The Otakon 2009 thread

[Castor Troy]

I actually won't be attending the con, even though my confirmation says I was

Any way I can give out my tickets to someone else?

[VicBond007]

I actually won't be attending the con, even though my confirmation says I was

Any way I can give out my tickets to someone else?

Not if you're not there to sit with them. That just opens up the floodgates to a whole new way to abuse the system :-/

[Scintilla]

I don't see anything in the rules about blank leaders before/after for CD/DVD or FTP submissions. Do we not need any?

[VicBond007]

I don't see anything in the rules about blank leaders before/after for CD/DVD or FTP submissions. Do we not need any?

You do not need any for digital submissions. The purpose of black leader is to eliminate tracking errors and rainbow effects caused by weak flying erase heads in VCRs. In fact, last year I made room for an extra entry by trimming black area from submissions so that each had a max of 1 second.

[MisterFurious]

7:30 is no longer a music video. That's a whole concert.

I beg to differ, sir. I think Otakon is missing out on some good videos with so short a time limit. For example, it broke my heart that my "Signal to Noise" video was far, far too long to be entered at Otakon (for the record, it's 7:16). It won the Grand Prize at AX, but no one at Otakon has seen it, because of the length restriction. And the rule against previous winners competing wouldn't have applied, because it didn't exist at the time.

The point is, you shouldn't pigeonhole videos and stifle creators' creativity because their video falls within certain guidelines. Should we start prohibiting Naruto videos because there are too many of them?

Just a thought...

[VicBond007]

I beg to differ, sir. I think Otakon is missing out on some good videos with so short a time limit. For example, it broke my heart that my "Signal to Noise" video was far, far too long to be entered at Otakon (for the record, it's 7:16). It won the Grand Prize at AX, but no one at Otakon has seen it, because of the length restriction. And the rule against previous winners competing wouldn't have applied, because it didn't exist at the time.

The point is, you shouldn't pigeonhole videos and stifle creators' creativity because their video falls within certain guidelines. Should we start prohibiting Naruto videos because there are too many of them?
Just a thought...

I'm not sure how the AX contest is run, but everything else that is "fan voted" has a time limit because in order for the fans to vote accurately, they have to sit through all of the entries, and there actually needs to be competition. If everyone who makes finals sent us a 7 minute video, that's only room for 17 videos in the contest, or 3 (and change) per category. At that point we might as well give out "Attaboy Plaques" like you got in 2nd grade for showing up to the mandatory school spelling bee since every video would place in their category.

I could stretch the contest to be longer, but I'm sure the average (and there are a good 27,000 of them) con goer would not. Having sat through the entire performance of Richard Vagner's "Der Ring des Nibelungen" I can say that I appreciate a good performance even if it does take all day, but people might have other things they'd like to do, such as eat, sleep, dispose of bodily waste, or even visit another panel/event. Every fan-voted AMV contest that I've sat through that went more than 2 hours has been dreadful.

I could break the event up into separate screenings, but how do you know when YOUR video will play? Print out 28,000+ playlists to hand out? I could divide them by genre, but I can tell you that drama/romance will probably be a ghost town and that's REALLY unfair to the creators who deserve the exposure, even if most of the crowd is showing up to watch the "fun" videos. The popularity of the contest basically demands that people show up for the entire event. It would be like the masquerade running for 6 hours and allowing 10 minute skits (might I remind you that most masquerades only allow a max time of 2-3 minutes no matter how many people are in your group! Our 6 minute time limit is the envy of every cos-diva!) but dividing the skits up into "character monologues", "interpretive dance", and "funny/gay jokes". Which do you think will people pick if time constraints only allowed them to attend one or two sections of the epic cos-saga?

I know AWA has Expo screenings all weekend, but it's a difference situation since it doesn't matter who sees them, because the outcome was already voted on by judges weeks ago. There's no participation, it's just "show up and watch some good videos". That's cool, and rock-on for AWA being able to do that, but that's not my contest. I doubt I could run AMV screenings all weekend at Otakon. There are too many Ota-egos in the way and we need to share the space with other events.

As for Narutopalooza, if every video that scored high enough to make the final cut was a Naruto video, I would show every one. I'll take 2 hours of good Naruto videos over 4 hours of drawn-out pretentious crap. And no, I'm not jabbing at Signal to Noise. It's a great video. I'm just saying that if I make an exception for one video, it applies to everything else. If it takes you longer than 6 minutes to get your point across, then you're better suited for a job in Congress, not video editing. Ever watch Survivor on TV? They'll take a week's worth of multi-cam footage and knock it down to 41 minutes. That doesn't mean that there wasn't more worth showing, that just means that the editor had time constraints and had to make decisions as to what made it into the final product.

[Castor Troy]

If it takes you longer than 6 minutes to get your point across, then you're better suited for a job in Congress, not video editing.

Poor Julian.

[Pwolf]

If it takes you longer than 6 minutes to get your point across, then you're better suited for a job in Congress, not video editing.

lmao... you have a point there but then again, i think it differs on the video and the intentions of the editor. The video I wanted to enter (the one in question... 7 1/2 minutes) is more of an experience then anything else. Was never meant to get a point across but show the viewer what they are missing or give them a refresher if they are already familiar with the content.

Either way, I agree wholeheartedly that time limits are needed, like you said. I'd rather see 40 shorter videos then 17 long ones. I like how Vlad handles it though. He has a set time limit but accepts videos on a per video basis and determines if they are good enough bypass the rule.

Even if it were to change now, I couldn't enter my video since it won at Acen, but I would've much rather seen it at Otakon


Pwolf

[HalOfBorg]

VicBond007 wrote:
If it takes you longer than 6 minutes to get your point across, then you're better suited for a job in Congress, not video editing.

Hmmmmmmmm. I had this idea for "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" that has been simmering on my brain's back burner........

[Scintilla]

I'm going to assume that FTP uploads go in the "Upload" directory and not in the root directory, because I got "Critical transfer error"s when I tried putting to the root.