DragonCon 2006

[dokool]

Thank you so much for your support.

The registration fee has changed. If you buy a full 4-day membership to DragonCon 2006 there is no fee to enter the amv contest. I suggest you buy them now before they reach full price.

Given that your contest has no proven track record, I join everyone else in seriously suggesting you eliminate any registration fee - I think this would be an important first step towards proving that D*C* gives a damn about anime fans and AMVers, something that the comments above mine don't seem to indicate they've done so far.

The rules, as they're written, seem vaguely unprofessional - the "we are not haters" bit regarding non-anime sources in particular. (p.s. "American, Korean, and other such anime are discouraged" seems like an oxymoron, no?)

"Please make sure to have a non-obtrusive title with credits on your video set to play before the video itself. An example is available on our website. Your paperwork should match the information in the credits." - This indicates that you have no intention of creating your own titles, which is probably a much better idea so that they're all uniform. You're also trusting people to make title-safe bumpers, etc. Drop this, do your own titles. It's honestly not that hard.

I'm seeing a lot of things like "please try to," "we ask that," etc - these are ambiguous terms that people will take as suggestions instead of requirements. This will come back to bite you in the ass, I've seen it happen too many times to count.

Also, if they're *not* at the con, and they pay the registration fee, you'd *still* have them send a S.A.S.E.? Isn't that what the registration fee is hypothetically for? How would they know how much to get onto the envelope, bearing in mind that they'd have no idea how much the shipping weight would be?

Furthermore, why on earth does a first-year AMV Contest need its own website? You could have saved the money on the domain name and host and put that towards prizes, y'know...

[Infinity Squared]

This is nothing against you and please, I hope you don't get offended by this, but I guess I just find the wording of some of the rules as being, well, unfriendly. Rule 2 in particular sticks out to me the most. It's as if you're anticipating your entrants to be complete morons who want a bite out of you rather than professionals (as much as we can be ). You'll find most AMV creators are courteous and very appreciative of the efforts of AMV coordinators and this comes out to me like we've done something wrong to you in the past.

Be susinct with what you want but at the same time make your readers feel welcomed, make them want to enter the competition A lot of AMV creators I know read these rule things perhaps a tad too much for their own good so I'm sure for the majority of people, they'd just rather hear what you want out of them straight out rather than warning them first that you'll hate them if they don't do what you tell them (sort of )

[Nimthiriel]

I researched a number of different rules when writing ours. Rule number 2 was closley related to a rule in a different contest. I will reconsider my wording.

From my understanding anime can also be translated as animation even though it has been coloquialized to mean Japanese animation. The not including Korean animation or American animation rule was on another amv contest website and I agreed with the rule. My "we are not haters" was a joke implying that it isn't that we don't like like animation from other countries we would just perfer that the animation be strictly from Japan. There are alot of people who are very fond of the programming on Adult Swim which includes a good bit of Korean animation.

I wrote the rules trying to be polite not condesending. I understand that the majority of people are level headed however there are people that are not level headed and therefore need to have things spelled out to them. When you consider that the majority of animation music video creators are intelligent people we felt that they are all capable of following the format for the opening that we are going to provide for them to follow. By not trusting our contestants to follow the format we are in effect doing as you say and implying that they are idiots. There are also many contests out there that say "you may" and I think that my "we suggest" was only in cases of suggestions in order to make sure they mail their package in time.

You guys can complain all you want about the fee however there is nothing that can be done until next week at best which is March 6, 2006 at earliest. When I hear something I will let you know. However many of the events at DragonCon such as the amatuer video contest began as charge events until the fans came in flock to prove that they were interested in the event. Instead of getting angry and refusing to pay it would be better to show DragonCon that anime fans are interested in an amv contest and they are interested in the anime room. Show your support and that will definetly get their attention.

Nim the evil (btw-this is a joke)

[Nimthiriel]

I forgot to address the website comment.

I didn't pay for the website. Registering a website is really cheap. Less than $10/yr if you use godaddy and they can be hosted from home. I'm the one doing the updating for the rules so there is no cost there. I could host it at my home if I wanted to do so and I can build pages in notepad and load them with dos which means that there is no cost there aside from my regularly incurred personal computer cost. There is not a lot of cost involved in something like this.

[dokool]

From my understanding anime can also be translated as animation even though it has been coloquialized to mean Japanese animation. The not including Korean animation or American animation rule was on another amv contest website and I agreed with the rule. My "we are not haters" was a joke implying that it isn't that we don't like like animation from other countries we would just perfer that the animation be strictly from Japan. There are alot of people who are very fond of the programming on Adult Swim which includes a good bit of Korean animation.

While in Japan, "anime" is the word for animation (in the Anime section at Tsutaya you'll find Disney DVDs, for example), in the US "anime" has become the word to represent strictly Japanese animation.

When you consider that the majority of animation music video creators are intelligent people we felt that they are all capable of following the format for the opening that we are going to provide for them to follow. By not trusting our contestants to follow the format we are in effect doing as you say and implying that they are idiots.

Wow, you totally have it wrong. A uniform set of credits is vital to an AMV contest, because it makes sure that all videos have clear and simple information about them presented just like every other video in the contest, giving them all equal footing and letting the videos speak for themselves as opposed to the bumpers. If different people use different fonts, colors, backgrounds, <i>animated</i> bumpers, etc, it creates a discrepency that will inevitably favor one video over an other. Take the hint from the fact that just about every AMV Contest Coordinator does his own set of bumpers for the contest and do them yourself.

As far as the "suggestion" issue - "Please try to remove watermarks (ie: company logos) from the videos you chose to use. They are distracting." That shouldn't be a suggestion, that should be a requirement with instant disqualification, as is true in other AMV contests. I also noticed that in the format requirements, you aren't specific about things like resolution, framerate, bitrate, audio encoding, etc. These are all things that, like I said earlier, will come to bite you in the ass.

How many AMVs have you watched? How long have you been watching them? How many contests have you watched? These are all things I'm curious about, given that you had to "research" AMV contests to make the rules for yours.

[Nimthiriel]

I appreciate all your feedback and I will continue to shape the rules.

[dokool]

Also, why the minimum of 2:30? There's a lot of shorter vids - people do trailers, commercials, parodies, you name it, and some of the most popular vids at cons are 30 seconds long (which, ironically, is the minimum length most cons use).

[Nimthiriel]

I don't know what to tell you then. Joining the contest is optional. If you don't wish to participate the you do not need to waste your money on the contest.

Please note: If people do not show their support and try to work with our current set of rules, which will change as we realize we have made a mistake, then the contest will fail and we won't be able to have it again in 2007.

Please limit critism to constructive comments like:

You may want to reconsider the minimum time limit of 2:30. There are many good quips, etc out there that would be excellent for a first year contest. Especially since you are interested in building a huge interest.

Thank you

[dokool]

I don't know what to tell you then. Joining the contest is optional. If you don't wish to participate the you do not need to waste your money on the contest.

Please note: If people do not show their support and try to work with our current set of rules, which will change as we realize we have made a mistake, then the contest will fail and we won't be able to have it again in 2007.

Usually most contests do their best to work <i>with</i> the editors to make a contest that they'll want to enter, not ask the editors to bear with them and whatever confusing regulations they have in place.

[Nimthiriel]

I have been trying to work with you guys and I have been bugging the director with all of your concerns and I have been changing the rules as good suggestions have been brought to my attention and I have been trying to keep you all updated but you my dear dokool are shooting the messenger. I fail to see how asking for a bumper and a title frame is asking too much of the editors. Maybe you can enlighten me.

This is evolving and we all hope everything goes smoothly but we don't know what problems will arise until we hold the contest. Please bear with us in this time of trail.