2018 VCA Updates, Questions & Feedback Thread

[Kireblue]

Q: What are the VCAs (Viewer Choice Awards)?

The AnimeMusicVideos.org Viewers Choice Awards is an annual opportunity to recognize and acknowledge the videos that stand out above and beyond the rest. It is a way for everyone who enjoys anime music videos here to say “Thank you” to the ones who went out of their way to put that extra effort of creating a video that is really exceptional. And so every year, we let members vote on what videos they thought were the very best from the previous year. There are awards for Best Action, Editor of the Year, Best MEP, and quite a few more! If you want to see what has won in previous years you can go here and click through the years!

Hello everyone. The wait is finally over, and the 2018 A-M-V.org Viewers Choice Awards have officially begun! This year, we've made a number of changes to the voting process, and so if you haven't been following this announcement thread, here's a list of the major ones.

• *All videos that premiered online in 2017 are eligible to participate in the VCAs (even videos that aren't cataloged on A-M-V.org).
  
  *Voting will be conducted using google form verification, and will be open to both A-M-V.org members and non-members.
  
  *Nomination threads have been created for each category, and every eligible video that gets posted will be added to the corresponding voting pool for round 1.
  
  *The top 6-8 videos voted on by the community will automatically move on the the 2nd round of voting. Then, a panel of judges will select an additional 6-8 videos to be added as well.
  
  *After the 2nd round of voting, the top 4-6 videos voted on by the community will move on to the final round of voting.

As mentioned above, we've created a panel of judges to help with the round 1 voting process. They were selected due to their long standing involvement and notoriety within the AMV community, and their past experiences with watching and curating AMVs, The individuals selected for this are as follows:

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VCA Schedule
Nominations: 02/21/2018 - 03/05/2018
Round 1 Voting: 03/6/2018 - 03/16/2018
Judges Deliberation: 03/17 - 03/23
Round 2 Voting: 03/24/2018 - 04/04/2018
Final Round Voting: 04/06/2018 - 04/15/2018

All rounds will end on the scheduled day at 11:59pm EST.

If you have questions about any of these changes, feel free to ask them in this thread.

[Kireblue]

This award is for the editor whose entire body of work throughout the year has been of a consistently high standard and worthy of praise - someone who should be awarded not just for a single shining video, but instead for producing great videos all year long.

Note: If there are editors that you'd like to nominate for this category, you can use Video ID tags to post links to their cataloged videos, or you can simply post a Youtube or Vimeo Embed of them. Self promoting is not allowed in this thread and should be restricted to the Shameless Self Promotion thread.

I'm not sure if the new system really works that well for nominating "Editor of the year". And so what does everyone think about any editor that is nominated for anything in any other category automatically being nominated for editor of the year as well? Would this also work for "most improved"?

[Kireblue]

One unintended side effect that we noticed from this year's VCA change is that since non cataloged videos are allowed to participate, there's nothing stopping people from nominating non-anime videos from shows like (RWBY, Samurai Jack, Avatar, Korra, etc). And so we see this as an opportunity to make the competition a little more inclusive to content that falls in line with the spirit of Japanese animation and AMVs. In other words, non-anime videos are now allowed to participate in the VCAs as long as they look and feel like Japanese animation. Non anime videos are still prohibited from being cataloged on the site, but feel free to start nominating them in the category threads.

The judges will serve as a final say as to what content qualifies as "the spirit of Japanese animation", and so we won't be making a comprehensive list of what's allowed and what isn't. But RWBY, Samurai Jack, Avatar, Korra, and various Video Game Cinematics have already been approved. We're drawing the line at shows like Steven Universe and Miraculous Ladybug though. Although they are heavily influenced by anime, their art styles are closer to American cartoons. Here's a few videos to give you a idea of what's allowed

[Kireblue]

Another change that I feel should be made is splitting the "Trailer/ Commercial" category. I believe that there are more than enough trailers to have a standalone category. Also, I feel that adding commercials and TV openings to the "Parody" category definition would make it clearer and more distinguishable from the current trailer category.

[Kireblue]

Hey everybody. I'm running a bit behind schedule in terms of setting up the round 1 voting, but I hope to have everything ready to go by 6pm EST today or earlier.

[Kireblue]

Thank you for your patience everyone! We're starting just a little late, but round 1 of the 2018 VCAs have officially begun! You can go to each individual category thread to find its corresponding voting form. If you notice errors, or have any difficulties with the voting forms, please let me know in this thread.

Note: The "Best Use of Single Anime", and "Rookie of the Year" categories have been removed for this year due to their nomination restrictions being incompatible with the new voting system. But we may revisit adding them back next year.

Also, I just want to take this moment to thank all of you that participated in the nomination round. Despite being our first year using the new system, over 350 videos, and over 200 editors were nominated by you guys! You kinda worked me to death trying to keep up with all of the posts . But thanks to that, I was able to come up with a improved and much more automated system for next year. I'm really glad that I'll have all of 2018 to fine tune it .

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How to Vote

In each of the category threads, there's a corresponding embedded Google Form and playlist that features all of the nominated videos for that category. To vote, you simply need to be logged into a google account (Youtube, Gmail, Google Drive, etc), and the form will use your profile to anonymously submit your responses. You're also able to go back to the form as many times as you like to update or change your vote. As long as you click the "SUBMIT" button, your responses will be recorded and remembered if you need to edit them later.

You can use the Youtube playlist embedded underneath the form to watch whatever videos were nominated for that category. 98% of the nominated videos were available on Youtube, but for the remaining 2% that weren't able to be added to our playlists, you can access alternative streaming links for them by clicking on the "List of All Nominated Videos" document found above each form. To make finding videos as easy as possible, the document contains separate sheets sorted by each category. If you notice that a video is missing from the sheet or voting list, please let us know as soon as possible.

There is no set limit for how many videos you can vote for in a category, but we recommend 10-15. The top 8 voted videos in each category are guaranteed to move on to the Semifinals. An additional 4-8 videos will be selected by our panel of Judges to move on as well. For the most part, we expect that the videos selected by the Judges will consist of the videos voted 9th-15th, but other videos may be selected depending on the category. If a video that you'd like to vote for isn't in the nomination list, feel free to post its Youtube link in the category threads for the judges' consideration. Even videos that weren't posted during the nomination period can become eligible to compete in the Semifinals.[/spoiler]

List of All Nominated Videos
Also includes streaming links to each video


Voting Forms
To access non embedded versions of the voting forms, click the following links

A embedded version of each form can be found in its corresponding category thread
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[EpicMango]

Hey everybody. I'm running a bit behind schedule in terms of setting up the round 1 voting, but I hope to have everything ready to go by 6pm EST today or earlier.

How long do I have before I have to complete the voting. There are a ton of videos to watch, this is my first time watching any of them.

[Kireblue]

Hey everybody. I'm running a bit behind schedule in terms of setting up the round 1 voting, but I hope to have everything ready to go by 6pm EST today or earlier.

How long do I have before I have to complete the voting. There are a ton of videos to watch, this is my first time watching any of them.

VCA Schedule
Nominations: 02/21/2018 - 03/05/2018
Round 1 Voting: 03/6/2018 - 03/16/2018
Judges Deliberation: 03/17 - 03/23
Round 2 Voting: 03/24/2018 - 04/03/2018
Final Round Voting: 04/04/2018 - 04/12/2018

You'll have until 11:59 EST on Friday March 16th to finish your round 1 voting.

[EpicMango]

Hey everybody. I'm running a bit behind schedule in terms of setting up the round 1 voting, but I hope to have everything ready to go by 6pm EST today or earlier.

How long do I have before I have to complete the voting. There are a ton of videos to watch, this is my first time watching any of them.

VCA Schedule
Nominations: 02/21/2018 - 03/05/2018
Round 1 Voting: 03/6/2018 - 03/16/2018
Judges Deliberation: 03/17 - 03/23
Round 2 Voting: 03/24/2018 - 04/03/2018
Final Round Voting: 04/04/2018 - 04/12/2018

You'll have until 11:59 EST on Friday March 16th to finish your round 1 voting.

Ok good to know

[AllySantra]

I'm so excited to see that you decided to move forward with the VCAs! Can't wait to start watching all of these.