Round 2 - Results [Updated with Group G & H Results]

[Kinematics]

@TwilightCrono:

I'm not a judge, so these are just my personal feelings --

I had a *real* hard time picking between your video and EE's as my second choice (when I did the review in the other thread), and Lopez's was only a bit above those two. I'll certainly agree that EE's was not edited nearly as well as yours; if it was solely a comparison of editing skill, there's no contest. However I also think his was stronger on the artistic and coherency side of things, which is far more subjective and difficult to quantify.

I went with yours as my second choice because I do like good technical quality, but I can recognize that there were certain artistic deficiencies. The subjective nature of that makes me very reluctant to critique them, as I can't trust my own feelings to remain consistent from one viewing to the next (it's already flip-flopped a few times), and don't really want to go around praising or condemning other people's work based on that.

As a comparison: Double-Z's Wonderland video -- the video quality was awful, and the editing was pretty bad, but I still thought it was one of the best videos that round. It showcased an editor that I'll look forward to seeing more from in the future, when he has improved on the technical side. There are certain videos that simply 'click' for a person, and it's not something that can be easily explained.


And on the technical side of how the judging works, remember that the rating is 1 to X. No matter how bad you consider the video quality of EE's entry, the worst it can rate is a 3 (compared to a 1 or 2), and that's only one aspect of the overall score. The fewer the number of contestants in a given round, the harder it is to differentiate them, and the less a weakness in one aspect of the scoring will hurt them, since the scale size keeps dropping. That may be something for Yue to consider. [Edit: not for this contest, obviously, but in defining scoring systems for any future contests]

[MasterZero8]

But seriously, if this goes any further with the rantin' and the raving then I'll have to take action. I do not wish to do that. When everyone signed up for this competition they agreed that the judge's rulings were final. End of story. It's in the rules.

Article 5: Agreements
8.1 Each participant hereby agrees to that he/she is the sole and exclusive author and does not violate directly and / or indirectly any third party rights.
8.2 Each participants understands that if they violate any of the previously stated rules, they will be disqualified.
8.3 Also, by participating in this contest, you agree that the decisions of the contest organizers and the judges are FINAL.

Agreed, I entered this contest because I thought it would be a fun place to start, and hey, its not like I expected to sweep the contest and take all the glory, by no means.
I accepted my immediate lost and moved on, advice in tow, to become better and better.

If just a few words it what it takes for you to lsoe respect for me, then you never really had any respect for me regardless. I'm hurt, upset and just overall bewildered. Keep in mind MasterZero that I almost never rage and you shouldn't expect this from me all the time.

No I really did, its just that I have seen my share of stuff like this in the past and I 100% do not tolerate it.
And I would not know what you normally do, as I am new, so this does not boast well for a first impression on me.
You did good work, the judges just thought the others did better, so take their advice, apply it, and impress us all next time.

[TwilightChrono]

@TwilightCrono:

I'm not a judge, so these are just my personal feelings --

I had a *real* hard time picking between your video and EE's as my second choice (when I did the review in the other thread), and Lopez's was only a bit above those two. I'll certainly agree that EE's was not edited nearly as well as yours; if it was solely a comparison of editing skill, there's no contest. However I also think his was stronger on the artistic and coherency side of things, which is far more subjective and difficult to quantify.

I went with yours as my second choice because I do like good technical quality, but I can recognize that there were certain artistic deficiencies. The subjective nature of that makes me very reluctant to critique them, as I can't trust my own feelings to remain consistent from one viewing to the next (it's already flip-flopped a few times), and don't really want to go around praising or condemning other people's work based on that.

As a comparison: Double-Z's Wonderland video -- the video quality was awful, and the editing was pretty bad, but I still thought it was one of the best videos that round. It showcased an editor that I'll look forward to seeing more from in the future, when he has improved on the technical side. There are certain videos that simply 'click' for a person, and it's not something that can be easily explained.


And on the technical side of how the judging works, remember that the rating is 1 to X. No matter how bad you consider the video quality of EE's entry, the worst it can rate is a 3 (compared to a 1 or 2), and that's only one aspect of the overall score. The fewer the number of contestants in a given round, the harder it is to differentiate them, and the less a weakness in one aspect of the scoring will hurt them, since the scale size keeps dropping. That may be something for Yue to consider.

I realise people's opinions will differ. Not many people like techinicals compared to story. In this case, a story won the round over mine. Which is understandable, I guess. I was just going for a fun/actiony experience. I didn't really wanan concentrate on a story since I do that in 90% of my videos anyway. Was just trying somethign different.

[RAWdangers]

"IMMA BLOW THIS MUTHA F***ER UP IF I DONT GET MY MUTHA F***IN CHANGE!"

Forum drama, what?

[TwilightChrono]

If just a few words it what it takes for you to lsoe respect for me, then you never really had any respect for me regardless. I'm hurt, upset and just overall bewildered. Keep in mind MasterZero that I almost never rage and you shouldn't expect this from me all the time.

No I really did, its just that I have seen my share of stuff like this in the past and I 100% do not tolerate it.
And I would not know what you normally do, as I am new, so this does not boast well for a first impression on me.
You did good work, the judges just thought the others did better, so take their advice, apply it, and impress us all next time.

Thing is. I put everything I had into that video. I had a bunch of RL issues and as a result, couldn't do any editing till there was a day and a half left. So I bascailly lived in front of my computer for the remaining time and edited the best I could. Afte I finished, I had no time to go back and polish.

Either way, I gave it my all.

[irriadin]

Either way, I gave it my all.

Then you should have no regrets. Chalk it up to a learning experience and do better next time.

[xDreww]

Funny stuff going on here.
Anyways, Lopez FTW?!?? Yaaaa. He be so sexy man. Don't underestimate the man!!
....man!

[LopezAMV]

I even translated this in French!

Article 5 : Accords
5.1 Chaque participant accepte dès lors qu'il participe qu'il/elle est le seul et exclusif auteur de sa vidéo et ne viole pas directement et/ou indirectement aucun droit tiers.
5.2 Tous les participants comprennent que s'il violents les règles pré-établies, ils seront disqualifiés
5.3 De plus, en participant à ce concours, vous devez accepter que les décisions des organisateurs et des juges sont DEFINITIVES

These rules definitely sound sexier in french.

That they do. It's a shame that I no longer know how to speak it, it's been far too long since high school =P


Congrats everyone!
Shout-out to Centurione, I really liked your entry...best from Round 2 so far .

[Kairih]

Yeah, hearts all over
Well, I'm glad I'm passed through this round, so I have a chance to edit again with the songs given.
Centurione will surely be a hard rival to defeat!
For the lyrics: unfortunately I was without internet, and I'm not english, so I couldn't follow the lyrics 'cause I couldn't read it and I've put everything as it was XDXD Trying to be fun but I guess I didn't succeed ò_ò
Re-watching my video now... Well, it's not so good so I'll surely try my best for the next round *hopes for a good song*

About round 1 results... Well, I don't agree with TwilightChrono, but he gave his apologizes so there's no need to make any drama anymore.

[Shin-AMV]

I'm usually the last person to ever get involved in any kind of public drama, but a big pet peeve of mine is when people are being disparaging to fellow contestants. We're all here to make AMVs and have fun and just because you may have felt torn down by the results it doesn't help to publicly tear down Evil Environmentalist and his abilities the way you have. Tearing him down doesn't build you back up at all.

Yeah, masking and camera work take a lot of time and effort but its never a guaranteed means to victory. In terms of video quality, especially with the logos and the subs in the video, yeah, your video comes out way ahead, but it also completely and unfairly takes out the consideration for other factors.

In terms of effects you seemed to put some effort with masking, but both videos had some questionable effects issues (Flashing sync/curtain crawl or piano cutter or whatever you wanna call that Compared to the TV sim sync/black+white with vingette/random masks) Implementing effects always has that risk vs. reward factor because even if you do put in a lot of effort it might not pan out in the end. If we take effect implementation on its own you do probably edge Evil Environmentalist on effort alone, but in terms of effectiveness and integration I think the more simplistic and less effects plays out in Evil Environmentalists favor. Sometimes less is more, and going effects heavy can and does backfire occassionally. This is really a subjective quality for judges so overall it probably all averages out to pretty even in the end.

I'm guessing, the thing that probably stood out the most and turned out much more in favor for this particular set of judges was the consistency/coherency of the videos. Both of you had pretty good sync, but I think EE did a much better job with scene selection and general flow, story or not. Evil Environmentalist was very focused with showing the character from Blue Exorcist in action. It didn't matter if there was an actual story being played out with the character or not, but a viewer would generally know whats going on from start to finish without having any disorientation issue.

Your video on the other hand, hops around from Shounen Action anime to slice of life smiley type scenes into to bloodbaths and murder and ending with a meta humor type joke about having to finish editing the video was all over the place and is disorienting. There was no clear theme or motif to really solidly connect it all together (punching and stabbing isn't usually a strong motif on its own). Yeah, sometimes it works without a well defined theme, but that generally requires much more time to polish the effects and transitions which is extremely hard to do in a time limit (going back to risk vs. reward) In my opinion, if you had focused on using 1 or 2 of the anime with a more defined theme the transition/masking effects would have been much more effective in carrying a viewer from scene to scene. (i.e. .hack and FMA would have worked well together with their blades/alchemy/magic type fighting styles, or any of them could have worked well on their own.)

Lastly, lipsync is always a dangerous thing to attempt, sometimes no matter what you do, people will automatically hate lipsync, just because its lipsync, even if its done well. I've had a rather fair amount of lipsync fail too. Regardless, I don't know if your lipsync was entirely effective in the video. Sometimes it seemed like it was a means to have an excuse to mask a character, stick him in the forefront of a different scene to really emphasize the fact that you just did something technical, which goes back to implementation and integration and overall scene selection, why is he/she there singing now?

So I don't think you're giving EE a fairshake at all. Yeah, watermarks are the bane of 'pro' editors and his video quality isn't the best, but if you take everything into consideration thats really his only major downside. If you ignore the watermark/sub issue, his video is very coherent, flows pretty smoothly, and has good scene selection actually making it pretty enjoyable. Dragging him through the mud like that just gets you muddy. Your round 1 video was much stronger because it wasn't overreaching like your round 2 vid tried to do where it seemed like it wanted to do a lot and have a lot and couldn't balance it all. Next time if you have issues take it up privately with the judges, MEP coordinators/members, Studio leaders, Contest Coordinators or whatever instead of airing it out openly on the forums or in journal posts.