I understand the communities are much larger all around the world when compared to Finland, but there are so many small things that could improve these big and famous contests abroad. We at AMV Finland (AMV.fi) have been working for years to improve our contests and we try to experiment with new ideas constantly. I've noticed things seem to be following the same pattern in big contests in America, and don't really seem to change and therefore things don't really improve either. Of course, the old saying "if it ain't broke, why fix it?" is true here, but just because something isn't broken doesn't mean it doesn't need fixing.
So without further ado, this is (hopefully) a short and sweet list of things why Finland does things better in my opinion.
- Transparency
Contests in Finland strive to be as transparent and fair as possible. In every AMV.fi contest the panel of judges (4) is published on the convention website as well as the AMV.fi YouTube channel before the contest deadline. The judges receive a set of rules to follow during the judging, which is also visible to the public and can be found on the AMV.fi website (in Finnish).
After the deadline the judges proceed to do the preliminary judging. The scores and documentation of the preliminary judgingare posted on the AMV.fi website after the contest.
- Online activity
Information about all AMV.fi contests and events is shared on AMV.fi's social media accounts, so that even though the contests spread out to different conventions, the relevant information can still be reliably found in one place. The winners are posted on AMV.fi social media immediately after the contest, and on the AMV.fi website (with judges reasons and justifications for the awards) the next day after the convention takes place. The contestants don't have to "wait around" for information on how their video did in the contest.
- Shared practices
All of the AMV.fi contests follow the same template of rules with small differences in each contest to make the contests unique, but still a united set. The rules template can be found on our website, along with the scoring template used in all of our contests for conducting the preliminary judging. With the shared practices, contestants don't need to stress over "what were the rules here again?", as mostly the contests follow the same pattern.
- Video feedback
All contestants are able to ask for feedback via the AMV coordinator, which is written by the judges of the contest and then sent to the contestant. The amount of people asking for feedback varies a lot depending on the contest and sometimes it takes a long time for the judges to finish, but I do love this about Finnish contests and think it's very much necessary abroad, in any shape or form.
As a contestant and organizer these are very small things that make the contests so much better in my opinion. I find that transparency especially is crucial in AMV contests, and that most contest abroad are lacking it so much, as mostly when competing abroad all I have are questions.
Questions like
who decides the finalists?
how are finalists decided?
how close was I to the finals / to placing?
what could I do better next time?
I want to emphasize that the point of this thread is not to bash or diss the way contests are done, it's to try to find the answers to my questions and hopefully get some sort of change going for future contests. I am not bringing out any specific contests, and I am interested to hear how things are done "behind the scenes" around the world! Maybe these practices are already in place somewhere and I just haven't seen it?
