AWA 2016 The Video Art Track - Deadlines SEP 4 & SEP 13 [EXTENDED]

[Xophilarus]

I really dislike the idea of a top 10. I feel like it is always really weird when different videos on a really wide variety of genres are directly competing on the same ground if that makes sense. A really amazing drama video is generally judged differently than an amazing upbeat video, and in the end, it makes it REALLY hard to actually determine which would be the better video overall. The second reason, and honestly bigger reason to me, is, as many people mentioned before, getting "6th" place just does not sound or feel nearly as rewarding as a best in category award. I am not super against the idea of having set categories, but I do really support the idea of leaving 2 or 3 spots open for potential flex categories with 10 fixed categories. That gives people more of a solid idea of what to aim for with the potential flexibility of it being open to add a couple more from year to year that may be prominent in one year but not the next. Also, if most of the categories do end up being fixed categories, I do believe it is REALLY important to have us the participants be part of the discussion, but by your email/post that seems to be the general plan so I'm good with that.

As far as the voting issue goes, I do believe it would be helpful to send a reminder a day or two before each round ends since they felt easy to miss this year if you didn't frequently check the AWA website. I know I had a few people message me directly asking when it closed.

I also like the idea of swapping between the two contests as well. Usually a ton of the audience leaves before Pro shows, which is always a bummer since that's the more serious of the two contests. I feel like this would be the best compromise to help resolve the issue since if Pro played first, people just would leave even more when it is Expo's turn. I think no matter what direction is taken as far as the order goes, there will be a certain level of drawbacks, but I did feel like I would throw my opinion in on that topic. As far as a pattern, you could potentially show the winner of whatever Pro category is most relevant to the expo videos that played before it. It is a tricky call though since there are multiple contests being juggled around in the same time slot.

[jingoro]

Assume I need to pre-order trophies well in advance... what do y'all think of "flex" trophies not mentioning the award they are for? I order "Best Video", "Best Drama", etc... AND I order 2 or 3 extra trophies without any mention of what they're for.

Another option is to not order the flex trophies, and hand you a proxy trophy on stage, then, after the convention, we can order the official trophies and get them shipped (oh, we have such a good track record on that... who doesn't have their glass from last year yet? ...wait, don't tell me, I know who you are.)

Showing the relevant pro category winner either before or after would result in long runs of drama, romance, sentimental, etc that would likely clear the room as previously discussed. Play order is always an audience-focused decision, and my goal there is to attract and keep the largest possible audience to applaud you when you come up on stage.

[Shin-AMV]

With regards to what trophies say, if all they said was AWA PRO on them I'd honestly be fine with that, dunno if it bothers others tho.

I can understand that play order matters so thats just a whole other mess and a half to deal with trying to balance which genre/video goes in the playorder and if mixing it up too much dilutes the significance of a Best Drama in Pro because it shows up in between two silly videos from expo. Or if enough of the audience even realizes the distinction between pro and expo to begin with and aren't just passively absorbing whatever video they get shown and then confuse expo winners for pro winners and vice versa, or even if they do, do that, if that even matters to enough editors cause the fact they got a trophy and their video played in front of an audience was enough.

Fuck.... I'm just going to say whatever decisions get made, I don't really envy Jingoro's position (appreciate you take the time for it though). Its a lot to factor, good luck mang. lol.

[The Wired Knight]

A system where the lack of a vote was, itself, a vote for "none of the above" or similar would be nice. Voting in the contest is a responsibility. Not doing it should be an act of protest, not of laziness.

Problem with vote by omission is that right now it means nothing - the winner is tallied based on who actually received votes. Yes it might be personally satisfying but it fails to send a message.

Comparatively if we were to count a non-vote as a vote for none/eliminating the category then people who forget are essentially having their vote cast for them.

[The Wired Knight]

I'd sooner see us throw out a comedy award in that case, which is why it's so important for people to pay attention to phase 1 of voting.

I mean it's pretty much the option of giving everyone who tried a participation award, awarding Earnest Fellates Himself to Death (literally 90 minutes off the shambling corpse of Jim Varney being manipulated to do unspeakable things in the name of "comedy" [pretty much my feels on this year's entrants, but I digress]) an award for being the closest thing to comedy, or saying "no. I'm sorry no comedy award this year. Next time at least try."

I disagree... if this is how stuff is going down can we get rid of half of the dramatic (Drama, Sentimental, Romance) based categories because I didn't feel many of the videos in those categories were exceptional? I would say we could get rid of Action as well then...

That is, in fact, the original intent of the Category Selection phase, in addition to finding nifty one-off categories. If Drama stinks and you don't feel there are "enough videos to make the category interesting" then it should not have been checked during category selection.

I don't think that's necessarily effective as it works though - given that I think category selection needs to be built into the nominations phase. Some people, including myself on a few occasions, have voted on category selection before finishing all the viewing - additionally staple categories basically are a shoe-in vote by just about anyone who just feels it "should be there" regardless of the quality of the entries.

Category nomination is efficient to allow for the creation and weeding of new categories but I do not believe, in its current format, it allows for a thoughtful analysis of if a staple category should be included at all this year.

I do honestly believe that you can manage a threshold of nominations to a category that the top four are not by default pushed in to a category however - but rather they need either a percentage of people voting to vote for them or a minimum number of votes to actually be considered for the award. This woudl allow a non-vote in phase two to effectively better protest a category than a non-vote in phase one which I would wager some people inadvertently skip because they aren't interested in new categories and just move on with the staples.

[Warlike Swans]

How would this variant of the top 10 be?

People vote for their favorite videos and categories at the same time. The videos are all listed, people check the 10 videos they think most deserve a spotlight. Then they select three possible categories the video could be acknowledged for. A list of category suggestions could be listed somewhere, and as people suggest new things, they get added to that list. Jingoro (possibly conferring with other non-competitors) choses which suggested award to give the videos with the most votes. There could be a pre-ordained process for tie breaking (eg, Jingoro picking based on what would round out the contest categorically, having a tie-breaking from of voting from contestants, having a tie breaking round from non-competing editors). The video with the most overall votes gets Best in Show, everything else gets an appropriate award without knowing the ranking.

Creative award titles can still be created, the contest will be guaranteed to award a certain number of videos (rather than possibly having a couple videos sweep multiple categories), and meta gaming is decreased, and participants are still involved in the category creation process.

I also want to restate that a reminder the day before voting for anything closes is something that I believe is important for busy and/or distractible people. I think that having so many category suggestions only appear on the last day, and probably few people voting that day is part of why we have categories that don't have many great options for the this year.

I also think, especially for new comers to this contest, an outline of how voting works would be useful. Maybe have that information with the first email, that gives the download link, since it's known that people have an unfortunate tendency to skim contest rules.

[jingoro]

The trouble with voiding a category after category selection is that I actually order trophies immediately after category selection closes. There's a 3-4 week lead time to get trophies (especially the nice new glass ones) so I don't have a choice in this matter unless I make sure ALL voting that could eliminate a category closes before I order trophies. That'd move up the deadline. I can tell you right now all the trophies have already been ordered and we're stuck with them. Either we award them, or a very nice piece of glass gets wasted. If I start wasting glass, my boss is gonna get upset with me, I'm sure.

[jingoro]

Some people, including myself on a few occasions, have voted on category selection before finishing all the viewing

WTF!? That's like voting for a political candidate in a non-partisan election without even checking their position statement.

additionally staple categories basically are a shoe-in vote by just about anyone who just feels it "should be there" regardless of the quality of the entries.

Then you're doing it wrong, the instructions specifically state to only vote for categories with sufficient material to be interesting.

Category nomination is efficient to allow for the creation and weeding of new categories but I do not believe, in its current format, it allows for a thoughtful analysis of if a staple category should be included at all this year.

Then it is broken, does not serve its purpose, and I am more convinced it needs to be eliminated than I ever was before.

I have too many people who don't vote at all, or don't vote certain categories, to use a non-vote as a "no" vote. I'm happy to add a "none of the above" to the final vote, but it's far too late for me to cancel a trophy order by then... that wastes money, and makes my discussions with my superiors difficult.

[jingoro]

How would this variant of the top 10 be?

(much description trimmed for brevity) This is VERY similar to how Expo works... I'll think about it, but I think Pro would lose a lot of its uniqueness under a "these N videos are worthy, now brand them" scheme.

[Rider4Z]

BLAH all this talk. There is no secret formula that everyone will be pleased as punch with.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wctkqQAK2Kk