OK after takeing a few days off from con stuff, I'll try to lay to rest a few issues that happened at Fanime and try to resolve a few issues that have come up since.
First off I would like to again thank all of the AMV editors who had contributed their videos to our event, you are the people that truely make this event a pleaseure to work on and show to the fans and we are always in your debt for that.
The story of problems with AMV this year starts with a few background facts that need to be addresed first as they add to the problems.
1. We were in a new facility this year, no it doesnt mean that we had to learn how a projector worked all over again and its not an excuse that we couldnt do our jobs. But what was at issue was that we had to deal with new facility staff that we had never met before. For the past several years we have been at the Santa Clara facility and while rude, unreliable, and hard to communicate with, after a few years we knew how to get around that to get things done on time. Since this was not that case this year, all events in the Civic Auditorium where the AMV events were held all had very large time bumpers at the beginning and end of each event jsut in case there were any unexpected problems.
2. For the first year ever, Fanime had to deal with Union Labor workers to setup and operate all of our technical equipment, from lighting, projectors, and sound. While in the past we have been able to have union as assitance or pay them jsut to stand behind us, this year we HAD to leave most aspects of running our events in their hands. This was another reason for the large time bumpers on each event. in addition to this the union workers were required to have a 1 hour lunch break during the day, this 1 hour could only start after the Civic aud was clear, powered down, and locked up, then the time needed to open up and get thigns back together caused even more time backlog.
so with that here is what I know of problems and hopefully together we can all work on solutions.
Time
Yes I do know that 10am on Saturday SUCKED BALLS for a start tiem for AMV finals. I knew this 4 months before the con, and knew we were goign to have a less than great turnout becasue of it. here is why that happened. Fanime Con's largest single attended event is Cosply. It gets priority in the largest room, and AMV cant be placed anywhere else since the next largest room we had was only 400 seats. So Cosplay gets 7pm Sat with a 6pm start for seating. So Saturday night is out. Due to contractual obligations all of the bands for Music fest can only play on sunday, and they need all day to setup so Sunday is completely gone. Cosplay needs a setup time. (this is where our bumpers first take the first casualty) Cosplay run through usually only takes 2 hours max, but since we were dealing with new union members whoam we didnt knwo how well they could work, was sheduled for abotu 3-4 hours, add in that we needed a 1 hour lunch break a seating, the only time available for anythign on saturday was the 10am-1230pm slot. so the Options for finals was
7pm Friday
10am Saturday
10am Monday
Monday would have sucked more, and since many students were still in school firday I knew that would have been worse. so Saturday was all that was left.
the good news : Since we now know that the union labor we have in the civic center is top notch and we work well with them, the discussion is at this poitn to set AMV finals next year for 2pm-430pm Saturday, yea its 1 year away and anythign can change, but we are aware that it was a bad time and we are workign to make it later in the day next year.
Judges
Yes, several great AMV's were not shown in the Finals, the reason for this was simple, we only had 2 1/2 hours to show 5 hours of great videos. If I had my way I would have added more of them into the finals but a 5 hour finals event would jsut kill an audience. I will stand by all of the judges decisions because even picking winners by the viewers was very tight in all categories. My entire judgeing staff do watch every video that is submitted to us in its entirety, and we rate those videos on sereval different aspects. It is tough on us since we are critizeing other peoples work, to go through houndreds of videos and have to say "only these 7 will be shown" is not as easy as it sounds. Anyone who was in Semi's knows that I was very vocal for one particular video which I wanted in Finals but I was over ruled by the rest of the judges. It happens. I resepect everyones opinion and in some cases agree with you, but in the end the judges made a decision and that is how the contest shaped into. As for the judges awards being different from the viewers choice, well that's the point. the fans see videos and vote for enjoyment, the judeges are looking what we regard to as content, you can agree or disagree with our methods or judgements in awards we present, but if you attend the event, you have the right to vote differently form the judges. Certain things I accept, the fan base of Fanime demigraphic is age 14-23, where the youngest member of the judgeing staff this year was 26. sure that may have somethign to do with it, but in the end, it is the opinion of the judges, that is all.
content
In regards to "cry little Idol" video
Yes this video's creator did ask me if he should submit a censored version and after reviewign the material I said it wasn't nessisary.Part of that desicison is the region at atmosphere that Fanime is in. Had I been runnign the contest with the same pool of videos in a region like say, Utah, I would have DQ'd the video almsot instantly sicne it was appropriate for the region, or a more conservative con which has stricker policeies. however for the past few years fanime has been fairly laxed in this area, ( adult stars in dealers room, hentai and yaoi marathons ) While I keep certain things out of the AMV contest a few things I will allow for creative freedom. The video in question, while shocking, does not cross a legal barrier for PG-13 content. It comes very close, but not over it, another video in semis did the same for language. However I do agree that this needs to be address to the viewing audince and next year during my announcements I will add that this is an unrated event and some sequences may not be appropriate, but I will keep that a rateing system will be in place for submitted videos.
Politics
the term "this contest as become to political" came up and I found this very interesting. Since I am the only one responsible I am curious what is ment by this.
a. exactly how is this contest becomming political?
b. How is this haveing a negative affect on the event?
c. what can be reasonable done to correct this?
I am very open to any ideas to make this event the best it can be, and would love to get some good solid, useable feedback on this.
Panel
Last year we had a hudge SNAFU with AMV panels, so this year I stepped back and let the chips fall where they may. I did ask SPpanda if he would like to get involved in a panel and he was willign to do so and I am greatful for that, but Brad and Justin picked up and secured a solid panel concept early and since it was a panle of some kind and was one less headache I had to personally deal with I let it go. If ANYONE wants to do ANY kind of AMV panel, PLEASE contact the panel dept in Live programming to set up your own panel, the more exposure we can give to AMV by as many different ediotrs as we can, the better AMV will flurish at fanime, please do so ( but please dont insult anyone elses panel, I dont want to have get involved in a cross panel flame war )
Categories
there has also been some talk that some videos shoudl have belonged in other categories. Whiel this arguement has been talked abotu before from other cons here is how we delt with it. On the upload site there was an option to choose which category your video went into, if you didnt choose one, it went into undecided and the judges made that desicion. If all the judeges decided that the video was in the wrong category, it was moved to another, if the judges could decide if it should be moved or not, and if so where, then the desion was left ot where the editor put it in the first place. In the case of "love is a battlefield" and "I am an outsider" thsi was split between the judegs and were left where the editors submitted them.
I still think that this years contest went incredibly well and I thank everyone for your input to help to make this event even better over time, jsut please remeber "constructive" critizium
jsut saying "this Sucks" doesn't help me to correct problmes later.
Congrats to all of our winners, I am mailing out the awards soon
]This was pointed out to me by many many many many strangers at the convention. I asked very casually, what they thought of the video, and was told EVERY TIME they wondered what the judges had been smoking. Sorry but the video was a few clips of Fushigi Yugi pasted ontop of winAmp screen saver effects. And the drawings... They were causing an artist friend of mine to cringe in pain at the bad preportions. Oh and the AMV creators I sat by, cringed at the points of the video where the timing was OFF. So please don't believe that it was some great video. (One answer I could come up with to why his video got not only best freeform and best of show from the judges was that some how they had more knowledge of the construction of the video...)
