Freakin' amen to that!!Rider4Z wrote: ↑Tue Jul 02, 2019 5:07 pmFor those who haven't been around AX as long I thought it'd be good to share this with y'all. I started attending AX and the AMV Contest in 2004. There were 2 more coordinators before Troy took over in 2012 and both left because AX screwed them over.
The first was James (I don't know who the coordinator was before him). He left after the 2007 long beach fiasco where main events was full of concerts that day and each performer kept going beyond their allotted timeslot delaying each following act. The venue for main events was under contract to be used by AX until midnight. Because of the delays the AMV contest didn't start until 11pm. That meant James couldn't show the entire contest. And instead of explaining to the crowd what actually happened, he was told to say he "lost" the discs (which was how the show was run then) that contained 3 of the categories. So he only played the AmTV category to a group of 2000 people who had been waiting in line for hours. Fortunately he was able to secure a smaller venue two mornings later to play the whole show but they would only have time to tally the creator votes.
Enter Michael in 2008 who was very ecstatic about AMVs. He was also in a paid division at AX under entertainment. Everything went smoothly for him until April 2012 when he announced his sudden departure. I was shocked. Especially being that close to the convention and the AMV submissions already well under way. Well, you may know April is tax month. And Michael found out very suddenly that he owed a large amount of money to the IRS because of a mistake on AX's accounting - which they have never rectified to this day.
Troy had always been involved with the AMV contest, being a judge and working with the coordinators, instead of just dumping the contest (which he'd have every right to do imo) Michael had the courtesy to pull Troy in to take over. He just gave Troy one specific piece of advice and that was to bring in someone to keep him in check (cuz troy can be a bit anal about some things but we love him anyway). Enter Vlad.
In 2012 Troy and Vlad took over running the AMV contest, renaming it the AMV Competition, and from that very first year up until 2018 the level of production quality took a major jump and stayed that way. Very few hiccups ever occurred and the ones that did were minor and addressed immediately with complete transparency to the audience. If they made a booboo they admitted it.
Troy and Vlad lasted 7 years, with the help of recruiting Jason in the middle, running this show. They were consistent and passionate. Vlad brought us the ever popular AMV room that I took up residence in most the time either running panels or just chilling.
And now they're gone. Why? Because AX wanted to fix something that wasn't broken? All through a veil of bureaucratical bullshit? The AMV team was understandably tired, but willing to leave gracefully and pass the torch into capable hands. But instead AX took the torch directly from their hands and shouted through a megaphone "ANYBODY WANT THIS?"
"Going in a new direction." Liars. You know nothing of AMVs so you know nothing of their direction.
If I hadn't decided before this all went down to drop AX like a bad habit, this would have done it. Ungrateful for YEARS of hard work and dedication.
But aside from that, do you know the real reason why they decided to shut AX down completely?