The AMV contest was a sad bunch of politics and BS.
Overall it was a good contest... but there were ALOT of bad points...
First... ErMac's video. Sorry it was a piece of CRAP!
[MOD843: Watch it
]This was pointed out to me by many many many many strangers at the convention. I asked very casually, what they thought of the video, and was told EVERY TIME they wondered what the judges had been smoking. Sorry but the video was a few clips of Fushigi Yugi pasted ontop of winAmp screen saver effects. And the drawings... They were causing an artist friend of mine to cringe in pain at the bad preportions. Oh and the AMV creators I sat by, cringed at the points of the video where the timing was OFF. So please don't believe that it was some great video. (One answer I could come up with to why his video got not only best freeform and best of show from the judges was that some how they had more knowledge of the construction of the video...)
Second... Mindwarp's United States of Whatever! Oh my! That was shown at the Semi-finals. It some how didn't make the finals. The reaction it got at the semi-finals was amazing. If it was in the finals it could have won the comedy category, based on the reaction it got from the semi final audience (they almost gave it a standing ovation). It could have easily beaten half the videos in the comedy category, so why the heck wasn't it in the finals? Alot of people were wondering this.
Third... Bad placement of videos in categorys. The first action video was more a drama video then an action. There was a freeform video that was an excellent drama and could have maybe won drama if it had been in that category. Then you had a comedy video with NO MUSIC, which should have been in free form (The category it was entered under).
Fourth... The Action winner of the viewer's choice... It was one of the last videos shown. Due to the crappy time slot of the contest, alot of people came in at the end of the action category and therefore didn't see all the action videos, and only voted on the last two or three they saw. When the better action videos in the catergory where shown much earlier. The 1st video was one of the best (and even if it was miscategorized). If people missed videos from a category, they should not be allowed to vote for that category.
Fifth... The perfect blue video that made it into drama. I don't care how good the video is, and bs about artistic license. My problem with video was that it was shown in the competition and was not PG-13. I don't mind a video showing some breasts (nipples can be abit much, depending on how they are handled). But when you show the guy actually ripping the panties off a girl, and then taken along with the other elements in the situation, you are not dealing with PG-13 subject matter any more. If I had children in the audience I would have be pissed. Even not having children, I was offended that this material was shown to a general audience, and sat in shock that this video made the competition. We may be adults, but when the contest is open to 7 to 13 year olds to watch it, the material has to be acceptable for them. This was not the hentai night.
Sixth... Bumpers left in. Many videos had bumpers left in, or that could not be removed. These bumpers did affect the AMV contest. (Contests really need to move to blind judging. There was clapping for specific creators before the videos even started. With cat calls of the creator being so great).
Now before people think I'm saying all this because of one reason or another. I entered one video to the contest. It didn't make the finals. It was shown at the Semi-finals, and I found that the audio on the video was crap. It had no chance of making the finals (due to the sound, which I have to take all the blame for). So I'm not saying this stuff because I felt my video was better. (Because mine wasn't better) I'm just letting people know what happened, and what some of the flaws of the contest were.
Sadly contests are becoming more and more political. The contest compaired to alot of other contests was rather good. It started on time, and the sound and video quality was good, the AMV creators were taken care of and treated well. They showed the videos that got submitted. (Which I must say THANK YOU that they played the videos of creators who were in the theater during the semi-finals first/on-request).
They have some things they needed to fix. But sadly, compaired to other conventions things went pretty well.
Anneke