AWA has a new contest!

MCWagner · Post by **MCWagner** » Fri Apr 07, 2006 2:32 pm

Yes! Fabulously late and everything!

(My apologies for the relatively late notice, everyone. Life has been coming at me pretty quick.)

As y'all are aware, the Master's contest is taking a break this year, so we have an opening in our schedule for a brand new contest! Thus it is with great pleasure I announce:

The Short-Attention-Span Contest of 2006!

The idea? A contest of absurdly short anime music videos judged by audience ballot and screened first thing at AWA's AMV awards ceremony! Taking inspiration from the hilarious and popular AMV Hell series, we'll screen the whole contest during the first hour of the AMV awards ceremony, collect y'all's ballots, count them during the remaining 2-hours of video awards, and announce the winner at the end of the program!

This particular contest is still in its infancy, so we don't have a submission schedule down yet. But this does give y'all a chance to chime in with suggestions. The following are the points we're certain on now:

1) Entries are limited to 30 seconds or less. Entries should be blinded = no author identification (though how you'd get a studio tralier to fit into that 30-second clip baffles me).

2) Unlike all our other contests, the submissions must be daytime-audience friendly. AMV HELL 0 this ain't. Making it audience judged means that if we can't screen it, it can't be judged.

3) A single award will be given out, according to audience judging. This award is for the "best" video, however the audience chooses to define it. If we made it more elaborate, there's no way on earth we could count all the ballots in time, and half the audience would screw up the ballot sheet anyway.

4) Any audio and any video are acceptable, assuming it meets the "daytime audience" stipulation above.

5) You may submit more than one video to this contest. If you do, please clearly prioritize them. We have no idea what kind of response we'll get to this contest, and we may have to cut some entries. Multiple entries by a single AMVer will be cut first, so be clear what order they should be cut in.

6) To avoid stepping on anyone's toes, videos entered in the current AMV HELL CHAMPIONSHIP EDITION may also be entered in the SHORT ATTENTION SPAN contest if they fit all other requirements.

7) Due dates will be posted later, but submission instructions are identical for all other entries to our other contests.

8) For once, since our staff isn't doing the judging, AWA staff are allowed to enter this contest. Hell, I might dust off the editing deck and submit something.

Please respond with questions or comments so I have some idea what kind of response to expect.

Zarxrax · Post by **Zarxrax** » Fri Apr 07, 2006 2:47 pm

Something I just happened to think about... how exactly will the judging happen? Particularly if there are any significant number of entries, people will easily forget some of the ones that they liked, or they might get mixed up about exactly which one was which.
I'm assuming there would be a sheet passed out before the videos start, which would list every video which would play? There would probably need to be some way for people to mark videos that they are considering, before they have to choose a final video. Because once they have watched them all, they will forget about a lot of the first ones if they didn't mark something down.

MCWagner · Post by **MCWagner** » Fri Apr 07, 2006 3:01 pm

Zarxrax wrote:Something I just happened to think about... how exactly will the judging happen? Particularly if there are any significant number of entries, people will easily forget some of the ones that they liked, or they might get mixed up about exactly which one was which.
I'm assuming there would be a sheet passed out before the videos start, which would list every video which would play? There would probably need to be some way for people to mark videos that they are considering, before they have to choose a final video. Because once they have watched them all, they will forget about a lot of the first ones if they didn't mark something down.

Numbers between each entry will designate each video from each other, and the ballot sheet might have a snippet of song lyric or description to make it clear. At the end of the "viewing run" I was thinking of cycling a master list on the big screen a couple of times with screen-cap stills from each entry to similarly distinguish each vid.

In the end, I'd like just one number from each ballot, or a checked box, or something similar. People could write all over the ballot at will, just so long as they only check one box.

Kusoyaro · Post by **Kusoyaro** » Fri Apr 07, 2006 3:27 pm

Are you looking more for videos that have a beginning and end, yet happen to be short (think "Harvey the Wonder Hamster"), or abrupt one-joke clips like the ones in the AMV Hells?

MCWagner · Post by **MCWagner** » Fri Apr 07, 2006 3:42 pm

Kusoyaro wrote:Are you looking more for videos that have a beginning and end, yet happen to be short (think "Harvey the Wonder Hamster"), or abrupt one-joke clips like the ones in the AMV Hells?

Whichever. The contest lends itself to short subjects, as opposed to snips outta the middle of a song, but we'll accept whatever comes our way.

I'm kinda hoping that the low-time-investment involved might lure a lot of the old-school near-retired AMVers to do some silly little jag they'd dismissed years ago, but we might also get 30-second epics, "The exorcist with bunnies" parodies, traliers, ads, etc.

anneke · Post by **anneke** » Fri Apr 07, 2006 4:11 pm

For the voting, may I suggest...they be given ballots (with video/audio and number) but be sure to tell them/stress to them to mark each video they liked. Then in a big box at the bottom they write down the number of the video they liked the most at the end.

With all the short videos you will want to stress that the viewers keep some sort of track of the videos. So videos in the begining don't get lost/forgotten by the end. Regardless of how good a video is, after 40+ videos your only likely to remember the last handful. As you said this is SHORT ATTENTION SPAN people.

-Anneke

MCWagner · Post by **MCWagner** » Fri Apr 07, 2006 4:18 pm

anneke wrote:For the voting, may I suggest...they be given ballots (with video/audio and number) but be sure to tell them/stress to them to mark each video they liked. Then in a big box at the bottom they write down the number of the video they liked the most at the end.

Hmm... that does sound like a good approach. My only worry then is handwriting. A marked box is sometimes easier to decipher than some people's numbers...

Orwell · Post by **Orwell** » Fri Apr 07, 2006 4:25 pm

maybe two columns, one for the first time they watch, and then when voting mark they're favorite in the second?

The Wired Knight · Post by **The Wired Knight** » Fri Apr 07, 2006 4:36 pm

MCWagner wrote:
anneke wrote:For the voting, may I suggest...they be given ballots (with video/audio and number) but be sure to tell them/stress to them to mark each video they liked. Then in a big box at the bottom they write down the number of the video they liked the most at the end.
Hmm... that does sound like a good approach. My only worry then is handwriting. A marked box is sometimes easier to decipher than some people's numbers...

From my experience running Yaoicon's AMV contest, people just don't alway sunderstand "mark one box" and then mark everything as they go and as a result the ballot you recieve is indecipherable. That's the only problem with that method. But yeah, a credit with screencaps will be needed in order to keep the videos straight to pick one at the end.

And now I've got a contest to enter, I've got tons of ideas that would only work for about 20 seconds but wouldn't be funny after that.

MCWagner · Post by **MCWagner** » Mon Apr 10, 2006 1:55 am

The Wired Knight wrote:From my experience running Yaoicon's AMV contest, people just don't alway sunderstand "mark one box" and then mark everything as they go and as a result the ballot you recieve is indecipherable. That's the only problem with that method. But yeah, a credit with screencaps will be needed in order to keep the videos straight to pick one at the end.

Yeah, the reason AWA's stayed away from audience voting for so long is the "we don't wanna count all the damn ballots" factor.

I have a feeling my staff is gonna lynch me sometime soon.