AMV Contest: I think it's 5pm to 8pm this time.
The overnighter will be the following night.
Memorable judges' quotes:
(to a wub-wub-dub-step AMV) "This sounds like Transformers eating Lunch!!"
Also, even though this contest DOES NOT have a Drama/Romance/Sentimental we still get a lot of those, probably because they are very satisfying to MAKE. But historically, when we used to run a drama category, the audience interprets it as 'Intermission/Bathroom or Snack Break Category' and half of them leave. So a few years ago we got rid of the category.
Drama AMVs tend to be LONGER than any other style, the slow, plodding music starts up, the whiny emo lyrics, then come long cuts of Face A looking longingly, wistfully etc at Face B....
- and the judges look down to the timeline progress bar and go "OMG we have FOUR MORE MINUTES of THIS??!?" Now, to be fair some AMVs actually start slow and then kick into high gear as a surprise - which can be intense - but if they slide the playback to the 3rd minute and we're still dealing with a plodding, relationship-based story - it's NOT an 'Intensity' AMV.
The other way they test for a good story progression in a 4-minute or longer work is to check Minute 1 versus Minute 3. Are we learnign more, seeing more, adding more to the story? or is this a one-trick pony that always goes back to the same topic whenever the refrain comes around? They do this again at Minute 4 versus Minute 2. In this way they once passed a SIX and a HALF MINUTE AMV - way over the limit BUT this AMV showed fighting pairs in which whoever you paired with you got DIFFERENT and EXCITING powers. As the editor went through the combinations, each one was NEW, and INTERESTING. One judge at the 4-minute mark said "Wow, I only feel like I am TWO minutes in..."
Compare this to a typical Drama vid where you FEEL like it's drawn on for three minutes already and you're just past the first minute...
VideoLAN (the VLC player) has a neat speed-change feature; it's "]" to speed up and "[" to slow down. It does this without pitch bending (like if you slowed down a physical medium like a phonograph record or magnetic audio tape...)
A lot of the 'Intensity' AMVs which were not selected actually still worked when played at 1.5x to 2x speed.
For Drama AMVs that get sent in as Intensity, it might be neat if editors tried that trick - Remaster it at 1.5x to 2x speed.
By the way this can make Classic Rock sound almost like Techno (which may be a fun Retro trick too: a 30 year old 'oldie'** can sound only 15 years old...)
** I hate how the term 'oldies' music is stuck to a particular era. To me, as the later music gets just as old as the 'oldies' were in the 1980s, we should get to call those songs 'oldies' too. I want to call Alanis Morissette, Jewel Kilcher, The Cars, Sting, and Insane Clown Posse as 'oldies' someday soon. Brittney Spears and Pearl Jam, you're NEXT. Oldies!!
