As a professional in the video production industry, I highly value the quality of my work, especially in regard to my reputation and believe that this is a horrible assault to the AMV industry as a whole. When it was asked of me in 2002 to do the job of AMV Coordinator for the 2003 convention, I was reluctant because of the time and dedication I would have to place into the event. I understood that I would be "starting from the beginning" with a contest at a convention that was going into its 6th year.
When it was asked if I would continue being the coordinator for the 2004 convention there was no hesitation in saying yes. I had to go the whole previous year starting from scratch to building a contest that would be presentable and was able to expand and make it much better. I received rave reviews in staff previews and was compared to the quality of contests like Anime Weekend Atlanta and Anime Expo. One individual even went as far to say that it looked like something they would see on MTV or TechTV, it had that level of quality.
To have my pride and sense of accomplishment completely abolished by the statements of NME goes to show the level of irresponsibility and lack of maturity that he has. I will be forwarding these comments along to the Sakura-Con Executive Board, ANCEA Executive Board, and the a-m-v.org domain owner, Kris McCormic (5800 Quantrell Ave. #1617, Alexandria, VA 22312 - (703) 566-8528).
The only comment to NME I have is that I will, one day, forgive you for the statement you've made, but I can't speak on behalf of fellow AMV contest coordinators, anime convention staff members, AMV creators, or the most important people to both you and me: the fans.
Source: http://www.animemusicvideos.org/phpBB/v ... hp?t=33157
NME wrote:Well.
The contest blew. Plain and simple. Instead of getting someone partially competant to run the contest, they get Mr. Arnesen. I don't give a shit if this will be seen as a flame on my part, but seriously, from the entry nightmares (lack of FTP, numbering system required to enter) to the playback problems during the contest (LOL GUYZ LETS AUTHOR THE CONTEST ONTO DVD-R AND PLAY IT ON A PLAYER THAT CAN'T PLAY DVD-R WELL!!!!!111, which caused sync errors and even skipping in the audio on most of the videos), the contest was awful. I seriously can't understand why someone who runs such a bad contest is allowed to year after year. Last year's sucked too.
What the hell is wrong with the staff? With the exception of one or two people (the dude in The Wired who let us transfer the videos and Dinger) the whole con staff was awful. The surly guy running the AMV projector in The Wired who kept telling me that "MP3 boosts the bass" and that it's only good for "techno remixes of classical songs" and that "AC3 is the best distribution audio format because it is a set hardware format (don't get me started on this one)" and also that "all MPEG videos have low audio levels that need to be turned up because of the source loudness problems made by MP2 compression" was just fucking hilarious, and mostly proves that much of the tech staff has no idea what they're doing. Keep in mind that this was all because he wouldn't turn the audio up. Surly motherfucker.
Arnesen if you read this here, or on the SC message boards, get serious about this shit or don't do it at all.