FMV Contest 2011 - Feedback

[Marin Jei El]

Hi everyone!
This year flat out rocked. I loved everything about working with this year's outstanding group of editors. So to everyone that submitted: Thank you! We would not have a show with out you.

I will be posting the winners up on the forums tomorrow night for everyone to see. Also, I have received many, many request to see this year's entries online. I found out that while we are not allowed to post the videos online directly, we can post links directing people to the video. This would be great as we had to cut so many awesome entries due to the limited length of the FMV showing.
So if you submitted an entry this year and would like to have people check out your entry, please send a link to your posted video to [email protected] or [email protected] with the subject "Show Off My 2011 FMV!"


Also, we would love to hear any and all feedback from you, the fans, about anything and everything FMV related. With that being said, I have some basic questions that I'll repeat from earlier in the year for both editors and audience alike that covers FMV judging, submitting, showing, categories, prizes or anything else that you can think of:

1. What did you like? What worked for you?


2. What did you not like? Is there anything you feel needs to be improved?


3. What would you like to see from the show? Do you like animated shorts/trailers? Any ideas for prizes? What day would be preferred for the show? Stuff like that. Basically ANYTHING that comes to mind about ANYTHING related to FMV.


*Keep in mind that we are aware of certian issues such as the lack of schedules, but please feel free to voice your opinion about that as well.


Please be as honest as possible, but keep it respectful. The more feedback the better! If you have one sentence or a long response, that's great! The more we hear from you, the better we can make next year's show!

I can't wait to hear back from everyone!

[Tsu]

Hokai, so, here I am to blab about another year...

First and foremost, before I get to any critique, I want to say on behalf of all the editors, a huge thank you to you, Jose, for being our FMV coordinator. I've entered videos under 3 different coordinators in my time at Fanime and am thrilled to say that you handle the contest very well, listen to suggestions and advice about improvements that can be made, and you're the only coordinator I've met as of yet that greets the editors with enthusiasm and respect. No dissing on Scott, he was rad, but you actually go out of your way to say hello to each of us, shake our hands, thank us for entering and even continue to quip about things throughout the viewings and afterwards. It goes a lot farther than "kthx for entering lol" after the con on a generic forum post and it really means a lot considering how hard us editors work! So thank YOU!

Onwards...

1. What did you like? What worked for you?
The intro/outros/genre introductions worked a lot better this year. They were shorter, more to the point, and tied in well to this year's theme. Plus the intro was just cute. Good job. I think mixing up the categories to avoid echoing was a great idea. Audio quality is a huge deal when viewing AMVs anywhere so this helped. Plus it made it fun to come back the next day and run into one room and then the other to watch favorite videos more than once. I know I did...  :-[

The upped ante on the gift cards was cool, too.

2. What did you not like? Is there anything you feel needs to be improved?
Who did we use as judges this year? Are we still doing art students/industry people? I liked it better when it was AMV editors that did all the judging. If an AMV Editor is judging your work, you know for a fact that they can see what you did, and aren't fooled by shiny filters on videos- they know how easily they can be applied, or how difficult it was to do masking, so forth and so on. Plus it never hurts when they're actually familiar with the anime or game being used, though that isn't always a given. Sometimes it's hard for me to tell when a scene in a video is from the original anime, unmodified, or if it was done by the editor- imagine how a non-otaku/editor would feel... (If we used editors this year, this is all moot, so feel free to ignore it.)

The audio balance, as always, needs a little work. Perhaps if someone went in ahead of time and modified the bass across all the videos, it would help. I know it's more trouble and it alters how the video was originally made, but the bass got so bad at some points it was literally shaking the walls. Plus, it buries the words, which can make a video a hit or miss situation. Don't take it personally- I've yet to see an AMV viewing at the con that had perfect audio. On a scale of 1-10, though, I'd say this year got an 8. It wasn't anywhere near as problematic as last year's first few videos, and on Friday in Room 2 it did get corrected relatively quickly. Side note: In room 1 on Saturday, the audio was turned waaaay too low. It took some of the oomph out of the showing. (Though the audience in Room 1/Saturday consisting of zombies didn't help matters... no wait... zombies make more sounds than that audience was XD)

3. What would you like to see from the show? Do you like animated shorts/trailers? Any ideas for prizes? What day would be preferred for the show? Stuff like that. Basically ANYTHING that comes to mind about ANYTHING related to FMV.

I like the idea of trailers/shorts, but if you don't get enough quality entries, then it's just a category bogging down the whole contest. I think it's ok to just put them in experimental if they're good enough. Or maybe advertise a trailer/short category, but if there aren't enough, advise the editors that you're moving the finalist entries in that category into experimental. I dunno, something like that?

This year's Friday/Saturday showing actually worked better than I thought it would. But if we end up across the street again, I think Saturday is ideal with the results Sunday. Results on Monday is something I'd love to avoid, as they might be shown after check-out and one can't guarantee that all the editors will be able to stick around.

I might post more later, that's all I can remember for now.

[Tsu]

Oh, I did think of one more important thing. (Seriously, I'm the only person who's posted? Come on, people.)

PLEEEEEASE in the future, if two or more editors make it to the finals and end up in the same category with the same song or a variation of, please notify them!! It's happened in multiple years (not in a row, just many years) and while sometimes it works, other times it's incredibly awkward. (Like this year). Since the Experimental category was only like 6 videos long, having two videos with almost the identical song (one being a remix and one being a shortened version of the original) in the same category was kind of a "wut?" and worse than that, in at least one viewing I checked out people outright laughed at the second video that started up with the song. Personally, I'd rather be notified and have the option of moving my video moved to another appropriate category than not knowing. It's hard on both of the videos, I think.