Change in the Anime Cental 2005 Primary showing.

lilgumba · Post by **lilgumba** » Tue May 10, 2005 7:18 pm

Edit: Is theme going to be shown near last? If so I might be able to take a gander since I'll get a ride from my dad. yay.

SailorDeath · Post by **SailorDeath** » Tue May 10, 2005 8:11 pm

The other showings are at 2pm saturday and 8am sunday.

as for when theme will be shown it'll probablybe right before staff and comedy

Ashyukun · Post by **Ashyukun** » Tue May 10, 2005 9:46 pm

Unfortunately, to a decent extent the scheduling this year will probably continue to promote something of a self-fulfilling prophesy with regards to attendance. Brad is right- there will still be a lot of people registering or wanting to hit the Dealer's Rooms as early as they can that would otherwise be going to the AMV contest. Again, ACen is about the only con I go to that I can think of where the main showing of AMV contest is not held in Main Events in the evening. Boston, Otakon, Katsu, Tekko, and at least as far as I remember, AX all have theirs Friday night, and it's the centerpiece of the night's events- and I can't say I've ever heard anyone say, "You know, I really wish that there was something else instead of the AMV contest on Friday night." I realize that by and large the programming schedule is out of your hands, Julius- but I have to imagine that if you'd known from the start that the contest would have to be held in the AMV VAT that you might have had it sometime other than when it was. Having it kicked from the main room back to the smaller VAT at the last minute but being set in that time slot just feels like yet another case of the con screwing over the contest. Which I have to admit somewhat surprises me, because knowing the con chair, I can't imagine him intentionally slighting the contest. But then, at the same time, I can't say I'd be too surprised to see him putting a higher emphasis on music guests than anything else, given his own involvement.

It's not something we should really be complaining about to you- I'll see how things go at the con and then bring any remaining gripes up with the appropriate people.

Castor Troy · Post by **Castor Troy** » Tue May 10, 2005 10:23 pm

So when's RVG gonna show?

SailorDeath · Post by **SailorDeath** » Tue May 10, 2005 10:35 pm

Well, the contest was scheduled so early because the only time available on friday was at noon. If I had found out, say last week, I would have adjusted the times to put a later showing in the amv room.

ACTUALLY, looking over the schedule I think I will add another one at 6pm on friday. Currently we only have just regular blocks of amvs showing at those hours, so nobody will have issues if I make changes there.

Also I understand how you feel. I can also say that nobody above me on the acen staff wants to sleight us. in fact they all love us. The big problem is that this is all still new to myself and the convention. I do take every comment seriously, and I do plan on bringing this up for next year. If we can't get main programming, I think we should get a bigger room. Because frankly, you're right, AMVs is one of the biggest draws at other anime conventions.

Traditionally, friday night in main programming is when acen has it's guest band and SWEK do thier performances. which setup for starts at 5pm. Afterwards they start midnight madness and anime hell. which means it's booked solid. Our only option is before 5pm whcih is what I tried to get.

Saturday is another no-go. Usually megatokyo goes in around noon for their panel, which PACKS the room to full capacity, and then there are gameshows and iron guest competitons that also draw a lot of people. Then that afternoon, the masquerade starts. again no time to get in, unless it's early on saturday, which personally I hated.

Also, the we got the amv room because of these scheduling issues. Getting the room eliminated many problems for the con. And as much as I'd like a bigger room right now, no rooms the size we need exist. (and believe me, I checked the floor plan so I could possibly persuade people for next year) the best we can do is what we got now.

But you are right about the timing, noon is bad, so I'll add the late night showing starting about 6:30 and going to 9pm in addition to the noon showing.

Darkseid · Post by **Darkseid** » Tue May 10, 2005 11:11 pm

just curious, will there be a showing of DDR4, by any chance?

SephirothJenova · Post by **SephirothJenova** » Tue May 10, 2005 11:32 pm

Are the awards going to be handed out during the showing on Saturday or something? Because I was reading the schedule on the website, and I understood it to be that the awards would be handed out on Sunday afternoon, basically after everyone has left?

Also the thing about the creators getting there early by 30 minutes. We'll basically know who the other creators are because most of us will be at the dinner the night before. Looks like it will be around 9:30pm, right after the Pillows concert. And if you wanted to get an autograph by them instead of the dinner, they will be doing another signing Saturday afternoon.

Sephiroth

Brakus · Post by **Brakus** » Tue May 10, 2005 11:34 pm

Darkseid wrote:just curious, will there be a showing of DDR4, by any chance?

If need be, I do have DDR Project 4 (5th Mix Nonstop Megamix) on DVD.

dwchang · Post by **dwchang** » Wed May 11, 2005 1:09 am

One comment, I'm not sure how well a contest during the Pillows concert will go. I certainly do appreciate the effort though, but I think it will also get a low attendence. At the same time, I think the contest will probably be better than an AMV block and perhaps folks who don't get into the show will go.

Either way, I certainly appreciate the effort and definitely understand why you originally had the showing at noon. I'll take main events at noon vs. say 9 a.m. like before and seeing my vid on that big of a screen is nice. So yeah, I understand that *now* the situation is diff. since we don't have the main events and ppl may not show up, but oh well. I'll be there

.

But yeah, do your best to get Main Events next year. I'll be frank in that I think Anime Hell is not as popular as the AMV contest and we *should* get that slot at night like nearly every other con. I certainly understand the bands things since ACen seems to be getting more and more bands (to the chagrin of some of us).

Lastly, the AMV Awards is set up for 3 hours on Sunday. Any reason? I remember it being less than an hour last time.

Anyway, thanks for the explanation!

Ashyukun · Post by **Ashyukun** » Wed May 11, 2005 7:14 am

Again, thanks for being so forthcoming about all of this, Julius.

I think having an additional, later showing would definitely be a good idea, even if it is opposite one of the Pillows performances. As DW said, not everybody is jumping for joy at the overflow of musical guests and there should still be a decent number of people that show up to watch the later showing (though I plan on being at the Pillows concert myself and catching the earlier showing).

Especially to the extent that it ends up interfering with the AMV scheduling, I would have to count myself in the numbers of those not particularly happy with the explosion of musical guests/groups at ACen (and bear in mind- I'm a musician myself). Having a high-profile, high-draw group/performer like The Pillows (or L'arc en Ciel, Yoko Ishida, Hayashibara Megumi, etc.) can be wonderful for a con- but ACen has I believe at least 3 Japanese musical acts this year, in addtion to (I'd imagine) SWEK? Musical groups are great and all- but speaking from experience having been one of the staff who ran the concert at Boston this year, they take a huge chunk of time out of the schedule. Rack up a few, and it just gets a bit absurd, and I'm imagining rapidly approaches a point of diminishing returns.

This is something I'll be trying to keep tabs on this year for reference in arguing for a higher priority for the contest next year- I want to keep track of just how much of a crowd each of the events draws. The Pillows will likely pack the room both times they perform, as should Fred's MT panel. But, for example, the last time I saw SWEK perform (2 years ago, when their concert was opposite the AMV Prescreenings), there were no more than 200 people in Main Events watching them, and it was in a prime time-slot. I would hope that the con programming staff would be keeping tabs on the attendance as well to better understand how to structure the con so that the events congoers are most interested in get the most attention- but I don't know for sure, so I'll try and get a feel for it myself.

I'm also curious, like DW, as to why the AMV awards is going to be as long as the contest itself.

I can't remember if I've had this explained before, but why again does ACen not have the AMV contest awards while the Cosplay judges are judging? It is nice to have our own awards ceremony... but at the same time, a lot more people would see it were it right after the Masq (which is where many of the larger cons have it). Yes, I realize that would mean they would be announced while many editors would be watching the AMV IE- but there's nothing saying they couldn't be announced there as well. And speaking of which, with all of the changes and cancellations to the guests who will be attending the con, are you going to be able to shuffle things around to still have enough GoH panelists for the AMV Iron Editor?