video "better," it'll make it more "not me." I know what audiences like, and I know what judges typically vote for, and it's rarely ever been anything I've ever made. So I'm trying to figure out what you have that's different.

Sell me on it. That is what you're here to do, right?

[BasharOfTheAges]

You didn't answer the question at all. Why would you expect anyone to help out a system that's actively working against their own interests? Because it produces less entertaining contests?

To me, a "less entertaining contest" is one where I have seen more than 25% of the videos before. A less entertaining contest is one where I sit there in the audience and think
"Wow...the Exhibition comedy entries were really really good, I wonder what kind of vid beat them out...Wait, hang on. Isn't this that vid I saw at ACen? ...And AWA? Holy crap, how many contests is this vid gonna be in? Oh well, at least there's the Best Action winner...JFC it's that goddamned Bleach vid that won three awards at BlahCon."

We need more variety in AMVs that're shown and in AMVs that win awards, because right now, there are a number of cons out there where the winners list is near identical, with The Big Six AMVs Of The Year taking up most of the top spots. A lot of the time, when I compare results from different cons, the only major difference is that rather than "Best Action", Video X is "Best Technical", or "Judge's Choice". The overall list of winners is often nigh-identical, and I think that is a serious problem.

When we were first putting this all together, preventing repeat submissions was one of the first regulations we came up with. The logic behind it is to prevent The Big Six AMVs Of The Year from crowding out the rest of the submissions and making things too homogeneous.

As a contest coordinator your JOB is to entertain the audience, not to get on your social equality high horse and dictate what should or shouldn't compete. 95+% of your audience does not attend more than 1 con a year they don't know and don't care about how any other contest went. Your responsibility is to them, not to editors, not to the hobby in general, to the audience. You aim to create objectively worse experiences for your audiences... Why do cons let you even run stuff? Are the execs not aware?

[Ileia]

Posting from my phone so please forgive any errors.


First, while it used to be, A-M-V.org is not indicative of the entire hobby so the graph is only giving a partial view. And even if it were and the hobby was dead, wouldn't that answer why you're not getting a lot of entries and invalidate even needing to ask why?


Secondly, it is frustrating to me when contest coordinators dismiss their audiences as being unable to identify "good" AMVs. I find the attitude off putting. It's just different perspectives of fans. Editors who are accused of "pandering" are often *gasp!* fans themselves. As an editor, what's my motivation to enter a contest that is just basically two dudes deciding? What makes them more qualified than an audience? What would be the incentive for entering that contest over another?


I agree that contests are sometimes identical lineups. It can be frustrating, but the most common way contests combat this is having a "freshness" date. Good videos take time and editors cannot always make enough to have a new one for every single contest. There are some contests that require exclusivity, but they are cons that have had years (in some cases, decades) to build up a reputation that makes editors anxious to submit. You mentioned that this is the third year running this circuit. That's relatively new and you may take a few more years to start gathering momentum. Rather than thinking that editors are snubbing your contests, it's possible that they just don't know about it.


You may be able to work yourself up to your picture of an ideal contest, but for the time being, I think your choices are a) relax the rules and include audience voting of some sort to draw more editors to want to enter or b) leave the rules as is and get less entries.


You may also want to contact some seasoned coordinators to get their opinions. Vlad, jingoro, VicBond, etc. They'll probably be the best resource on that front.

[ngsilver]

You may also want to contact some seasoned coordinators to get their opinions. Vlad, jingoro, VicBond, etc. They'll probably be the best resource on that front.

Many of us do communicate and discuss things with each other quite often. It really does help and trading ideas and seeing how others handle things helps to tune your stuff. I would also recommend this approach.

[ngsilver]

On a more serious note (not that the last comment wasn't serious, but I guess a more answer the question side of things) while you can have your views on the community and contests in general I'm not sure you are quite hitting the nail on the head. Contest submissions is a multi-facited thing and there isn't really one answer to rule them all as to why some contests get more submissions then others or why so many contests have the same videos competing.

I will admit, as an editor myself (though I consider myself a fan first) I generally only submit to a select few cons at least for a first view kind of thing (mainly AWA) and leave the rest of the cons I submit to as secondary. Much like Kio, I rarely make finals and if I do it's a really rare thing to win for me. But even starting out I never submitted to a con in order to win awards, it's all about exposure and eyeballs. While I tend to make videos I want to watch I know others could enjoy them as well so I submit to as many cons as I can. However rules restrictions and conventions sizes do tend to throw me off. Basically I tend to try to play with the big kids. I've been editing for nearly 2 decades now and I feel I should allow the newer editors to get some limelight. So smaller cons, newer contests, like the ones you run, I don't submit to generally because while I could see myself easily winning (most of my awards have come from small cons I dominated over) I don't want to troll that hard. But also there is the idea of eyeballs. The smaller the con, the smaller the audience, the fewer people get to enjoy the video.

As for the flow of the hobby. As far as I see it AMV editing is stronger now then it ever has. We have more videos, more editors, and a flood of videos. They're just not all centered around the org anymore. There are multiple smaller communities around the globe that keep their stuff tight nit. There is youtube and other communities and video sharing sites that are used more often now. The org is a dinosaur as far as most modern editors are concerned, if they bother to create a catalog entry (which to many is a chore in itself) they surely won't bother to figure out FTP to submit their video to the doughnut. These newer editors will make whatever they can, for whatever length they can, do whatever they can to make sure their video doesn't get taken down on YT (pitch shift the song, color grade the video, add effects and watermarks, ect.) and just put it there.

These aren't bad things per say. It's a little sad that the community has fragmented but then again the org has never really had a good reputation with new editors or those who don't really care to improve the craft but instead just want to make videos and get instant gratification or just not comment at all. This same trend can also be seen in contests. After all what is a contest but a competition for eyeballs and awards. To win a contest you got to get GOOD. You got to be at the top of your game. You got to be the best and take out the rest of the competition. Many new editors can see just the idea of a competition to be too exclusive either by the size of the contest, the technical mumbo-jumbo they have to adhere to in the rules, or just simply not caring about accolades. If you can get a YT upload to go viral you can get more views in a day then you could ever get at a con (even the big ones) so why bother?

There is also the issue of advertisement. Sure coordinators like us can post here on the org, over at amvcentral, and on our con's websites and forums and social media. But that only gets a small subset of potential editors. At this point no matter how many times I put info about my contests on the cons site and social media it doesn't really change the submissions. Sure I want new editors to submit (after all, new, interesting, and weird videos THRIVE at Youma) but I also want to make sure I have butts in seats and to keep them there. We have to justify having the space and we can't do that if we can't keep the room in use. So it's a balancing act. Many of us are still trying to figure out how to reach out to these other communities and let them know we would love to see their work and it can be appreciated in a convention setting.

In the end my philosophy is more about experiencing the broad ranges of videos with my audience. I try to make sure the final list of videos shown during the contest blocks are the best and most entertaining of what we received, but I also try to make sure we show every video we get at some point during the con. Our awards are seen as 'honorable mentions' which works out well for editors who like me want their videos seen at as many cons as possible for exposure and also is our way of adding a bit of whimsy to the exposition (really, we don't run a contest, it's an expo.) So yeah. The same videos winning at multiple contests is just a product of us trying to have the most entertaining videos being played and we like the same stuff our audiences do (as contests judged by judges often have the same award winners as audience judged contests for the most part) so really it's more of a differing opinion thing.

And yeah, the bigger the con, the bigger the contest, the more need we have to ensure our rooms are filled so it's often a by product of this that the same videos make it in, because these are the most entertaining over the others. That's why smaller contests, new upstarts, are still needed to allow exposure to the 'lesser' videos that we may still enjoy and think are good but we realize the broad audience wouldn't enjoy as much. So keep doing you.

[Kionon]

While I hate to be that person, I'm going to +1 everything Nate said above. But rather than leave it at that, because "me too!" posts are lame...

There's always been a HUGE "instant gratification" factor to AMV editing, and the history of internet infrastructure has just made that easier and easier. There was a time when the Org represented the path of least resistance, believe it or not. Gratification wasn't instant, but it was pretty close. If you did figure out how to upload to doughnut, well, in the heyday, you could drop your link with a poster image into AMV Announcements and get dozens or even hundreds of responses, some very detailed, in short order. A matter of hours at the Org's peak, generally a matter of a few days before or after the peak. Around 2005-2006, or so, this place was INSANELY fast.

YouTube and social media pretty much killed that. It's a matter of personal injury to me, because the Org is my only faction, my only fragment, and I feel like a foreigner outside of the Org. This is my home, and elsewhere, I'm simply a visitor, and I don't tend to stay for long. That being said, I absolutely concur with Nate that the issue is NOT that AMV editing or the AMV community is dying. That's demonstrably not true. As was mentioned before, the Org is not the hobby as a whole. It's a very small patch of it. That said, it's my patch, and the BEST way I see to account for our current deficiency, honestly, is conversations like this. This honestly is one of the best most involved discussions outside of "LOL AWA" I've seen in months, and I have a vested interest in keeping it going.

I'm really interested in what you can bring to the Org (speaking as myself, and not as a moderator, I am representing my own views, not the views of the Site), but I'm not sure what that is. This is kind of what I was getting at when I was asking why should I participate? I live thousands of miles from any convention. I haven't been to a convention in years. So if you want me to participate, I need to know how my participation here, in this space, warrants the effort. I don't care about winning, but I do care about being involved in something that keeps traffic in my house. I'll be happy to whip up something for AMV League if I can see it generating content here.

[MaboroshiStudio]

Freshness and award limits are a very simple solution and have been discussed. At MTAC we have an award limit and it works very nicely...

Since returning from a decade long retirement things are very different in my eyes. Trolling and pandering were often looked down upon in the olden days, but that opinion doesn't exist anymore as far as I can see or it is not discussed like it was in the old days. I used to send a video to 2-3 cons max, but that isn't the norm now. While I feel guilty at times trolling a video too much... I tell myself that is how things are now and I just need to stop being lazy / make a new amv. Now if more cons had freshness and award limits it would force editors to create newer stuff... AX when they changed their rules a couple years ago did just this.

The issue is this won't automatically allow younger editors to get their videos in... but it will give them a better chance.

The concept of the league / circuit is interesting, but I have no clue how good the contests are and how the experience is for the audience. I think something like the league can work as a break from the norm just like contests with freshness / award limits.

As far as interest and AMVs dying people need to stop pushing this myth... AMV entries are up at most contests. If anything more how to panels and getting younger editors into it is needed where they will be better prepared to compete.

[Pathos Prime]

The concept of the league / circuit is interesting, but I have no clue how good the contests are and how the experience is for the audience.

Do y'all think it'd help if we tried to set up a live-stream of an AMV League Event? Maybe at A-Kon or San Japan?