Manifest AMV Contest, 2010

[machina21]

Since I'm American, make sure my T-Shirt comes in the size "Extra fat and arrogant"

[bluetrain]

Damn we only have Obese and Warmongerish left...

[Castor Troy]

Damn we only have Obese and Warmongerish left...

I'll take one of those.

[machina21]

Damn we only have Obese and Warmongerish left...

\

Hmmm...needs more hypocrisy and consumerism, take it back!

[bluetrain]

Actually we just got a shipment of Limitless Debt & Unsustainability. Will that suffice?

[Kazemon15]

Is there a list of finalist anywhere?

I wanna check them all out, not just the winners.

[bluetrain]

sure i'll put up the finalists later tonight.

[bluetrain]

Is there a list of finalist anywhere?
I wanna check them all out, not just the winners.

Okay here is the extravaganza playlist, in the order they were played during the convention. By default these are the "Finalists" - And just because I feel generous I'll leave a brief comment, whilst I listen to the sweet sounds of Paramore.

Disclaimer: Song-Choice is mentioned quite often in this post. I must assure you all that Song-Choice was NEVER taken into account during the judging process and imho should never be so. I discuss them simply because I'm in a musical mood.

01.
Comment:It's probably too long, and the CG scenes (Minus Tina from DOAX) feel out of place. But the editing is sublime, and the lack of FX is refreshing. A worthy tribute to one of the key reasons many of us watch Anime.

02.
Devil^Shin - Dark Sun (I believe this hasn't been uploaded yet)
Comment: An all-round decent Death Note AMV, the originality, for us, let it down but it was still entertaining. One of the few action AMVs we received this year & easily worthy of the finalists.

03.
Pierced Sky - Beyond Love (Couldn't find it anywhere, I assume it has not been uploaded)
Comment: For a first video the quality was wonderful. Simple, Sweet & No FX = enjoyable drama for me. The editing was quite nice and the song/clip selection helped get this video over the line. I'm looking forward to more AMVs from Pierced Sky because this a damn good launching point.

04.
Comment: I will mention that if we were holding a Fan-Favourite competition this probably would've finished 3rd. It's a great convention video, because you don't really expect where the audio is heading. And the structure of the AMV is so simple yet original that it carries the audio very nicely. Worth a lol.

05.
Comment: Well Mark probably felt hard done by when he saw the video finished Runner-Up in two categories... Especially when my laptop thought it would be fun to majorly interlace "Be My Escape" (The Winner). I love this video actually, perhaps because of my passion for that freaking amazing song. Or perhaps its because Mark always manages to keep a really strong flow throughout all of his videos. I very much enjoy those subtle transitions, so much so that I made him teach me how to do them in Vegas. (I'm a Vegas n00b). The only reason this didn't win is because we decided is clip-selection during some of the choruses were somewhat weak & didn't follow the character profile theme. Unlucky. Probably should have earned extra points for being one of the few HD-Entries, C'mon guys!

06.
Kitsunebaba - Be My Escape (You'll need to type that in on U2B)
Comment: As afore mentioned the winner of... well let's face it: "Best Australian AMV" - Twice in a row now actually. This was quite the opposite in clip choice, and in(our)opinion (ioo) the clip choice really fit the song better. I will add again, a fantastic song. Helped me through many-a-break-up (okay, 1). The editing was fine & the encoding was just good enough. It was a really tough decision between this & Error.exe and this post is flooding those hours of deliberations back... *sigh* - I believe we split the two into 5 aspects of the AMV and this video won 3-2. So it was very close, but Sian's a great up and coming editor so I hope to see some awesome stuff from her in the near future. Cos this girl has skillz! She even gave Mark a run for his money in the Iron Chef comp too!

07.
Comment: Our runner-up for best action. It was intense, it was FX-packed and it made us really doubt if this was a first video. Finishing runner-up to Reloaded is nothing to scoff at and this finished just 3rd in the "New to AMVs" category as well. I would keep an eye on Fedot because this editor has a lot of potential to do some big things. I will say that as intensely bouncy as it was and as well as it matched the song, perhaps it just lacked that x-factor that winning videos have.

08.
*Has requested not to be named, wanna tell me if i can name you yet?* (lolz)
Comment: Equal 2nd in Fan-Favourite. At first I didn't like the start of this video and I think some of the masking, could've been better/sourced more intensely. But it's grown on me. I was out-voted, quite rightly, when I tried to deny this video first place in the Comedy category. I had this insane idea that 'Kanon in 5 Seconds' winning an award would just be a too-gooder opportunity to waste. But this video really does deserve it more.

09.
scherzo2notte - Chance (Again you'll need to jump on U2B)
Comment: I really liked this video and this would probably be my 4th in "New To AMVs" - It's really simplistic & cute. The Kindom Hearts in-game footage doesn't look too out of place and the use of the limited clips was quite appropriate. It's probably suffering from a slight lack of effort, but I understand the need to finish AMVs when you're first starting off. Well done.

10.
SuburbanPanda - Code Orphen (I believe this has not been uploaded yet)
Comment: The only AMV truly built to the Mecha vs Magic theme. Ultimately this led to the prize. The Australian editor had one goal & one goal only and that was to put Orphen vs Code Geass (HENCE THE NAME), in an epic battle done with barely any (if any) masking. The result: It actually worked pretty well. I think it might have been better with some masking, but its a very honourable attempt. I just wanna know who wins!

11.
Comment: Our drama winner. This was by far our hardest category to decide the winner. We had our Australian girls pushing for it, we had some very pretty 5CM videos pushing for selection and in the end originality was the winner. This video relies on some solid editing and some very careful attention paid to how the song mood advances. In places it was a little too literal, but I'm now quite proud this won. It's tough to justify some decisions, when there's potential to be a small amount of backlash. But I think the right video won.
Keeping to a solid direction and telling a followable story really helps.

12.
Comment: Hahaha our EASY winner of the non-existent Fan-Favourite category. This was super-popular potentially due to the fact that, luckily enough for Mark, the video was played ON ELECTION DAY! Which was quite a remarkable coincidence. Super-topical & smooth-running, imo what let this video down in pursuit of a category award was the lack of masked politician faces... haha. But it does feel like more effort could've been applied to bring it to the same level as the original source. [Politics Warning: I JUST PRAY EVERY MORNING THAT ABBOTT LOSES!]

13.
TheOriginalMe - Hollow Princess (copy n' paste into U2B)
Comment: Our 'New to AMVs runner-up' - I think the song was a very difficult one to work with, it's not particularly editable. And doesn't have a lot of sync opportunities to break-up the video, but I think despite this Eleanor has done really well to stand out in a convention that saw 4 Princess Tutu entries! The signs are good and the AMV matches the series quite well (or so I'm told)...

14.
Comment: 80s Awesomeness! I felt so nostalgic watching this AMV and as drawn-out as the beginning is, it's worth it for the epic Old-Skool that ensues. I had more fun watching this video than any of the others... (Except for our winner). I will be honest, I thought this would be a lot better received by the audience. Unfortunately not everyone shares the same opinions on certain things and what can be unanimous to 3 random judges doesn't necessarily translate to the con-crowd - Not to say the crowd didn't like it, I just thought they would enjoy it more than they did. Check it out, because I still think it's epic win.

15.
Moezychan - Fireflies ("CCS - Fireflies" on U2B, should get you the video)
Comment: Another video with a very difficult song. This was close to being considered for winning/runner-upping but the downfall was perhaps some of the over-editing/fast cuts in inappropriate areas of the song. It was one of the standout issues all of us judges agreed on and that was unfortunate because the song-to-anime match is a really great find. It works perfectly.

16.
Comment In 5 Words: Just watch it right now.
~The crowd went ballistic after this video! (Equal 2nd crowd favourite)

17.
Comment: Drama Runner-Up. We had to break-down the AMVs into 5 aspects again to decide this one, and even then we couldn't decide. We ended up performing a ballot with two extra bonus judges to break the deadlock and this video lost by a vote. We were under the guise that this video was technically superior to the other drama videos in almost every way. However it was just so unoriginal. I mean, realistically how many soft solo female artists combined with 5cms per second AMVs have we seen? We even had another one entered into the competition!
We also didn't like the trap that most 5cm AMVs fall into of using each of the 3 story-lines. Even when it doesn't really make a lot of sense to your overall story. I could be disagreed with on these comments, and I'm okay with that. But there's no denying this is a fantastic AMV. And if you can ignore the originality issues you may possibly make this your favourite 5cm AMV.

18.
Comment: Up for Best Fun, 3rd for Best Drama & Equal 2nd for Favourite. It's hard to believe a video of this calibre missed out on a medal. Romantic, Funny, Cute, Fun & Touching. Everyone's favrourite AMV-Mum has the skills to punch out lovely AMVs like this with ease. A late, but great entry.

19.
Comment: Our Action Winner, and I watched it win best Action at AVcon too. This has extremely solid and well-paced editing. There's a reason this video cleaned up Australia's too primary AMV events. It's got the story, the action & the effort put in to bring Old-Skool matrix-awesomeness, together with the fast-paced action of the survival horror juggernaut that is Resident Evil. My only beef with this video is that of Resident Evil... remember when it used to be just about fighting zombies?? Why are there so many ultra-beast ninja-hack black-tentacle-wielding insano-monsters... I miss the old days, survival horrors are getting too "DDR Timing" for my liking... [Ends RE5 Review]

20.
Comment: The ultimate "AMV Editor's video" - I mean c'mon it features vdub. This is clever on so many levels. Skazillzors just ooze from the LCD screen when you watch this video. There are subtleties you may miss in the first viewing. Like for example, the tiny thumbnails in magix are actually lip-synced. The fact that this was devised and then created in just a week is borderline sickening. Everyone knows Ileia has become a goddess amongst men in the AMV-scene, but what makes me scared is if she and Nostromo made babies (Ilomo & Nostreia) then all of my AMV-dreams would probably come true at once and I'd... [Ends before brain implosion]

---

Long post I know. But I hope it helps you guys understand how the judging process worked. You can agree or disagree that's totally cool, we're all human. ('Cept Ileia, she's a freak of nature).
If there's any spelling mistakes or grammar issues I aplogise. But I spelled too many words deliberately incorrectly, used mostly Australian spellings and had too much hyphen-overdosing-fun to sort through it all. I might go ahead and quick-comment or OP these videos with my comments, if its appropriate in the near future so look out for that.

One thing I noticed about the entries is that the biggest winners host on the 'org. It makes my life easier with VIDID! Upload 'em winners!

Also if you entered a video and it wasn't shown in the extravaganza than that doesn't mean you failed, these are just the top 20 of the con, and believe me, it was hard deciding from about 14 downwards what would make it onto the list. Your video may have been screened at some of our other shows too:
~Best In Theme
~AMV Extras
Rest-assured people definitely watched your video and we were super-pleased overall with the quality of AMVs this year. Perhaps we lacked a some of the super-big-shots but the bottom of the barrel AMVs were severely limited. During the judging process there were not more than 4 AMVs we couldn't watch through. Which is a fantastic improvement on some of the other years. World, you're getting better!

Too much typing, must sleep. Thanks guys!

[Castor Troy]

19.
Comment: Our Action Winner, and I watched it win best Action at AVcon too. This has extremely solid and well-paced editing. There's a reason this video cleaned up Australia's too primary AMV events. It's got the story, the action & the effort put in to bring Old-Skool matrix-awesomeness, together with the fast-paced action of the survival horror juggernaut that is Resident Evil. My only beef with this video is that of Resident Evil... remember when it used to be just about fighting zombies?? Why are there so many ultra-beast ninja-hack black-tentacle-wielding insano-monsters... I miss the old days, survival horrors are getting too "DDR Timing" for my liking... [Ends RE5 Review]

Thanks for the kind words.

The video doesn't seem to be doing as well here in America, but it's nice to know that Australia loves it.

[HalOfBorg]

04.
Comment: I will mention that if we were holding a Fan-Favourite competition this probably would've finished 3rd. It's a great convention video, because you don't really expect where the audio is heading. And the structure of the AMV is so simple yet original that it carries the audio very nicely. Worth a lol.

I agree - thanks for the kind words. I'm happy people enjoyed it!