1) About the contest entry CD. Neat idea. The problem comes in where money gets exchanged for AMVs which are made up various of bits of (usually) licensed materials for which most of us are too broke to go around and whistle up 'legitimate' distribution rights. I think it's a bit iffy for anyone associated with running the con to be touching money while distributing AMV's. Maybe I'm just paranoid about the legal environment nowadays. (checks out the back window for black helicopters... :-D)
2) I really like the idea of a LAN set-up where the winners (or heck, ALL the entries) can sit in a file that people can grab & burn on the sytems they bring & jack in. If some Cat-V saintly person decides to PRIVATELY burn & distribute, making his/her own arrangements for media cost - even BYOBD (Bring Your Own Blank Disk) then maybe THAT would work. I dunno, & will defer to con staff for their say & opinions.
3) Remote submissions: Mail media to:
Kumoricon
ATTN: AMVs
P.O. Box 3213
Eugene, OR 97403
This could be a CD, DVD or a ZIP disk (100MB or 250MB.) I will TRY to remember to have the submitted media with me at the con, so if you REALLY need it back there's a good chance I can have your stuff for you to pick up.
Kumoricon Staff has set a mail-in deadline of 8-August-04.
4) How I plan to run the showing: I've run a couple of AMV showing at cons, which went off reasonably well, using the following set-up. However, I'm not a techno-uber-geek ("dammit, Jim, I'm a MECHANICAL engineer, not a computer expert!") Here goes:
I will bring a 'Shuttle' box, running Windows 2003 Server Professional on it. I will set up directories for each category, with 5-second 'dummy' files in between. The order of showing within each category will be determined randomly by physical dice rolls, shortly before the con. The file names will be renamed with prefixes "01-" "02-" etc. to keep them in order in each directory. Showing will consist of a brief verbal introduction to the categoy to be shown, then mouse-drag or grab all the files in the directory, and hit 'Play.'
I will then show snippets of the videos in quick succession during the voting phase. How about each entrant include a TEN SECOND, no-more-mo-less snippet? This way, instead AMV staff trying to figure out the most memorable section, or artificialy selecting the opening 10 sec, or some other uniform but arbitrary method, why no have the creator select the 10-second slice? They know their work the best - What do you guys think?
5) Why no WMVs? Because (a) the resolution isn't as clear as .avi and .mpg on the above system, and (b) you need Windows Media Player 9. The licensing agreement of WMV includes phrases about letting Microsoft check up on what you've been doing with the media player, install & change things automatically whenever you're connected to the internet, and you even allow them to access 'other areas of your computer' which they don't tell you WHAT. So, I hit "I do NOT agree" and will have nothing to do with Windows Media Player 9. So, contest entries need to be in more open-source formats like MPG or AVI. Ra's and mov's usually BITE for quality, so let's stick with the mainline: AVI and MPG. Sooner or later these works will al hit the 'net, and it's nice to go in knowing that your works will be as widely accessible as possible.
I would like to run the show in Winamp 5, but I can switch to an earlier version of Windows Media Player if it BOMBS. Note: as I said, I'm not a computer geek. I'm what marketers call a 'late adopter.' I stick with something that works for as long as possible, change ONCE, then hang on as long as possible again before changing. The system I will use currently plays MPGs and AVIs well, and DivX up to 5.05. I'm not upgrading. If somebody releases a codec in mid August, and you encode with it, and your AMV doesn't play on 'Ol Sawbones' here, it won't show at the contest - because it doesn't play on the system.
6) Posting of Submission Guidelines: I'd like to put it all all into a printable TXT file and see if the Kumoricon web-master(s) might pop it up on the con site. Can a good staff person e-mail me about that, pleez?
7) Limits: Up to TWO entries per creator, only ONE entry per catagory. Each work must be submitted for ONE category. You must tell me WHAT category you want each work to compete in.
Eight) ADDITIONAL RULE I AM "CONSIDERING:" What do you guyt think of this: Any music style is fine, but lyrics must be 'radio quality,' which means no execrable expletives. I AM -NOT- 'enforcing' this, just bringing it up for discussion.
- Guy Letourneau