OTAKON 2003 AMV

[Chaos Angel]

Oh good... there will be at least two AMVs then.

We haven't received hardly any entries as of yet...

I shall be in attendance, and I shall enter a vid!.

[genestarwind21122]

I e mailed otakon and asked them about the contest they sent me back a forum to fill out for the contest anyway. When they say the submitters will vote does that mean like some day before Otakon the submitters get to decide which one gets entered in the contest and which ones don't.

[Vlad G Pohnert]

I e mailed otakon and asked them about the contest they sent me back a forum to fill out for the contest anyway. When they say the submitters will vote does that mean like some day before Otakon the submitters get to decide which one gets entered in the contest and which ones don't.

If memory serves correct, last year they had a few public showing at local clubs and all those there got to rate each video on a ballot. Also, they sent out a judging tape to anyome who sent a blank tape with thier entry.
The the highests scores are those that go into the contest. At the con, the winners are picked by attendies voting on a ballot form you get when you register for the con...

Vlad

[Yosho]

Oh good... there will be at least two AMVs then.

We haven't received hardly any entries as of yet...

I shall be in attendance, and I shall enter a vid!.

Me too! Me too! Still working on my video though. I should have it done before the deadline. (hopefully)

[Scott A Melzer]

Personally, I don't want to see trailers in an AMV contest, but I can see what the issue might be. People just want to see an audience for their work, and want to be recognized. I don't think that the AMV contest is the right place, but it IS high profile so I can see why people would want to be shown there.

Otakon did something WAY cool last year and had an entire video track (in a huge room that sat at least 500 people) dedicated to pan produced works. Nothing but. Music videos, fan parodies, etc. It was... awesome. I definately like this trend! The room was always at least half full, and when it was packed it was THE BEST PLACE AT THE CON! Being shown in that room is JUST as good as being shown during the contest. Even better, I think, since there's NO competition. Personally, I'd be happier with no competition with AMVs, and I'm really enjoying making parodies since there really isn't any prize or worrying about who's better than whom.

I think that the main reason that AMVs became popular things to make was because cons would show them. Cons are now setting aside time and room for fan produced works, so we can only expect to see more of them. This can only be an awesome thing.

Another reason (aside from Cybermat's excellent reasons) not to allow trailers into the contest is that that would open a huge can of worms. Trailers today, then what next? I think that trailers are a subset of short parody films. If people are making them, then cons should show them. Either along with an AMV contest (such as PortConMaine is doing this year), or a separate showing (like Otakon does). Having your commercial or trailer shown at MAT3K is a HUGE deal. There were, like, 3000 people at the MAT3K show last year, I think?

So, I don't think that we should be trying to get trailers shown during an AMV contest, but I think we should push for more parody/short film showings. I think that if Otakon or other cons encourage this, they'll receive a LOT of submissions and we'll all be rewarded with more fan produced works.

Why limit ourselves to just AMVs?

[Flint the Dwarf]

So, I don't think that we should be trying to get trailers shown during an AMV contest, but I think we should push for more parody/short film showings.

I completely agree. Sorry, Sai, but they shouldn't be played in the contests. However, if you wanted, you could make a trailer without any of the original audio clips from the movie trailer... just use music and make it look like the movie. It would be the ultimate project. And it could be played in the AMV contests. Heh, but I don't think you're up to that.

As for me, I'll be submitting and most likely attending.

[iserlohn]

To answer the earlier question about pre-judging (and IANMP)...

Prescreenings were held in conjunction with the anime clubs at UMBC (U of MD at Baltimore County) and UMD (U of MD at College Park). They were held on Saturday Mornings in June, and at each screening Matt would play some funky little Otakon vid (last year it was Otakon 2001's Opening Ceremonies CG), give a spiel about which tapes we were seeing, how to fill out the form, etc. We would then watch 2 T-120 (IIRC...may have been T-160) tapes, and take a break about once an hour. The average attendance, was, IIRC, between 30 and 45 people, composed of club members, friends, AMV creators, Otakon Staff, and stalkers who somehow found out where the events were.

As far as voting was concerned, we were given forms with the videos listed in order with runtime, video title, anime/music, and studio name. The ballots were designed so that you graded each video on an integer level from -2 to +2 (-2, -1, 0, 1, 2), and then there was a list of all the categories, in case the voters found the videos to be mis-submitted (such as the Doom Song video and Once Upon a December, both of which were submitted as action and moved to comedy and sentimental/dramatic, respectively), as well as a space on all but one of the forms for comments. After the con, Matt offered to let people know what their averages were and what the comments were (pretty thorough email, too, I got one...)

For people who wouldn't be able to come, the option was available to send in a blank tape + SASE. Those folks got one of the tapes and a ballott, and would mail the latter back to Matt.

Anyhow, once all the forms were filled out, Matt went through and painfully calculated the statistics, split the vids up by category, and started filling in slots from the highest average down until they filled a T-120, in this case, the top 34 videos, with a rating of 0.6-0.7 being my guess at the lowest vid that made it into the contest (definately nothing under 0.5)

For those wanting to size up the potential competition, I hereby plagiarize Matt's post-con email:

Of the 108 AMV submissions we received this year 97 were evaluated by our group of pre-screeners; the remaining 11 submissions were disqualified for irresolvable technical problems or other reasons.

On our scale of +2 to -2 the highest average score which was received by
an AMV this year was +1.7273, while the lowest score was -1.5909. The
median score for this year's submissions overall was +0.3077, with a
standard deviation of plus or minus 0.7281.

Hope this helps answer some questions/proves interesting for people.

[Vlad G Pohnert]

So do we ever get to find out which video scored the highest Score last year, or is that a secret that dies with Matt

Vlad

[iserlohn]

Probably a secret that dies with Matt. I know what my video got, at least, and it was above the median (yay).

[hackerzc]

A weekend at Otakon can cost as little as your transit costs and as much as you can possibly imagine. It all depends on factors such as whether or not you're willing to gofer for Otakon (work a bunch of hours for the con and get free registration, comp for crash space, etc....not recommended due to staff abuse) or shell out.

HEY! I'm gophering this year! (Kind of a trial thing to see if I might be interested in Staffing in the Future. I was asked last year to staff by this years con chair but rejected because I had too many fun things planned).

Anyway I'll be entering the contest and I think I actually have a shot at making it this year.
Anyone who saw my First "AMV" (if you can call it that. It ws more like me playing around trying to do something cool and failing horribly) from last years over flow or pre-screenings knows how much I sucked. SO after I repeated the same mistake once and sent it to Nekocon I decided to take almost an entire year to "edumacate me some'tin". I actually read "part" of a bood about Premiere and can even do some small things in After Effects (man I hate the learning curve with that thing). And just Today I sat down with my 102 fever and chronic headachs and swore throat and actually understood AVISynth scripting for the first time!

Since I don't want to ruin the surprise in the video and because I am very supersticious about releasing videos now (my failures last year were a humbeling lesson in which I learned to eat crow very slowly), I won't be making this years available untill at least after the pre-screenings. I SO want to show it to people so then can see the difference between the two I did a year ago, and this one. It's lke Dr. Jeckle and Mr. Hyde. I have yet to decide which vid represents which personality yet. Anyway I am very excited about this all.