TheAX AMV Contest 2009 Finalists are...

[Radical_Yue]

From all the suggestions here I came up with an idea.

5 Categories: Action, Drama/Romance, Comedy, Upbeat(fun), AMtvPro

we must have Upbeat category

I can agree with the upbeat category.
Now, I'm going to say here and now that I'm a bit tired so I have yet to weed through the rest of these posts but I have something to say that I think will anger a few people. Deal with it.

With the exception of Vlad's video and the Pale Cocoon video, I've never seen a worse contest.

Action: This category was by far the worst. I'll only go over a few entries due to the fact that they were all pretty forgetable.
“The Good Ship Lifestyle” - While the song itself drove me crazy, I'm not going to let that affect my opinion of it. The editing wasn't bad but it was by far a drama video. WHERE WAS THE ACTION?! Maybe Usopp running with screens sliding behind him is action? Like I said, the video wasn't bad but it was just the wrong category entirely. Not to mention a mixture of bad aspect ratios throughout the video with correct ones.

“Spin On Simon” by Solomon Smith - Once again, where is the action? I guess poor lip syncing, bad aspect ratios and people talking about making it to the big time is action? This is one of those videos that would go into an "Upbeat/Fun" category if anything. There just wasn't any action.

“Fate/ Eternal Inferno” by Millenium Strife - Not only was this just a poor video but it is a total troll. The friends I was attending the con with had seen it multiple times YEARS before in their local AMV contest. Now, I know that judging through piles of videos isn't exactly fun or easy, but I believe the least you could do is double check your finalists to make sure they haven't been submitted to every damn con on the circuit for years and years. While it's up to the creator to pull something like this I always thought contest trolling was bad for everyone involved. The other entries lose out to an old video that's won other places and the audience gets to see an old video that has been submitted everywhere else they've gone.



Drama: Now this category actually had an very nice entry....THAT LOST TO A COMEDY. THAT right there is where this category failed the worst. How in the hell did you let a blatantly obvious COMEDY video into DRAMA and then worst of all...let it BEAT the only good damn drama video in the contest!? I mean really?

“Death Note Rhapsody” by BaitMaster - THAT! THAT IS THE VIDEO! What the hell guys? What the hell? Not only is it VERY poorly edited but it's in DRAMA. :/

“Amor Fatali” by TearX (Areeba Khan) - No complaints about this video, it actually should have won given that it WAS DRAMA, NOT UPBEAT and it actually had a point other than "guy face, girl face, guy face, girl face, we're showing you pictures of their faces so you should care about these characters"

I'm just going to stop there with drama since none of the other entries stood out in the least.

Comedy: Now this category...

“We Need You” by Vlad G. Pohnert - I must say, I love this video. I was actually laughing out loud and not for terrible technical problems along with bad editing like I was for the other entries. Vlad, you are a veteran and please don't take this as me trying to suck your cock or anything, but this was just a great video. The visual gags kept up with the audio and it was just overall a major win

Now for the rest of comedy...It was either upbeat or just a terrible video that relied solely on the audio to be funny. Half of the entries you could have played with the screen totally black and still you would have gotten the exact same amount of laughs. The "Robots" video was cute. That's all I have to say.

Pro: I take back what I said about action...pro takes the cake for the WORST category of all.
I mean really guys? You call yourselves "Pro" yet you can't even get a motherfucking aspect ratio correct? Jesus Christ! It's not that difficult! It's either fullscreen or widescreen. You either have bars on the top of your entry or you don't. You don't just say "Hmm...this requires me to check a couple extra boxes in my encoding program...I'm just going to stretch everything to hell and make all my characters look like they're from newer Clamp series! " It really is pathetic when you sit there and watch a category and decide on the winner of it based on which video was the least laughably terrible.


On the whole, I felt terrible for the audience the entire time. The turn out was staggering and they had to sit through shit for the most part. No wonder AMVs have gone downhill nowadays when there is nothing but crappy youtube videos being shown to the masses. While I think I will actually submit something next year, since it looks like all you have to do is have a combination of an anime the judges like with a song they like and a mildly ok video. This was one of the most disappointing contests I've ever seen.
Now I'm prepared for the massive waves of people to attack me for not liking either their video or their bestest buddy in the whole wide word's video, but damn it, when you make a video and you put it out there for the public to see you have made it subject to their opinion. You can't just sit around with your hands over your ears yelling madly to block out whatever bad they have to say.

I went to the contest. Staff did a great job on making things run flawlessly, editors (with the exception of a couple) did a miserable job of putting on a show. I can only hope that with a con this big they'll start getting good entries to show to all of those poor people that pay their good money to attend the con and watch videos.

[MisterFurious]

Hey I like that idea, Brad. Pro would denote that someone worked hard at that video and it should be judged by those who can spot the work put in. And we can keep the "creators favorite" since it encompasses the entire contest. Or maybe make the Pro category vids ineligible for the creators favorite awards.

That's a terrific idea!

From all the suggestions here I came up with an idea.

5 Categories: Action, Drama/Romance, Comedy, Upbeat(fun), AMtvPro

Audience votes on all categories except AMtv Pro, which are only counted on the Creators ballots. However, since we add another category, decrease the finalists in each category to 6. It ends up with an addition of only 2 videos to the contest overall. This probably wouldn't add any time to the contest, though, since upbeat vids tend to be shorter. The only problem I can see on the coordination side would be adding a new prize and plaque, but I have no knowledge of the budget situation so that is up in the air.

Now of course, this is all just speculation. Michael has done so well getting this contest back on track the past 2 years I wouldn't try to assume anything. This is just speculation on my part of what COULD be done. I know little of how this whole thing is put together.

One of the reasons Michael has done such a great job with the contest is because he listens to the creators. He's probably been listening this whole time, formulating a plan to make next year's contest the best ever! Your suggestion is the best encapsulation I've read of what we've been discussing, although I would still add a judging rule that no matter what category the creator enters their video in, if the judges laugh their asses off the first time they see it, it should be placed in Comedy, since the audience will also laugh their asses off.

How to measure that? If the judges get up from their seats and their asses are still in their chairs, then we'd know they laughed their asses off.

[MisterFurious]

Pro: I take back what I said about action...pro takes the cake for the WORST category of all.
I mean really guys? You call yourselves "Pro" yet you can't even get a motherfucking aspect ratio correct? Jesus Christ! It's not that difficult! It's either fullscreen or widescreen. You either have bars on the top of your entry or you don't. You don't just say "Hmm...this requires me to check a couple extra boxes in my encoding program...I'm just going to stretch everything to hell and make all my characters look like they're from newer Clamp series! ".

This is a particular thorn in my side, as well, but I don't think it's fair to blame the editors for it without knowing what happened. For example, Rider KNEW her video was being screened in the wrong aspect ratio. Perhaps it was a problem with the equipment? No matter how much Michael and his crackerjack team can plan, mistakes do happen. Like at FanimeCon. They asked creators to submit their videos in 16:9 format if the original source was widescreen, and guess what happened? The idiots from the performance hall who owned the video equipment insisted that the 4:3 screen be "filled", and since it was their equipment, every 16:9 video in the entire contest was screened stretched! I was one of the lucky ones whose source material was 4:3. Is this the editors' fault? I don't think so.

[Hagaren Viper]

I can agree with the upbeat category.
Now, I'm going to say here and now that I'm a bit tired so I have yet to weed through the rest of these posts but I have something to say that I think will anger a few people. Deal with it.

I do agree with you for the most part. While there were a lot of videos that I enjoyed, it seems a few were stranded in categories for lack of another place to go (Perfect Day and Spin on Simon are begging for an Upbeat category). Not only that, there were also some poorly edited, end in one case, barely edited vids in the contest that just shouldn't have been there, though I won't point names. Kind of makes me wonder if the judges are any better than the audience when it comes to judging if they let things like that get through.

And for the record, I thought that Drama was much weaker than AMtV Pro (Myself included).

[Radical_Yue]

Pro: I take back what I said about action...pro takes the cake for the WORST category of all.
I mean really guys? You call yourselves "Pro" yet you can't even get a motherfucking aspect ratio correct? Jesus Christ! It's not that difficult! It's either fullscreen or widescreen. You either have bars on the top of your entry or you don't. You don't just say "Hmm...this requires me to check a couple extra boxes in my encoding program...I'm just going to stretch everything to hell and make all my characters look like they're from newer Clamp series! ".

This is a particular thorn in my side, as well, but I don't think it's fair to blame the editors for it without knowing what happened. For example, Rider KNEW her video was being screened in the wrong aspect ratio. Perhaps it was a problem with the equipment? No matter how much Michael and his crackerjack team can plan, mistakes do happen. Like at FanimeCon. They asked creators to submit their videos in 16:9 format if the original source was widescreen, and guess what happened? The idiots from the performance hall who owned the video equipment insisted that the 4:3 screen be "filled", and since it was their equipment, every 16:9 video in the entire contest was screened stretched! I was one of the lucky ones whose source material was 4:3. Is this the editors' fault? I don't think so.

I think it partially is :/ If you really are concerned about having your video messed up and played in the wrong aspect it's not hard to add the black bars to the top and bottom yourself. I've done it for every single widescreen entry I've ever submitted to a con and NEVER had a problem. And it's a saying that I go by "If I can do it, ANYONE should be able to." I'm not a "top ranked" editor and I never claim to be, but the mass of bad aspect ratios was just horrendous. It really isn't that hard to do everything you can to make playback easier for the staff. Now if you do EVERYTHING you can and still have your entry fucked up, that's when I'll have sympathy for you, until then you're just lazy.

And I'm not just singling out the videos that were stretched to all hell, but overlapping aspect ratios and random borders is just inexcusable. If you're going to go through the trouble of editing a video and submitting to a contest the least you could do is make sure the tech side is correct.

I do agree with you for the most part. While there were a lot of videos that I enjoyed, it seems a few were stranded in categories for lack of another place to go (Perfect Day and Spin on Simon are begging for an Upbeat category). Not only that, there were also some poorly edited, end in one case, barely edited vids in the contest that just shouldn't have been there, though I won't point names. Kind of makes me wonder if the judges are any better than the audience when it comes to judging if they let things like that get through.

And for the record, I thought that Drama was much weaker than AMtV Pro (Myself included).

The other category's I will let slide on being bad, they're just submitting to submit. PRO on the other hand is a category you submit to when you think you're the top of the pile. It's bullshit when you submit a video that shouldn't have even been allowed into the contest to a category that should be for the best videos.

[Darkseid]

Honestly I was hoping for Armor Fatali to win, that AMV had so much in it. Especially with the ending, as much as people didn't vote for it, I believe that AMV deserved Best Drama or even Best of Show for just telling a amazing love story.

So which one did you pick?

I remember flipping a coin to decide. (Really it was that close for me.) I may have voted for Celebration for the nostalgia factor but... I dunno..

Either way though, nice vid man. And thanks for putting it up. I really wanted to get my hands on it after the AMV contest screening.

Armor Fatali should've won Best Drama since it was actually a drama vid and a nicely done one on top of that. I almost liked the one that used the rap song simply because it was different than most of the music I hear at AMV screenings.

Oh and I have to add something about the Costume Contest on Saturday: The presentations were largely good, but everything after that was... rather bad. Very poor stage management that totally disconnected the audience. If you're going to have someone as obviously talented at the 2008 AX idol is (can't remember name now), don't have a bunch of activity going on around her like stage assembly and un-directed support dancers all around her. Very very bad.

[MisterFurious]

Now if you do EVERYTHING you can and still have your entry fucked up, that's when I'll have sympathy for you, until then you're just lazy.

I just thought you were being a little quick to bag on creators without knowing the whole story. Don't just assume that everyone whose video screened stretched was being "lazy." Since I have always submitted 4:3, I don't know the circumstances. Perhaps Michael and/or Rider can shed some light on the subject, people who would actually know what happened, before anybody speculates.

And for the most part, I agree with your assessment of the contest. However, I accept that the contest has rules, one of which is that there are a set number of videos per category. This is because they have main events for three hours that they need to fill. If not enough people submit in Comedy, then they have to nominate some of the less funny ones. Creators also have a hand in this, submitting funny videos in Drama because they don't think they would stand a chance against the inevitable dominating video (which this year turned out to be Vlad's). Adding an Upbeat/Fun category would give some remedy to this, since they would have to reduce the number of nominees per category to 5 or 6, but the bottom line is that a contest is going to be a snapshot of the creators that submitted to it. No one can hold a gun to Kevin Caldwell's head and make him edit AMV's again just because you're upset with the quality of the contest. If you don't like the contest, don't go, or make something badass and bring it, both literally and figuratively.

[XStylus]

“Fate/ Eternal Inferno” by Millenium Strife - Not only was this just a poor video but it is a total troll. The friends I was attending the con with had seen it multiple times YEARS before in their local AMV contest. Now, I know that judging through piles of videos isn't exactly fun or easy, but I believe the least you could do is double check your finalists to make sure they haven't been submitted to every damn con on the circuit for years and years.

Has it ever been sent to AX? No? Then there's no problem, and there's no rule against it.

A video having participated in a contest at another con should have zero bearing over its qualifications to participate in another convention elsewhere, nor should it ever. I hold zero respect for conventions that have such a ridiculous rule. Most importantly, if I have a winning vid, you better believe I'm going to send it to as many cons as possible and try to win as many awards as possible. This is a competition, not a tee-ball "everybody wins" game.

As for your disappointment with the quality of submissions in some categories (particularly AMTV), the only solution is for more people to submit more videos to those categories. Please.

[The Wired Knight]

Regarding AMTV Pro I think there are a couple of problems making it a creator judged catagory.

1. How will this influence audience voting best of show? They will have seven videos that they cannot pick the best of but are able to compete with the other 21 in other catagories? I actually see a lot of audience confusion on this one that could potentially hurt the chances of those videos in that catagory.

2. An alternative to fixing problem one would be to make AMTVPro its own contest akin to AWA pro, which I think is intensely problematic to now create a contest that would run almost like AWA masters.

3. Lastly I would think there would be a huge problem with stacking the votes. Vlad mentioned at AX that AWA last year had issues due to a number of creators who knew each other stacking the votes of Pro in specific catagories. At AX this could be done quite easily given the small number of entries in AMTV that would allow five or so friends to skew the votes in their favor. Remember, unlike AWA Pro where all contestants get to see the videos, only those attending AX would be able to vote here (and potentially their guests since Michael would be hard pressed to crosscheck every ballot he recieves up front to see that it is indeed an editor balot). So the voting pool is incredibly small to the typical AWA Pro.


Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that creator voting is a bad idea, but I think it actually opens up a huge can of worms and problems that are extremely difficult to deal with given how the contest is structured at Anime Expo. Frankly I think a lot of the problem comes down to the contest being labeled highly technical which causes audience members to only vote on videos based on special effects, and ony the ones they can instantly recognize at that, masking generlaly recieves no props from an audience so they end up voting for the flashiest thing they see.

[Stryyder]

I tend to agree with xstylus. While I believe that, at a point, there is a "retirement" factor with videos (as Nighthawk has done with Be a Man, and Rider with One-Eyed Fish), the fact that there is NO rule in the AX regs about a video's winnings and showings at other cons means that, regardless of what you think they should do, Michael and the rest can't disqualify a video for that fact. You can make the arguement to Michael to add that rule, but as it stands, there are no real reasons why it shouldn't have been in this year's contest.

As far as aspect ratios, again that is a problem often with the AV crew. Rider spent 3 months on that video, at least a week of that spent making sure the AR exported correctly for standard viewing. Yeah, she could have added black bars, and may in the future, but to TOTALLY write off a video because of a technical difficulty like that? The phrase "shit happens" comes to mind.

I hate to sound like I'm coming off as pugelistic, but I just think you are being a bit harsh. Yeah, there are videos I just don't see why they made it into the contest, but without knowing the mitigating factors I'm not going to totally destroy them in critique. Not everyone can be a Vlad or Kevin Caldwell.

While I was underwhelmed by many videos this year, the only true problem I had with the contest is that DN Rhapsody should have been in comedy. Everything else is just subjective.