Judging AMVs: a rigorous approach

[Therax]

On the flip side, how can the submitters
judge the credibility of your panel?

Judges and members of the audience both have their prefrences.

Judging is inherently sugjective work. The big plus I see from our system is that the judging process is open and transparent. All of the judges' comments and scores for each video will be posted and individually attributed. If "Judge #3" hates Naruto videos and it affects the way (s)he scores the videos, it will be visible.

The comparison to the Olympics was intentional, since you may recall there have been more than a few judging scandals surrounding the Olympics in years past. But in the end the truth comes out, and if you know the French judge is scoring very low, you can construct a new ordering excluding the scoring of the French judge and get an idea of the "real" winner.

I hope that this is at least an improvement from most of the current "judged" AMV contests, where the process by which the judging panel reaches its decisions is completely hidden, as is any possibility of detecting or correcting bias.

I'd be interested
in seeing your judging criteria in action on some
well-established vids. Say, how would your panel
review what it considers to be Caldwell's best and
worst videos?

If you'd like to assemble a short list of well-established "trial" vids, I'd be more than happy to do that. However, there is the problem of blinding. When dealing with well-known material, the judges will be coming in with a heavier than usual load of preconceptions and preferences.

[JaddziaDax]

i find that as the trend may be that whatever video makes the audience laugh the hardest usually is what is made of super schweet and win :/

but since comedy is a dying bread (heh bread) yea... i donno O.o

i was going somewhere with this but it got lost in the "omg squee" of the audience :/

[Adv1sor]

If I were running a contest I would do it this way.

Have the contest judges pick one winner in each category.

Have the fans pick one winner in each category.

Thinking that those shown later have the advantage of being better remembered, I would show the qualified AMVs in reverse order of the mailing date they were received. (The first one received would be the last shown.) I would not break down the show into categories.

On the ballots for the fans I would only list the name of the AMV, the song, and the anime. Not the editor’s name. Not the category.

I would then have the fans mark the ballots with their picks for the winners in each category. This would mean that the fans themselves would say which is the best comedy, drama, etc., whether or not the editor intended it to be in that category.

A ballot would look something like this:

Best Comedy____________________ Best Drama___________________
Best Action _____________________ Best Upbeat___________________

AMV ANIME MUSIC

Naruto’s Dance, Naruto, Linkin Park

Some Action Show, Anime, Music

Ect….

[godix]

It's a fucking hobby people. Christ, it's not like the wealth of the worlds rest on this shit. At the end of the day it's about a plastic trophy, a few DVDs that are #2 of a series that didn't sell all that well, and an ego boost for people who thinks any of this makes a fucking difference. Giving editors awards is like giving a special needs child a gold star for remembering to go to the restroom to take a huge heaping dump. While it's nice that they managed it and all it probably isn't something that's worth celebrating. Get some perspective here, it's a cartoon to a song. If the 'wrong' video wins the entire con isn't going to end with everyone committing seppuku (although that would make the awards ceremony rather interesting). Jesus fucking christ on a pogostick in a minefield, give the award to the video that you liked the most then go the fuck outside. I'm becoming more and more convinced that <a href="http://www.animemusicvideos.org/members ... 7902">Stop Watching Anime and Go Outside!</a> wasn't a comedy, it was a serious bit of advise to people who know offhand the timestamp for the very first kooptange that appears in Euphoria but have to spend five minutes of concentrated thought to remember the last time they spoke to a person in real life. Leave your mothers basement and come join us out here in reality. I know there's a big frightening ball of fire in the sky but trust me, that's normal, we call it the 'sun'. It isn't going to fall on you and it might make you look better for losing that pasty white complexion. Just keep in mind a few simple rules for dealing with the outside world, if we find something funny we laugh, we don't say LOL with a deadpan face. Yelling 'YOU GONNA GET RAPED! PEDOBEAR!' at a preschool is not generally acceptable behavior. And no one out here holds conversations over if a My Little Pony tribute set to 'Discovery Channel' is better or worse than GI Joe set to 'Slim Shady'.

[Koopiskeva]

Just flip a coin to decide, its unbiased and random. O:

[chosef]

I don't think there is anything left unsaid after the last two posts... It's like FUTILITY before them and from here on...

[Beowulf]

Oooh, a well balanced competition? I'll put my FLCL video in there and maybe Ill win an award

That thing is PAINFULLY balanced.

[Vlad G Pohnert]

But, are the Judges as many cons really any "better" than the masses. Honestly, I don't know. Just like an audiance, the judges come in with their own perconceived notions on AMVs and favor that "type" of video (whatever it may be). Anyway, that's my take on it at the moment.

JH

Depends on the judges... I hand pick my judges from fans/creators/staff who can judge objectively and find the results tend to be videos worthy of the award for my contests..

Most audiances judge too blind or spur of the moment or on an emotional level... Part of the problem is they only see the video once and don't have a lot of time to thik about it or re-watch it at contests.

Vlad

[Otohiko]

I think it's an unfair generalization (and what is it based on other than a subjective perception to start with?)

For one, I think there's a lot of 'everything and the kitchen sink' videos around, which is not always a good thing. Balance in a video often rests on keeping focused.

Then there's the issue of how 'pure' is 'pure comedy' or 'pure action'. Those categories in themselves are abstract constructs, labels that people stuck based on this or other checklist they invented.

The key, I think, is not to think either way - you're not supposed to start by saying "I'm gonna make an action video" or "I'm gonna make an EVERYTHING video" or "I'm gonna make a video that is not like that other video". What you end up with this way is either imitation or the reverse of it, which is just as bad.

The real first step should be "I'm gonna make a good video using source X/with audio Y/concept Z".

[inthesto]

99% of AMV audiences are complete and total shitheads.

99% of AMV editors are complete and total shitheads.

That said, this topic is quite shitheaded, and now I am going to go jack off to KTB for the sixth time today.