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Disclaimer: I am not a member of the AMV contest staff, so do not direct any questions to me. Please use this thread as a sounding board, and feel free to email music.video(@)spja(dot)org with your suggestions.Hey everyone, James here...
Good News! The rules for this years contest should be showing up on the AX website very shortly (just waiting for the web site folks to update it). Not much is different in the rules for this year, but there are some updates (look for the grey boxes).
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! Warning ! Long post ahead ! Warning ! Long post ahead ! Warning !
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A little background: As some of you know, Katy and I have wanted to expand the AMV contest and overall creative video editing program at Anime Expo for some time. We have worked hard to try to improve the current contest in subtle (and not so subtle ways) with some success and some failures. One of the biggest failures has always hinged on _me_. Up until AX2005 I also ran the Audio/Visual division of AX which ate up all my time causing mastering the contest DVDs etc. to be a very last minute event. Often I was burning the final master discs 20 minutes after the contest was supposed to have started. After AX2005 I stepped down from A/V to focus strictly on the AMV Contest yet we came under duress from the (former) head of Programming who did not want the AMVs to take place due to her own personal issues. Last year was pretty depressing for us and you can simply look back in the archives of the group to see the summary of what went on.
We now have a new head of Programming, she has expressed an interest in AMVs continuing and even growing in the fashion we have been wanting to do for so long, and this an uplifting change from past years, but...
Bad News! It does not look like it's happening this year (yet again).
-We wanted to expand to a second "Creative Editing" contest that included parody and story driven videos.
--> Can't do it because there are too many concerts and other high-profile events in the schedule.
-Failing a new show, we wanted to expand the contest itself to contain new categories that included parody and story driven videos.
--> Not going to happen due to the legal hurdles of the content involved (specifically parodies).
-We wanted to show the AMVs at night during the "Midnight Madness" block of programming.
--> The jury is still out on this one. We've been told this is a possibility; I'm keeping my fingers crossed and hoping.
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The biggest shake up, and the one that has me somewhat at a loss, is that we have been squeezed out of having a re-showing of the AMVs followed by an award ceremony on the last day of the con. The schedule for the Arena is so full of big name concerts that there is apparently no time for us. This means we will be returning to the "One-Shot" show, and forces us to either (1) find a way to perform the judging "live" or (2) find a way to "pre-judge" the show that everyone does not hate. Then we wrap up the show with the award ceremony.
We have been debating for a week now... what is the preferred way of judging?
--> Even using very high end scanning machines, we can not tabulate 9,000 ballots in under 3 hours of processing time.
--> The voice-meter has proven to be sometimes unreliable andit is usually unpopular with those who do not win.
--> Judging by a staff panel ahead of time proved so unpopular with the contestants and crowd we never did that again after the first year.
--> Judging by the creators ahead of time was full of hi-jinks and we did not do that after the first year either.
So ultimately no method is perfect.
...
After all the discussion we have come up with this new judging scheme. We feel it is as fair and equitable as possible.
- We normally have our "Special Judges" panel screen all the videos entered into the contest. They rank all the videos and determine what will be shown at the AX Staff Screening & the Live Contest Phase held at AX. The top video ranked by the Special Judges is also entered in as "Judges Favorite" and is a finalist for "Best of
Show". This will not change.
- We normally then have a showing for the AX Staff of the videos that will be shown during the Live Contest Phase. The top video ranked by the AX Staff is entered in as "Staff Favorite" and is a finalist for "Best of Show". This will not change.
- We normally collect ballots from the AMV Creators at the Live Contest Phase, tabulating those tells us what the "Creators Favorite" is and that video is a finalist for "Best of Show". This will not change. The votes will be tabulated during an "intermission" hopefully not lasting longer than 20 minutes. This way we ensure that the Creators still get to cast their vote.
- Now for the part that is completely changing this year; we will be forced to take the popular/audience vote via the decibel meter (and we're gonna have to buy a frippin' expensive one to handle a 9000 seat arena!). This will be done after the intermission and will determine the "Best of Category" awards as well as the "Fan
Favorite".
- Finally, as we have done in the past, the video that has the most nominations wins. If there is a tie, Katy and I will confer and declare the winner.
Awards and trophies will be given out as the winners are determined and announced and that will conclude our event.
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Personally, we are not thrilled to have the decibel meter back in the mix, but we can not come up with another viable solution that gives instant results. We had considered the "vote by phone" option, but reception is either great or lousy in the arena depending on your carrier (and not everyone has a mobile phone).
We also are disappointed to lose the re-showing of the AMVs.
We are however thrilled by the ability to have the continuity of show and awards in one shot. It is much more rewarding to have the two linked together and to have the audience participation (via direct feedback) increased.
Now if you have made it through this ridiculously long post... you are pretty much up to speed. Any suggestions/feedback for us?
