1) First off, Nimthiriel, we really are trying to help. People are pointing out pitfalls that a lot of us have fallen for in the past. Please don't see any of this as an attack. However, you do need to know a bit of history of D*C and anime. A long, long time ago (jeez... uh... 11 years? 12?) a local group called "Anime X" was in charge of the anime rooms. The rooms at D*C were really, really cool, huge, and served as the real origin of stuff like the AWA AMV contest and Anime Hell. Unfortunately, as D*C got bigger and bigger, anime got shoved further and further down their list of priorites, and the anime room got smaller with every year. "Anime X" left and started AWA, after handing the running of the D*C anime room off to one of their directors. About 50% of the current AWA directors have, at one time or another, had to run the D*C anime room, and they've ALL come away from it bitter at the convention.
This is why D*C is not well liked by the Atlanta anime community. It's totally not fair to you, as the newcomer, but you need to know this background is why that attitude exists. The anime room at D*C has been bounced from group to group since Anime X left, and has been all over the place in quality since.
2) You need to know that the vast majority of the videos you are going to recieve will be digital. A lot of creators these days don't even have the ability to output to VHS.
This means that running an AMV contest is INTENSELY TECHNICAL. If your actual, real job isn't working with computers, I highly, highly suggest that you get an assistant who's is, and who is VERY reliable.
The current descriptions you've got up on the webpage for technical requirements are WAY too thin. Get together with a tech expert, check out the video output and computer processors you've got available to you, and figure out exactly what you can and can't play. Post that. Even with that, you will still get people sending in videos with the weirdest format incompatibilities you've ever seen, but if you're very specific about your system, you'll get less of those. I cannot stress enough how important this is.
3) Priorities. The order of importance you should be thinking about is
a) Make sure you can physically conduct an AMV contest. Find out now about the equipment you need, the codecs you can play, and the reliability of your machines. PRE-VIEW ALL ENTRIES ON THE SYSTEM YOU'LL BE SCREENING ON. I can't tell you the number of times a video that worked fine on our sample system came out as total garbage/absent audio/de-interlaced/washed out at the convention. This goes hand-in-hand with the "give technical requirements." Nothing else matters if you can't actually show the videos.
b) Organization. Make sure you have time/structure to show what you want to show when it'll be good for everyone to see. A handful of contests with good tech just collapsed under their own weight by being really disorganized. Make up clear playlists, with wiggle room for whe smoke starts coming out of the projector. Work out who is judging & how (this always takes longer than you'd think) & double check your final lists.
c) Sufficient entries. Worry about "getting enough entries" ONLY after taking care of a) and b). Even if you only get a handful of entries on this first year, being well organized and competent will get you a good reputation and make it easier to get more the next year. Going out and pimping for lots of videos only to have the contest collapse on you 'cause you get too many is the fastest way to breed bad blood among AMVers.
4) Content. This is less trouble than you might think. The key is to say in the rules a casual "keep it clean, folks" and say that videos that are especially violent or adult-themed may be excluded from the contest at the director's discretion. Put up a contact e-mail and say that they should contact you if they have specific questions about a video's content. Everyone will get the idea if you say this, and the only people who won't heed it are just troublemakers. The political comment, however, is just asking for trouble. In my years of running a contest, I've only ever encountered one video that was explicitly political & pissed me off. Fortunately, it was also terrible.
5) It is a good idea to announce the contest's existance early. This makes people aware of it and starts them thinking about entering. It's a bad idea, however, to put up incomplete rules early, because then people remember the wrong rules.
6) Prizes & entry fees. AMVers get real nervous about money changing hands, and that nervousness has recently been reinforced. It may be out of your hands, but I'd strongly suggest dropping the entry fee. No one else has successfully held an AMV contest with an entry fee & the stigma attached to it is more damaging than the loss of the $300 or so it might possibly bring in. If you have any budget at all, invest a little of it into plastic awards with engraved plaqes or something. There's a couple of good, cheap places around Atlanta to order them from, so long as you give lots of notice. (PM me if you want details.)
7) You've DRASTICALLY over-estimated the number of videos you can show in a 2.5 hour block.
This is a luxury, and should be further down the list of priorities. If you have to, resign yourself to reading the video info aloud before each vid is shown, if the 2 days spent making titles is needed for something more essential. However, I would NOT suggest asking the people submitting to make your title cards for you. Not only does that heap more weird-ass tech problems on you, it's asking the submitters to do your work for you.dokool wrote: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.Nimthiriel wrote: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.
More work for you: Avoid like the chicken pox
More work for contestants: Avoid like bubonic plauge.
So I'd suggest dropping the "make your own titles" suggestion and try to do it yourself, but be ready to drop it if you don't have the resources.
All this will do is limit your entries recieved, and by practically none at that. Only the newcomers still use watermarked video, and they need a place to get started showing their vids. Frankly, I've though the "instant disqual" on this is petty and elitist and I've never instituted it myself. I think your "suggestion" is fine.dokool wrote: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.
No need to be rude, dokool...dokool wrote: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.
(see the smile)
