First of all, I'd like to say that you guys gave a great show and the judges seemed to like the videos alot... however there are a few things I need to address.
The reason why I chose personal friends who don't know much about amvs as opposed to some of my friends here in the amv community was an experiment to see how they would judge an amv contest in comparison to veteran amv creators and watchers themselves. They seemed to nearly liked everything they watched but they did catch on to alot of the normal problems present in amvs today.
Video Quality
Almost any person can catch if video quality is really good or bad. Since the contest was outputted from my video out card to my TV, video quality was a little spared but some of the entries that had bad video quality still looked bad on my tv.
Subtitles
While I didn't restrict subtitled footage, I encouraged people to use unsubbed footage or find out ways to get rid of the subs. The judges were wondering why there was subs on a few of the videos. The judges have not seen much anime outside of CN so seeing subs was a bit strange for them.
Normal people do and will catch on to the above problems in videos. Some may or may not care as much as other people but the fact is that some of the entries weren't recieved as well because of the above problems and with WMM, those problems were pretty common.
Now for the results...
My judges were 2 males and one female and were asked to rate each of the videos on a scale from 1-10. The 3 videos with the highest scores were chosen as the winners. While I only will give prizes out to the top 2 videos, the third one was chosen because it shows good qualities of what you can achieve with WMM. Now without furthur ado..... here are the results!
Third Place
The Tranceporter by DannyWilson
Why did it win?
Out of all the entries in the contest, Danny's video had the best video quality. It also had a good moderate pace and story. While it seemed to be a long advertisment for Spriggan, the judges have not seen Spriggan prior to the contest and they said it sort of looked like an "Indiana Jones" anime. The 2nd song put in the video was a good twist for the ending as well. This entry shows that you can still achieve good video quality with WMM and time with a good moderate pace.
Second Place
[urlhttp://www.animemusicvideos.org/members/member ... d_id=38574]Animal Attraction[/url] by Arigatomina
Why did it win?
While the video quality was really good, the small resolution didn't make it appear as good as Danny's entry. However this video got the most laughs in the whole contest. With a funny song, lip sync, good timing and scene selection, the judges were rolling on the floor laughing. I personally thought from their reaction that this video was going to win but when I added up the scores, it only fell a very small amount of points away from the winning video.
Now for the winner.....
First place
Hajime no Ippo - Viva Rock - Guts! by dongster138
Why it won
This was my personal favorite entry in the competition and the judges gave it the highest vote as well. While the video quality wasn't as good as Danny's or Ari's entry and had the divx logo appear and disappear throughout the video, it still had good quality and the divx logo didn't detract the enjoyment of the video. While I'm a huge jpop fan, the judges have not heard much jpop outside of gundam and eva's opening and closing songs but they didn't seem to mind. The song was very fun and fitting for the video. Lots of good scene selection and timing, especially the intense timing at the end. While I loved this entry, I didn't think it was going to win over Ari's entry but I was proven wrong. Overall, a great video.
So congrats to dongster138 for being the winner of the WMM contest!
Plus congrats to Arigatomina and DannyWilson as the runner ups.
I'm definitely glad that I got to run this contest to show that very good videos can be made in WMM and I certainly got what I wanted. The 3 winners of the contest should be good enough proof.
I hope the rest of the contestants had fun and learned something from this experience as well. I took measures to make sure every entry was shown in a good presentable fashion and you all gave a great show!
I'm not sure if I will run this again next year because now my judges have better knowledge of who's who in the community now and they may be a little more biased.
Thanks and congrats to everyone who entered!
