AMV League Feedback Thread

[KiddTheManiac]

Alright, we're about halfway through our third season running America's first nationwide multi-convention circuit of AMV Contests, and we have to say we've never been more impressed by the consistent quality of videos we see pouring in from the AMV Community.

But from the beginning, we've noticed that a good number of fantastic AMVs never seem to get submitted to any of our events. And that number, as of late, seems to be growing. To the point where we now seem to be having trouble getting enough entries for a contest at all.

So we think it's time for a chat with all of y'all, the editors. How do you think we're doing? What can we do to improve? If there's a reason you've never entered an AMV League contests, what is that reason?

We want to hear from you, no matter what you have to say. Please be brutal with us; we can take it.

[PieandBeer]

so i personally do not enter every contest/especially smaller contests out of laziness and wanting local editors to shine. it's an amazing experience to see your own vid at a local con and if every editor entered every contest, then i fear these editors would be drowned out and discouraged.

additionally i'm personally kinda weirded out by the award structure in these contests. the amv league coordinator mentioned in the amv contest discussion here that you do not do audience voting. this says to me that the awards are judges choice but who are the judges? why is their opinion more valid than an audience? how come big cons like expo and sakura have no qualms about audience choices? I understand these cons are smaller i'm just miffed at the idea that any audience choice is bad because like i enter contests for the fans not to please judges/other editors yknow? if i do not think the awards of a contest are fair or justified i will not enter. i think you just need more transparency and like qualifications of the judges presented up front to give a better reputation to what these contests and awards mean if you're gonna go the pure judges choice route.

but honestly i miss deadlines for major contests out of pure forgetfulness, so do not take editors not entering as a slight towards the contest. i think it is great that a competent group of people are taking over these smaller contests. personally an idea of a league/circuit drowns out how every contest is unique by saying these contests are equal and similar, but that's really for other editors to decide with their entries.

it's great that you're asking for feedback and i wish you guys the best of luck as this league matures

[BasharOfTheAges]

You've got yourselves a growing cartel and rules that heavily favor the majority of bad videos over the minority of good ones by removing the ability to compete again and again. I'm not sure why anyone who makes content that isn't mediocre or worse would be inclined to submit anything to you... Can you explain why you'd assume anyone who regularly makes quality stuff that gets shown to dozens of audiences would want to further enable a system like yours by making it successful?

Killing that sort of idea on the vine so it doesn't spread would be the first thing on most people's minds.

[Pathos Prime]

additionally i'm personally kinda weirded out by the award structure in these contests. the amv league coordinator mentioned in the amv contest discussion here that you do not do audience voting. this says to me that the awards are judges choice but who are the judges? why is their opinion more valid than an audience? how come big cons like expo and sakura have no qualms about audience choices? i think you just need more transparency and like qualifications of the judges presented up front to give a better reputation to what these contests and awards mean if you're gonna go the pure judges choice route.

Our serious issues with audience judging come from observing several convention contests.

First, audience voting heavily favorites popular anime and popular songs over quality of video. A LOT of audience voting tends to be heavily biased towards fanservice and memes, and while neither of those are inherently bad things, they don't necessarily make for a good AMV.
Second, in larger contests, audience voting is influenced by judge's choice anyway, as judges must pick and choose finalists for audience members to vote for.
Finally, and this may be the biggest issue, audience voting is allowed by anyone who comes and goes throughout the entire presentation, even those who come in late or leave early, and don't necessarily watch every eligible video.

As for the judges, well... so far they're just us. Kidd the Maniac and myself. We're both AMV Editors, though of late the only editing we've been doing is for convention opening ceremonies AMVs. The AMV League scoring system is designed to allow any existing convention judges to adapt their contest to our system and become an Official AMV League Event, though no one has taken us up on that offer as of yet. But more than that, our strict scoring system means that every single award we give has to be logically justified. If an editor emails us asking for their score, they get an in-depth explanation of why it ranked the way it did. I'm not sure how we can be more transparent than that; transparency is a big thing for us and one of the reasons we started AMV League in the first place. We want to give editors specific feedback rather than just making broad-stroke comments like "It's amateurish" or "This style is overdone."

[Pathos Prime]

Can you explain why you'd assume anyone who regularly makes quality stuff that gets shown to dozens of audiences would want to further enable a system like yours by making it successful?

We feel that this is, in itself, a problem.

So many convention contests nationwide receive exactly the same entries and end up exactly the same. And it drowns out inexperienced and aspiring editors completely. This may possibly be why there are so few "mid-tier" editors; either you've been doing this for ages, or you've gotten disappointed and given up.

AMV League, we feel, is a good compromise. While experienced editors tend to receive the convention-level awards and move up to vie for Best AMV of the Year, less-seasoned editors, at the very least, reach Finalist status and actually get showcased at the convention, motivating them to improve and try for a Best award during a future event. In most contests, expert editor submissions are so drastically overrepresented that most editors never get to see their work on the big screen at all.

We do understand that the 'one-shot-only' nature of AMV League may worry some editors about submitting their works, as what happens if someone else happens to submit some out-of-nowhere jaw-dropping AMV that scores higher and moves on to the Nationals, while your video, which may have won at any other event, is relegated to Honorable Mention and the cold annals of never winning a prize. Currently, we mitigate this somewhat using a Judge's Choice system - both Kidd and I select a single non-winning video that we happen to think needs a second chance, and those two videos move on to compete equally in the Nationals.

We are considering modifying this in Season 4, as first of all two videos aren't enough - there are so many AMVs we get that we genuinely feel bad don't get a shot in the Nationals under the current rules. And second, we feel that making it subjectively Judge-based removes transparency. What we are considering for Season 4 is a "Wild Card" system rather than a Choice system, where the four (I think would be a good number) highest scoring non-winning videos compete in the Nationals, leaving it up to numerics instead of our personal whims. This should assuage any worries about "wasting your one shot" on a contest where you just get unlucky, as a good-enough video will move on to the next level on its own merit regardless of whether it wins any awards at the convention level.

[Tigrin]

As annoying and frustrating as it is that every AMV contest is different, with different submission rules, and different judging, and even different categories... I like that they're all different. AMVs are extremely subjective. What the judges at one con might love and want to give an award to, the judges at another might not consider worth putting in the finalists. So it's worth submitting to different cons. If you've streamlined several cons and put them all under one set of judges, I see that as a serious drawback. I've done really well at some cons, and never managed to make the finalists at others. It's kind of a gamble and I prefer it that way.

I think everyone understands and accepts that AMV contests with audience awards are a popularity contest. Of course they are. Often times the most well-made or technically sound videos aren't necessarily the ones that audiences enjoy, and people tend to vote for what they enjoy rather than what they appreciate. There's probably a reason that big budget blockbusters like the Marvel movies are so popular and make so much money from audiences, but get passed over at award shows. People like going to see movies that are fun and make them feel good. It doesn't feel great as an editor when you spend a lot of time on an AMV and the audience passes over your video for one featuring popular anime, or one that's funny. But I feel like ultimately unless you're editing entirely for the love and acceptance of a general audience (a fool's errand if ever there was one), that's something you kind of have to accept. That's why I see a lot of value in making the finalists for a con, because that says that the judges at least saw the effort in your video and think it's important enough to show people. Not everyone can win.

I can't say I've ever wanted to know my scores or the judges' specific criticisms from a contest... I put myself down enough without having that stuff echoing in my head.

[BasharOfTheAges]

Can you explain why you'd assume anyone who regularly makes quality stuff that gets shown to dozens of audiences would want to further enable a system like yours by making it successful?

We feel that this is, in itself, a problem.

So many convention contests nationwide receive exactly the same entries and end up exactly the same. And it drowns out inexperienced and aspiring editors completely. This may possibly be why there are so few "mid-tier" editors; either you've been doing this for ages, or you've gotten disappointed and given up.

AMV League, we feel, is a good compromise. While experienced editors tend to receive the convention-level awards and move up to vie for Best AMV of the Year, less-seasoned editors, at the very least, reach Finalist status and actually get showcased at the convention, motivating them to improve and try for a Best award during a future event. In most contests, expert editor submissions are so drastically overrepresented that most editors never get to see their work on the big screen at all.

We do understand that the 'one-shot-only' nature of AMV League may worry some editors about submitting their works, as what happens if someone else happens to submit some out-of-nowhere jaw-dropping AMV that scores higher and moves on to the Nationals, while your video, which may have won at any other event, is relegated to Honorable Mention and the cold annals of never winning a prize. Currently, we mitigate this somewhat using a Judge's Choice system - both Kidd and I select a single non-winning video that we happen to think needs a second chance, and those two videos move on to compete equally in the Nationals.

We are considering modifying this in Season 4, as first of all two videos aren't enough - there are so many AMVs we get that we genuinely feel bad don't get a shot in the Nationals under the current rules. And second, we feel that making it subjectively Judge-based removes transparency. What we are considering for Season 4 is a "Wild Card" system rather than a Choice system, where the four (I think would be a good number) highest scoring non-winning videos compete in the Nationals, leaving it up to numerics instead of our personal whims. This should assuage any worries about "wasting your one shot" on a contest where you just get unlucky, as a good-enough video will move on to the next level on its own merit regardless of whether it wins any awards at the convention level.

You didn't answer the question at all. Why would you expect anyone to help out a system that's actively working against their own interests? Because it produces less entertaining contests?

[Kionon]

Why is this in General AMV and not contests? The League is a contest, right? I think it should be moved, but if you had a particular purpose for putting it in General AMV, I'll hold off until I get an explanation.

As for being on topic, I only submit to a few contests, and not every year. Contests I tend to submit to regularly are Youma and Anime Evolution, and I used to submit regularly to AWA and Anime Central, but I haven't in a long time. I never question the judging, usually, except maybe a few years ago I had some issues with AWA Pro. And I've won at Anime Evolution and Youma, and only after well over a decade of editing. I generally assume going into any contest that I won't win, so I don't really see how League rules would give me reason to desire participation or make any extra effort.

[Scintilla]

But more than that, our strict scoring system means that every single award we give has to be logically justified. If an editor emails us asking for their score, they get an in-depth explanation of why it ranked the way it did. [...] We want to give editors specific feedback rather than just making broad-stroke comments like "It's amateurish" or "This style is overdone."

I'm curious about this. How often DO you get editors contacting you asking for feedback?

Before I became a contest coordinator in 2012, I always expected to get a lot of that kind of request. But now that I've done five years of contests totalling hundreds of videos, only one editor that I can remember ever asked how his/her video scored in the prescreenings, and I don't think that was even in pursuit of specific feedback.

[Kionon]

Before I became a contest coordinator in 2012, I always expected to get a lot of that kind of request. But now that I've done five years of contests totalling hundreds of videos, only one editor that I can remember ever asked how his/her video scored in the prescreenings, and I don't think that was even in pursuit of specific feedback.

My question as well, honestly. It's not going to change the result, so what's the point? Of course I usually know precisely why something of mine doesn't make it to finals or if finals doesn't win. So I'm more curious why something wins than why something loses, but even then, I don't think I've ever asked why it won. I think I was just happy that it did, given my zero expectation of ever winning anything.