Hi, gang!

I apologize this took as long as it did; Ani-Jam sure took a lot out of us! Some of us needed a full week just to recover!

Anyway, as promised, here are the results as I announced at the con along with a YouTube link to watch the video.

Enjoy!

--Ian.

P.S. This year, all things considered, things went pretty well for a last-minute event. I personally would like to thank each and every one of you who submitted an AMV to the contest and congratulate the winners.

Next year, things will be different. We will be far more organized about how we handle things. We will formulate guidelines for how entries are submitted as well as establish a deadline by which time all AMVs for consideration will be accepted.

For my part, I have now assumed the chairmanship of AMVs. I look forward to working with you in the coming year for the next AMV contest and perhaps even events in the intervening time.

Have fun and long live fair use!

--IRJ.

===========

Third Place

---

D.Gray Man - Exorcists of the Black Order

Anime: D.Gray Man
Music: Rob Zombie - "Dracula"
AMV: Christina O.
Watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfkew6sQ67k


Second Place

---

Fades Away

Anime: The Girl Who Leapt Through Time
Music: Within Temptation - "Pale"
AMV: Larry Pereira
Watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anwPIprDMfU


First Place

---

Konata Sharada

Anime: Lucky Star
Music: Skye Sweetnam - "Sharada"
AMV: Kelsey M.
Watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Encq3m9QDYk

---

Ian R. Justman,
Director of Anime Viewing, AMVs
Please note: I do not monitor Ani-Jam's MySpace; contact me here or via e-mail

I'll be uploading all the other entries later this evening for everyone's enjoyment.

Thanks again!

--Ian.

---

Ian R. Justman,
Director of Anime Viewing, AMVs
Please note: I do not monitor Ani-Jam's MySpace; contact me here or via e-mail

Awesome,
Please keep us updated as to when and where they are uploaded.

I would like to see the AMV's return next year but would also suggest a few changes be made. From my memory I believe that two or three of the videos were of higher quality but a majority of the other AMV's used subtitled footage which distracts from the video itself. In addition these other videos were also of lower quality due to blurry or pixelated footage. After viewing the winners I was surprised that two of them were low quality. I spoke with a friend who attended and we came up with two possibilities.

First, that the winners brought friends who voted for them, or second, that the people voted less on the video itself and more on the anime shown.

In order to prevent an unfair contest in the future there are a few things that could be done.
1: Break the AMV's into sub-categories such as professional, comedy, action, etc...
2: Have impartial or guests of honor judge the videos.

This year things were more or less last minute.
But yeah, those are some good ideas for next year.
And while I agree that subs are distracting we all start there.
I'm currently re-ripping my footage and remastering the video I entered.

Hi, gang.

I would like to apologize if the AMV contest seemed a bit messed up this year. However, since I literally only had one or two weeks to work with, so indeed, all the minutiae of this year's AMV contest were very much last-minute as some have observed. Further, I feel some additional explanation is in order.

To begin with, we were going to deep-six AMVs this year due to the lack of communication throughout.

The traffic on these forums prompted me to bring this to the rest of the staff's attention since nothing was communicated about the AMV's being deep-sixed to everyone making submissions. The decision was made to go ahead and continue with the contest. Given the marked lack of time, we had to more or less accept just about every submission so we could have SOME manner of contest. At this point, we also set a hard deadline for submissions, which we enforced.

As for video quality, many of the submissions originally started life as YouTube links. I asked the entrants with YouTube links to furnish their original footage so we can show higher-quality versions of these videos. I managed to get them for most of them except maybe one to three of them.

Originally, we were going to have one of the guests of honor involved, but the two who would have been involved canceled. Ultimately, we had to have the members of the audience judge the submissions.

Next year, things indeed will be different. I still feel that this year wasn't a total waste since it was a great learning experience. Since I am taking over the AMV department for '09, I will be enacting a few criteria, especially concerning video quality, format and sources. We've already been talking amongst ourselves about how to do some of the judging, including requiring all sitting staff to judge entries. I will describe some of the criteria I'm considering after the end of this message.

I truly appreciate everyone's feedback on the matter because as I've mentioned earlier and others have observed, this was very much done at the last minute. Also, please bear in mind that this is also Ani-Jam's first-ever AMV contest. As such, given all the abovementioned factors, things were a bit bumpy, which I take responsibility for. Hopefully, I can take what I've learned this year and your suggestions and turn this into a much bigger and better event for next year.

Thank you for your support!

--Ian.

P.S. As promised, here are some of the criteria I'm looking at for next year.

Technical criteria:

--No YouTube links

--No WMV format files; WMV is Windows-only

--The result must use OPEN standard encoding, such as Xvid (MPEG-4 Part 2) or H.264 (MPEG-4 Part 10) with open-standard sound, such as MP3, AAC or Ogg-Vorbis, all of which contained in either AVI, MP4 or MKV containers

--Clean source files, including no subtitles; when in doubt, befriend a fansubber, especially a raw provider and/or an encoder

--Clean destination--use a higher bitrate so we don't see macroblocks!

--Nothing that requires us to reencode the video. If anyone has to do any reencoding work, you need to do it.

--No DVDs.

--While we realize these things can get a bit big, we'll work on making sure you can make submissions, whether via a website, FTP (no e-mail; mail was never designed to handle transfers of very large files!) or by SneakerNet(R).

--Basically, assume the absolute worst possible way your AMVs will be presented, like on a Linux box whose selection of formats is VERY limited, which is why I suggested no WMVs.

Anime-related criteria

--Material must be appropriate for the kind of people who might be on the grounds at the time when the contest will take place, which will very likely be during the daytime. E.g. no ecchi or hentai, no gratuitous blood and gore, no excessive violence

Music-related criteria

--Please use music appropriate for the audience that will be attending the con, which will range from children on up.

General criteria

--We will likely limit how long any one AMV will be, so limit your entries to one song each. I haven't come up with a hard limit to running time yet.

--Enumerate all sources, notably anime title(s) and piece(s) of music.

--We'll likely come up with a standardized form to use for submitting entries.

Well, that's what I've come up with for now, but bear in mind, nothing is set in stone QUITE yet. We'll likely solidify things a bit more in the coming months, especially after we've had our first meetings.

Again, thank you for your suggestions and criticisms. I can take those and make next year's AMV contest even better. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me here on the forums, via PM here or e-mail to ianj (at) fresnoanime (dot) com.

--Ian.

---

Ian R. Justman,
Director of Anime Viewing, AMVs
Please note: I do not monitor Ani-Jam's MySpace; contact me here or via e-mail

So... Any news on when the other videos will be online?
Or if they already are online where we can find them.