Cal Animage Alpha presents...
Anime Destiny 2006: The AMV Olympics
Summary
A new kind of AMV contest run by AMV creators, for AMV creators. The contest is distinguished by having completely open-judging, an emphasis on rewarding original videos that excel in all areas of the AMV creation art, and giving detailed feedback to creators.
The Inspiration
Sadly, due to a lack of manpower, there wil be no Anime Destiny 2006 this year as a traditional anime convention. However, we'd still like to hold an AMV contest, but how to draw submissions when we can't offer creators the chance to have their videos shown before an audience? From our experience with Anime Destiny 2005, we received a ton of positive response to our detailed award letters, especially those accompanying our Judges' Choice awards. We realized that there's a real lack of valuable feedback to AMV creators from most AMV contests. Either your video wins its categories, or it doesn't.
Most existing AMV contests ask the judges or attendees to judge videos on a holistic basis. a-m-v.org ratings boil down to a 1-5 star rating system. The system leads to winners that have a high "wow" factor; these videos may not do everything well, but they do at least one thing really well that impresses judges and attendees. Our desire was to create a new contest structured to reward AMV's that display a consistently high level of quality.
Objectives
- Bring Olympic-style judging to the AMV community with concrete numeric scoring.
- Ensure that a single aspect of a single video cannot dominate the contest by breaking AMV judging into separate scores for artistic and technical aspects.
- Provide a detailed scoring breakdown to submitting creators that forever puts an end to wondering why your video won (or didn't win).
- Base judging on an openly developed rubric for judging that represents the views of the community.
- Make the competition actively contribute to improving the generic quality of AMV's by giving creators specific feedback from a knowledgable, unbiased judging panel.
- Educate AMV viewers on the elements that make a good AMV good, and move away from the dominance of "wow" factor videos.
- Establish a balanced judging panel composed of knowledgable, respected AMV editors, experienced AMV fans without creation experience, and anime fans without prior extensive prior exposure to AMV's.
Final scores are the total of two independently determined scores, one for Artistic Merit and another for Technical Merit. Each of these scores will be determined as the average of 4 categories, described below. Each category will be judged on a 5 point scale with two significant figure (i.e. 0.0 - 5.0). Originality is an implicit factor in determining scores in each category; a superbly executed effect rarely or never seen before will receive a higher score than a superbly executed effect that closely resembles an effect used in the winning AMV's of the last five years.
The individual scores given to each video by each judge will be made available, as well as the aggregate scores and the final score ranking.
Artistic Merit
An Anime Music Video is just that: a video using anime footage, set to music. The art in creating an AMV is making the video and audio work together, each enhancing the other. The Artistic Merit score captures the major ways an editor creates synergy between these two disparate sources.
Pacing
Every audio source and every video source has variations in intensity. Even the most frenetic set of action sequences will have climaxes where fights are decided, lulls where opponents face off. This score captures how well the creator matches the changes in intensity of the final edited video to the audio source. Note that opposites may also form an effective match, with the classic example being scenes of nuclear armageddon set against a calm, peaceful classical interlude.
Concept
Every video that puts anime with music starts with an idea of why the two sources should be put together. The overall mood of the two may fit well together, or a character in the video source may seem like a natural parallel to the lyrics. Some video concepts make the viewer exclaim "I never thought of putting these two sources together!" regardless of the polish (or lack thereof) that the final product may display.
Viewer Independence
Not all videos are equally accessible to all audiences. Some make sense only to viewers who are already familiar with either the source audio or the source video, or sometimes both. Some are comprehensible even to viewers who have never heard of any of the sources used. Videos that score best here will be both accessible to neophyte audiences, while also offering additional insight, entertainment, or surprises to viewers familiar with the original source(s).
Plot/Characters
A good video has a story to tell. It may be a no-holds-barred retelling of a full season's plot in 4 minutes, an exploration of the subtle relationship between two supporting characters, a profile of the rivalry between bitter enemies, or a completely original "what if" experiment. Regardless, a video that scores well will have clear characters and relationships between them.
Technical Merit
There is more to making an AMV than having a good story idea. Good AMV's are the result of hours of painstaking labor, meticulous editing, and a healthy dash of creativity applied to the finest details.
Special Effects: Filtering and Motion Graphics
Filtering is a the process of changing the appearance of an original image. Blurring the source video, reducing color footage to monochrome, or adding effects that resemble the appearance of aged celluloid film are all examples of filtering. Motion Graphics are additional elements not present in the original source(s), added by the editor to enhance the final image. Moving windows, additional lines, and "oscilloscope" overlays are all examples of motion graphics.
Special Effects: Compositing and Transitions
Compositing is the process of blending two different source images into a single final image. Compositing can be as simple as overlaying one scene semi-transparently over another, and as complex as placing multiple characters from wildly different sources in the same frame, and making them appear to interact. Transitions move a video from one scene to another. Wipes, fades, and dissolves are all examples of common transitions.
Audio/Video Quality
A good-looking final product requires high-quality sources and meticulous attention to maintaining or enhancing that original quality thoughout the editing process. Low-scoring videos may display interlacing artifacts, macroblocking artifacts characteristic of aggressive video compression, or superfluous subtitles, network logo "bugs," or other distractions. High-scoring videos will be vibrant, clear, and free of any distractions from the video's content.
Timing and Synchronization
Timing is critical. Satisfactory videos will make transitions from scene to scene on the beat, or in conjunction with important events in the audio. Good videos will go further, matching to the audio not just scene transitions, but also on-screen action such as gunshots, sword thrusts, explosions, or changes in facial expression. Videos set to lyrical audio may also match on-screen events to appropriate lyrics.
Prizes
There will be two major prizes -- one each for the videos with the highest technical score, highest artistic score -- and a grand prize for the video with the highest grand total score.
We will also continue the Anime Destiny tradition of "Judges' Choice" awards. These will generally be given to recognize videos that display particular achievement in a specific aspect. For purposes of comparability, Judges' Choice Awards are considered "Honorable Mentions" (significant for the now-defunct AWA Masters').
No single video will receive more than one prize.
Restrictions and Miscellanea
- All submissions must be your own work.
- Submissions must not have been publicly shown more than 12 months in the past. No old videos, please!
- Submissions must be comprised of a minimum of 75% anime footage.
- There is no length requirement, but keep in mind that submissions are judged based on pacing!
- Due to the high judging workload required by the contest, we reserve the right to limit the number of submissions accepted. This is a nascent contest, so we expect to nail down numbers more precisely in future iterations of the contest.
- As said above, this is intended to be a contest run for creators, and by creators. We invite your comments and suggestions in this thread, with your thoughts on revising and clarifying these rules.
You must send a link where your video can be downloaded to amv@animage.berkeley.edu. Many services, including http://www.sendthisfile.com and http://www.megaupload.com will allow you to send a file to an e-mail address without requiring you to have independent web hosting. In addition, a-m-v.org links are specifically allowed.
Since videos will not be shown at a convention event, we have no special restrictions on file format or encoding. If we can watch it sufficiently well to judge it, we will!
In your submission e-mail, you must include the following information:
- your preferred handle and/or studio name
- your real name and mailing address (so we can send you your prize if you win!)
- the title of your video
- the titles of all video sources used in your video
- the titles and artists of all audio sources used in your video
Historical Links
http://www.animemusicvideos.org/phpBB/v ... hp?t=57093
http://www.animemusicvideos.org/phpBB/v ... hp?t=59093
http://www.animemusicvideos.org/phpBB/v ... hp?t=59819
