Awa Pro video discussion

[Illia Sadri]

Cause damn it Walter was right and we ought to be discussing things in the open. Better late than never.

I am the first to say that I was a bit dissapointed not because of the heavy amount of drama but a lot of it was uninspired. A handfull did very much intrigue me and those vids made it worthwhile.


The Utena to Hendrix worked so much better than it deserved to. Very stylish which is good because Utena is a very highly stylized show and doesn't get videos that do it justice in that respect.

Texhnolyze vid is absolutely haunting. It is very effective in setting a mood. Of course I can;t imagine anybody making anything fluffy to that show. It's as strange as Lain only a lot mroe gruesome.

Haurhi and This video makes no sense are the most fun videos to watch. The latter is probably the most aptly named in the contest. The former shows Haruhi in a quirky manner and yes that is the show! It's the new crack show it seems and the video doesn't shy away from showing it as completely random and goofy.

The Metropolis vid is also one of the very, very stylized videos. It's a very neat concept, and it works incredibly well. I was dissapointed in it not being up for best in show because I personally thought it was among my favorites.

There were two Last Exile vids done.... both were very well done but failed to make the finals.

The Phoenix/Night on the Galatic Railway video was the other really really stylish video. There is no describing it. Watching it a few times it just pulls you in.


Some of of the dissapointments

Naruto Technique Beat 2, no, actually the bleach version of it made it into artistic. No offense to the editor here because the video is incredible on the tech and really is a MAD. Artistic is typically for the high art vids that really can only compete at pro. Mad's are pretty established format and are meant to just be fun and flashy. Usually based on the focus they are an offshoot of action and/or upbeat. So while I agree with other things, it being put in artistic reminded me of some of the wtf selections we have seen in the vca's.

Bottle Fairy does an interesting thing in that is parodizes blipverts. Only for a parody of the genre (which is revealed at the end) the video runs too long and a good deal of the jokes fall a bit flat. Once I got to then end I literally said aloud to my boyfriend "had that video taken five or six of the best parts and THEN went into the joke on amvhell/blipvert vids it would have been absolutely hilarious."

What is love was another vid I wanted to like more. It has all the makings of a great dance vid. But using things like avatars from 4-chan is not always the best choice. Some seemed oddly proportioned or oversized to the point of being very noticable. Yet is had some absolutely awesome cuts in there.

Not sure if this is good or bad, but we don't have any incredibly risque vids. The worst we get are bouncing boobies (bouncing Eiken boobies no less.) No Unclefucker or Internet is for Porn or enormous penis. It seemed.... strange. I am so used to having that hard come up at least once warning this is a vid that is 18+ and the reason we sign the damn sheet.

And on that note: What has happened to comedy over the year; not just here but cons in general? Have all the good ideas been done? Now it seems almost all of them are amvhell style videos. Amv Hell was a great idea because then we all knew we had about 20 ideas that could never work for more than 15 or 20 seconds. It's hard to find videos now that run the full duration of a song. Of course in pro it was nearly nonexistent . I think more videos qualified for the bizarre category than for comedy.

[Sephiroth]

There's a reason i suggest a best and for some reason the catagory suggestion was up but not the vote, which disapeared. If bug Staff but i know there going through more then thier share right now.

As for comedy, i think there's a curtain stigma thats atached to the pro vid catagoery and comedy vids seem to be amaturish compared to some high concept drama vid. i had planned to enter a form of comedy this year but problems came up and that didn't happen (thanks to staff for still letting me get the disks) for those that are curious it was the newist vid in my profile. (Shameless plug)

I'm not sure if i should be glad or sad not to have been included in the developers vid. Since i don't want to be associated with anything from microsofts insanity(same goes with apple).

I'm sad to hear that the metropolis vid at least didn't get a nomination for best vid. Can anyone tell me which ones did?

[ngsilver]

What is love was another vid I wanted to like more. It has all the makings of a great dance vid. But using things like avatars from 4-chan is not always the best choice. Some seemed oddly proportioned or oversized to the point of being very noticable. Yet is had some absolutely awesome cuts in there.

I will agree with you completely that sometimes using gifs from 4chan is not always the best choice for footage. But in the end I wanted to see what I can do with it. This video however, will warrant a remake using a better selection of gifs in part due to me loosing the HQ version of the video as well as the project file. This vid was the first compilation of it and people seemed to like it, despite the problems you stated. It was my best work to date IMO, take from that what you will (I suck, I know). You have to admit, it is good for whoring prizes at conventions where attendees vote at ^^

And on that note: What has happened to comedy over the year not just here but cons in general? Have all the good ideas been done? Now it seems almost all of them are amvhell style videos. Amv Hell was a great idea because then we all knew we had about 20 ideas that could never work for more than 15 or 20 seconds. It's hard to find videos now that run the full duration of a song. Of course in pro it was nearly nonexistent . I think more videos qualified for the bizarre category than for comedy.

I've been seeing this as well. I must say I get sad thinking about it because I've always loved a good comedy video. It is one of the most favored categories and yet hardly anyone is making videos for it, and when they do, it is a Hell video. Yeah, I haven't done much to rectify that fact by making my own comedy videos. It's not that I don't have ideas, I have quite a few, I just lack the technical ability to pull those ideas off...

Is there really any explination for this other then editors are trying to be deeper or can't think of a idea that will last for a whole song?

[WalterScott]

Seph, the best in show nominees are the haruhi video, champloo, phoenix, and the bleach MAD (all disc 1 strangely enough). The metropolis vid is up for 3 other categories though.

Taking a positive spin on things, I think the overall quality of pro has been increasing - there just aren't that many sub-par or embarrassing videos entered as before. Some perfectly good videos will not make the nominations cut, and even some outstanding videos will not get awarded. That's how it is. At least it's not as brutal as Masters was.

An example: I thought the Akira video was perfectly fine and in a 'normal' contest would have made it into action and character profile. Even if there have been a million Tetsuo vids in the past, they haven't been showing up in contests for a while so I didn't really mind.

I was disappointed the kiminozo/abba video was not in romance. I think it was done in by the overly narrow category description which said "no angst" but there weren't enough videos of that type to create an "angst" category as there have in the past, so it only ended up with a "storytelling" nod.

What is love was a lot of fun and I ended up rewatching it quite a bit despite the distraction of the gifs. I'm sure with some experimentation the integration of those could be improved. Even as simple as using a dark background might help.

Now the following observation may be totally unfair, but I noticed a lot of videos tended to blur together for me because of an "us against the world" motif. Even if the video in question was well made. What I mean is a drama video that focuses solely on the lead couple, so much that it seems like there are no other characters in the anime! Not that there's anything wrong with that... but I think videos focusing on side characters are relatively untapped and would be appreciated.

[anneke]

The one thing that pissed me off about the contest was the AMV creator tribute vid. I'm not mentioned on it at all.

I didn't make the finals with my video, which made me sad as well. And I made a Non-AMV-Hell type comedy video even. I should have put more work into the video, but what ever.

-Anneke

[Ashyukun]

I'd have to agree with most of what Lynn and Walter said. I found myself thinking that there just weren't as many really good videos this time around (it should be noted that honestly I'd put my own in this category, despite the fact that it somehow made the finals), but at the same time there weren't really that many videos that made me want to skip them because they were just awful, but far more of, "I've just seen too much of this already."

After tech judging for Boston and pre-judging for Otakon, I think I've just gone numb when it comes to your garden-variety drama/angst video this year- and it's got to be very well done or do something really interesting to get much more than a 'Meh.' from me at this point.

I was also quite surprised to see BTB in 'Artisitic', but that is one category that is very nebulous and hard to define- one person's effects orgasm is another's artistry, and it's very dependent on the individual doing the nominations. Personally to me the sheer technical aspects don't make something artistic, but the way they're used can make it that way. I didn't personally feel that way about BTB- contrasting with Vlad's video from last year, which was in its own way just as technical but I also considered very artistic.

Comedy was definitely disappointing. But then, I believe Seph. hit it pretty solidly on the head- I think Pro is where most of us (who manage to get new videos done and don't have to recycle vids from earlier cons that nobody seems to remember, <i>including</i> the AMV coordinator ;P) pull out the stuff that we think just won't fly in most other cons, either because of content (e.g.- 'Purpose of Persocom', 'Uncle Fucker', 'Enormous Penis') or because most cons rely on an audience vote and heavily artistic or non-mainstream videos just wouldn't fly well at all. The artistry behind videos like Firewall and Undiscovered Countries would likely have simply gone over the heads of your average congoer, so videos like that are more likely to show up in Pro than a Comedy video that you know is going to go over really well with the usual 'peanut gallery'.


Lynn really hit the nail on the head with regards to the Hell0 Fairy video- I realize that having it drag out for so long was part of the joke- but I thought it would have been far better to have taken the better half of the segments and ended with the Max Headroom joke (which was the only point in watching through the Pro discs I stood up and cheered for). But then I can't really bring myself to really dislike a video essentially mocking Blipvert AMVs.

[AMV_4000]

Comedy was definitely disappointing. But then, I believe Seph. hit it pretty solidly on the head- I think Pro is where most of us (who manage to get new videos done and don't have to recycle vids from earlier cons that nobody seems to remember, <i>including</i> the AMV coordinator ;P) pull out the stuff that we think just won't fly in most other cons, either because of content (e.g.- 'Purpose of Persocom', 'Uncle Fucker', 'Enormous Penis') or because most cons rely on an audience vote and heavily artistic or non-mainstream videos just wouldn't fly well at all. The artistry behind videos like Firewall and Undiscovered Countries would likely have simply gone over the heads of your average congoer, so videos like that are more likely to show up in Pro than a Comedy video that you know is going to go over really well with the usual 'peanut gallery'.

i mde uncle fucker just for pro... i havent entered it anywhere else... and i wasnt even thinking of content...
then again, i made my pro video this year with 2 days left... in about 4 hours... i started the song 1 way.. then said fuck it and put the song at -50% speed... apparently it was a bizzare horror.. then again... im the only dumb ass who would use Big Wars after the WTF vid... but yeah.. no art.. just crap that i fling into awa pro.... *i was going to put in a DBZ - In The End video....*

[aoi_neko]

Thanks, Illia. I always like this topic.

To tell the truth, AWA Pro is one of my faves anyway -- I'm outclassed, but I enjoy the damned thing. It really gets me to look very carefully at some videos I'd never otherwise study that closely. And while I try not to do it before I vote, I even like the "whose is THAT" guessing game afterwards.

I think it hasn't been discussed mostly because some folks feel that it interferes with the "blind" process, but we're past that now, anyway.

I'd expect to be the bad example of what Seph was referring to and voting heavily for some high concept artsy thing, but it shocks me a bit to find that by far my favorite of the bunch is actually the upbeat Haruhi video. (I made up for it by submitting an artsy one, and one of the other nice things about Pro is that I can gush about the Haruhi without sucking up, because I really haven't figured out who did that.)

Illia, Ashyukun, also thanks for the validation that I'm not crazy to think that however good BTB is, I don't think it belongs in "Artistic." I'm guessing that what we're seeing there is just a tendency for people who really love a specific video to just nominate (and/or vote for it) in as many places as possible because they're determined to see it get something. Unless the particular contest adopts some draconian method of limiting how many categories an entry can be a finalist for, I think we're stuck with that pattern.

Sympathies, Anneke. However, I think Walter's right -- there aren't a lot of hard core embarassments left anymore. No nominations isn't a sign your entry wasn't good -- especially when you're working outside your comfort zone (I'm still scratching my head as which was yours) and especially since comedy and a sense of what's funny varies so widely from one person to another. Maybe that's part of why we see so many Hell-style videos: if there are enough unrelated gags, some of them will ikely get a laugh.

[The Wired Knight]

Man do I regret not submitting my comedy video. There was a hell of a lot of drama this year and my Gungrave video just sort of got lost in the mix. The reason I didn't submit my comedy is the lackluster performance it had at AX so I felt the Gungrave video had better odds.

All in all I still think the quality was quite high, just oversaturated with drama. But in terms of comedy I agree that it was a lot weaker than in previous years. There were some funny elements here and there but no video that I found myself outright laughing about.

Speaking of Developers; is there a list of everybody in that video? I'd like to know who all was listed.

[anneke]

Well my video is listed in my profile now, so it's no secret. (shrugs) Figured since I didn't make the finals it didn't matter. But yes I made a 'comedy' video. I KNOW no one can have guessed I made the one I did.

I like to go and re-watch videos later when I know who did them.

And did anyone else had a moment of horror when watching the contest and then realizing that the same people who made a bunch of lack luster videos (as I considered alot of them to be) were the same people who would be voting on the videos. So therefore I wasn't/not going to be impressed by the results I'm sure.

-Annneke