I suppose it's pretty hard to take my comments seriously considering that of the 5 judges that entered, I ended up winning 3 awards. I can certainly see how it can be perceived as in-voting or what-have-you. It should be noted however that we were not allowed to vote in categories that we were nominated in. It should also be doubley-noted (as Jay already pointed out) that the nominees weren't primarily restricted to VCA semifinalists since we had the opportunity to include other un-nominated videos. So the field was very open.
As far as the whole in-voting idea goes, I can't speak for the other judges, but I know that I gave fair votes to every video and I sat down and watched every single nominated video and judged them on my own personal basis, which was a combination of technical merit, artistic/creative merit, and simply visceral enjoyment, which is a factor I think a good number of people don't factor in. Take Magic Pad for example. A lot of prominent editors like to rail on Magic Pad because it feels like his other videos and isn't "groundbreaking" or whatever. I can agree with both points, but the fact still remains that I still enjoy watching it quite a bit. It's got flow, it's got style, it's got good scene selection, everything just works very well. In terms of JCA justification (it winning Best Multiple-Anime), it did a fantastic job of blending a wide variety of sources together to make something seamless and simply fun to watch. Basically, I voted for the videos that I thought deserved to win, and not on WHO deserved to win.
Now when it comes to what I think should change, I do think adding to the number of judges would help make it a broad spectrum of well-informed opinions. As far as putting a restriction on who can be a judge would be very tricky. For one, the people who are TYPICALLY (as in, not making a set in stone rule here) best suited for a position like this are people that have a lot of experience with editing, have seen a lot of videos, have been around for a while, and thusly can see a video for many different facets. Typically these people end up making videos throughout the year, and typically their videos end up making it into the VCA semifinals. It's just the nature of the beast. Again, THAT'S NOT TO SAY THAT NOBODY ELSE WOULD MAKE A GOOD JUDGE. Take Quadir for example. He's been running the AMV Reviews and obviously he seems to have a pretty well-informed opinion (even if it might vary from other people's), even though he's not an editor. You also have people who simply haven't been editing for quite a while but still know quite a bit about the artform (Take AbsoluteDestiny, NightOwl, Kusoyaro, etc. for example). However, I think that restricting it to these individuals would be a mistake, since I do think current familiarity with what's going on with the hobby makes a difference. So what I'm saying is, I like the idea of a wide variety of opinions and reasonings.
The inherent problem comes with the judge selection. I think we need to come up with a more balanced way of doing it. Unfortunately I don't really have any good ideas for how to do this, but it's something to think about.
Overall, I think the JCA results were balanced, grounded, and successful. Congrats to the winners
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