AWA 2005 Pro Contest Discussion Thread

[RutKiskasca]

The background was the first one in my list of backgrounds. The music was simi-random from what I had on the HDD. I wanted to have an AWA logo for the background but could not get one ready in time. The menu music will always be mostly random unless AWA gets theme music.

I thought we had theme music...isn't Linkin' Park our official band?

Regarding the thumbnails for the menu...I don't know if the software you used to create the DVDs was a Ulead product, but it sure looks like a similar app. I have an option in the menu creation step of Ulead DVD Workshop where you can shuttle to a certain frame in each clip, and set that as the start point for the thumbnail loop, and it takes a default 5 second or so section of the chapter/clip for the thumbnail. It's not hard, but I rarely bother with it.

Regarding the discussion of categories, I think that the nomination process for categories is very informative, because I see it as an indicator of what someone out there felt was important to them when selecting what they feel is Best. Theoretically, you could whittle the whole list of categories down to just one...."Best"...and everyone would still look for the same things that they would look for if they had 20 categories to choose from. But then, I wouldn't have much of a chance of taking home a new Porche with the a-m-v.org logo on the bonnett, so I'm all for 20 categories!

Ummm...that IS the prize this year, right? New Porches (Porchi?) for each category winner?

[aoi_neko]

Some of the new nominations look like valid attempts to map out a recognition structure, some are essentially jokes, but yeah, some do have a flavor of "Beautiful and subtle entry 71 deserves an award, but it will get slaughtered if it has to compete against flashy entry 72 in every category it qualifies for." I've got some sympathy for that, and an innate distaste for seeing the same video nominated in 8 categories, but it ought to be possible to get to a point where we have categories without a lot of overlap, but still don't have categories with two nominees.

Agree completely with combining Fun/Upbeat with Dance into a larger category. Ditto for Trailer and Parody. But is the real way to "lobby" for that to actuallyl create a new suggested category that explicitly combines them, or are the cordinators monitoring this thread closely enough to know there's some feeling that way?

On the subject of combinations, how about taking angst, and horror and combining them into "Best Dark Vision: The video best expressing dark emotions or situations, such as angst, horror, sadness, or hatred. This category is suggested as a proposed combination of the horror and angst categories, but may include dark or gloomy drama as well. Videos which are violent action or tragic romance should be nominated in those categories, rather than this one." Sort of stretch, but expressed that way, there wouldn't be a shortage of nominees.

[Edited for typos]

[Scintilla]

Ummm...that IS the prize this year, right? New Porches (Porchi?) for each category winner?

Porschen?

[Vlad G Pohnert]

Well.. sure a lot of deep dicussions on categories alone.... I'll vote for the 90 minute long video (#100 )...

Seriously, it getting hard to try to fit some videos into the traditional drama, action, comedy type cateroies and maybe some of the more descriptive ones are more appropriate.

Vlad

[istiv]

DvDs received one week ago. i just finished to watch it for the third time.
I used a system of "stars" from 1 to 5 (max) to quantify how i like some videos in comparison of others, for all the categories i was feeling present this year.

Now I just finished to vote for my 4 and 5-stars videos in their respective categories. Some of them were very impressive, and i hope these videos should win something at the end.

I think i'll watch the dvds again to decide about the 3-stars videos, if some of them are elligible for votes. Anyway, good luck to all the participants, somecategories will be hard to find a winner .

About the Categories, It 's a good thing that they are many new ones as a test phase. If at the end, there is not many votes in some of these categories, we just have to cancel them.

[Ashyukun]

"Best Crossover" is a video that, more or less, superimposes one character into a different series or otherwise tries to manipulate the footage to have two (or occasionally more) series appear to interact with each other. "Best multiple-source" is simply a video that uses multiple series. As it is, however, I don't really see the need for "Best Crossover" - there are perhaps two videos that could legitimately compete in that.

Actually, I can count at least 4 that could be considered 'Crossovers'.

To me, separating the two makes sense, as there are usually completely different intents between crossover-style videos and ones that are simply multi-source. Multi-source vids tend to draw from the parallels between characters/shows or other things that link them together while Crossover videos aim to actually combine the shows into one 'world' so the characters are actually interacting. That's a considerable difference in my opinion.

Personally I don't have any problem at all with having a large number of categories to choose from. If people feel there are enough videos that they nominate in those categories, then I think it makes sense to keep it. It's entirely up to us to work this out through our voting, which is one of the unique and fun things about Pro compared to other contests. It's obvious some of the categories are pretty targeted at a limited number of videos- but if we think that the concept/style/content they exhibit is worthy of specifically being recognized then I'm all for it.

[Beowulf]

I've never cared too much for Sentimental or Tech.

"Best Technical" and "Best Editing" used to be synonymous..but nowadays that's definitely no longer true, and I'm a little surprised that no one's made a Best Editing category yet. I was thinking about doing it myself, but I didn't feel up to writing out a description. IMO, "Best Technical" tends to translate to "Most Technical" in a lot of cases...

I suggested the Best Technical catagory. My thought process was actually similar to yours in the sense that "best technical" almost always ends up "most technical" but I thought it would be a stretch to have "Best Editing" as well as "Best Special FX". While the description for "Best Technical" is a little different from the usual description of it, I think its a better and more appropriate.

In my opinion, "Technical" is a mix of editing and/or effects and most of the time, the combination of both. However, sometimes a best technical has awesome editing and 0 effects, sometimes it has lame editing and ridiculously note worthy effects and sometimes its everything in between.

[StudioKZ]

As written, I can't figure out any difference between "Best Crossover" and "Best multiple source video."

"Best Crossover" is a video that, more or less, superimposes one character into a different series or otherwise tries to manipulate the footage to have two (or occasionally more) series appear to interact with each other. "Best multiple-source" is simply a video that uses multiple series. As it is, however, I don't really see the need for "Best Crossover" - there are perhaps two videos that could legitimately compete in that.

Not to mention that the Crossover videos should be able to legitimately compete in other categories anyway. Doing Crossovers is no longer as novel as it was when Tainted Donuts or Vlad's Love Triangle came out, so it's a Gimmick category like Lip Syncing.

[Vlad G Pohnert]

Not to mention that the Crossover videos should be able to legitimately compete in other categories anyway. Doing Crossovers is no longer as novel as it was when Tainted Donuts or Vlad's Love Triangle came out, so it's a Gimmick category like Lip Syncing.

I think it depends in how you use the sources... Fancy Effects (piano keys, flashes, squares, etc are not ac "novel" either but still used all the time..

Vlad

[StudioKZ]

I think it depends in how you use the sources... Fancy Effects (piano keys, flashes, squares, etc are not ac "novel" either but still used all the time..

Vlad

Right, but I wouldn't make a 'Best Piano Keys' category though...