Awards sites/contests - meta

[franzeska]

I am still a relative vidding n00b, and I've never done anything involving awards or contests. I don't think I quite get it. Tell me about awards and contests and what makes them appeal to you--as a judge, as a vidder, whatever.

Or let's talk about their history: I've seen you guys saying the number of awards sites seems to be dropping? Some vidding communities seem more into them than others. Some cons run them; some never have. Thoughts?

I'm bored: meta me! ;D

[nos]

I just recently started trying to enter contests, and this post reminded me to check the ones I entered...I am totally pleased I got runner-up in the Art of Vidding Awards! Heh.

But I only know of two awards sites running at the moment, those are:
Art of Vidding awards
artofvidding.co.uk/avaawards.html

and The Creative Junkyard Awards:
cja.rightsiders.com/index.html

As for my thoughts? For the majority of my fannish time online, awards sites always seemed to be something that were skewed heavily in favor of the judges' friends. Hence why I avoided them for so very long. Fanfic, vidding, fanart, whichever, it always seemed to be the same handful of people winning stuff. Now that awards sites are mostly vanishing, it maybe has changed? I don't know. Since I never actually entered any back then, I am not the expert on the subject.

[elipie]

I've only entered one, and the contest was abandoned before submissions closed, so I'm not really sure how they work myself. I think the main reason I'd enter something like that would be to get more visibility since I'm still pretty new to the vidding community. It's also interesting to me to see what judges look for in each vid to decide the winner for each category. Obviously that's subjective, and like nos said, it has high potential to be biased, but it's really interesting to me to see what other viewers believe makes a good vid.

[obsessive24]

I think winning awards only have value insofar as you value the judges' opinions and judgment criteria. That, and if they have shiny, shiny awards graphics. ;D Mostly I just think of them as a good way to find new vids that I might not be exposed to otherwise.

As for giving awards to your friends, that's a difficult one. Because a lot of my vidding friends are my friends precisely because I admired their work and struck up a conversation and that developed into a friendship. So if later they entered their work in my award site and I genuinely think theirs is the best for a category, is that favouritism? Or just the fact that my personal tastes in vids skewed toward my befriending them in the first place? In which case, it feels disingenuous to specifically seek to penalise my friends for, you know, being awesome and having the bad luck to be my friends.

I co-judge at Driver Picks the Music (regularly active) and The Fourth Wall (annual). DPTM is run by someone else so I don't get too much say into the way the awards are structured; but T4W is my baby and I'm pretty proud of it, mostly because (1) we have so few categories, and (2) we've been writing long-ass reviews for all the winners each of the four years the awards have been running to date. I think reviews are key for us because at least it gives you an insight into the judges' process, what worked for them to give the vid the award. You may agree or disagree with the reasoning, but at least there's a transparency to it.

You can find all past years' awards and reviews in the archive. Here's a sample of the reviews we wrote for the Achievement in Vidding award (similar to Best Video) each year. (Opens in PDF.)

2007: "Only" by Cherryice
2008: "Beautiful Struggle" by nc
2009: "In My Veins" by Milly
2010: "Tandemonium" by Jarrow

Like I said, long-ass reviews. But I find them both valuable as a resource and hopefully a really nice keepsake for the vidder as well.

[nos]

Dec 21, 2011 3:00:31 GMT -5 obsessive24 said:

DPTM is run by someone else so I don't get too much say into the way the awards are structured; but T4W is my baby and I'm pretty proud of it, mostly because (1) we have so few categories, and (2) we've been writing long-ass reviews for all the winners each of the four years the awards have been running to date.

This is something I wish more award sites would do, cause I'd be ALL OVER that.

And as for being friends with vidders, that's a given. But in years past, I would look at awards sites, and it was obvious bias, considering the winning fic/vids/fanart wasn't all that great compared to some others, and the same few people kept winning no matter their skill. It's what turned me off of awards initially, but I am hopeful that things are different now heh. You shouldn't penalize your friends for being your friends, hee. But I know that you would totally pick some unknown vidder who blew you away over a friend that was less-blow-you-away

[obsessive24]

Dec 21, 2011 3:12:13 GMT -5 nos said:

This is something I wish more award sites would do, cause I'd be ALL OVER that.

I've seen a number of awards sites do that and stop because the workload is just too much. The same reason why almost all awards sites eventually grind to a halt. The only reason why we've been able to keep going at T4W is because we only do it annually.

Well, obvious bias and favouritism is... er, obvious. ;D In which case I'd say it falls into my first statement, in that - because of the favouritism - I don't think I'd value those judges' opinions and judgment criteria enough to care.

I think it's kind of like a job interview in some ways. On the face of it, it seems like they're interviewing (judging) you. But in actual fact there's a very strong undercurrent of you interviewing (judging) them and figuring out if it's a good workplace fit for you. If it's not, you shrug and walk away.

[thedothatgirl]

Just chipping in here. I used to like to offer reviews but on top of judging, award making and keeping the site running I had to drop that. We've been going 5 years now and the number of rounds has gone from regular monthly to around 2 or 3 a year with a special round thrown in to mix things up.

I have a co-judge on my site who has intermittent internet access so I have to send her the entries, kind of slows things down but I really value her help so it is worth it. If the number of entries is lower again next round, I shall take a view and perhaps switch it to annual. All things have their time.

As for awards sites dwindling? Definitely - I've seen eight different sites disappear/go on permanent update/hiatus over the last 18 months. I won't bore you with how many have gone since I started submitting in 2005.

But in actual fact there's a very strong undercurrent of you interviewing (judging) them and figuring out if it's a good workplace fit for you. If it's not, you shrug and walk away.

Precisely, well put. I do this and I know there are vidders who have entered our site who have probably done the same.

As for favouritism and bias, we try hard to be objective and set aside our own fandom preferences and so on - that's why we have the judge's choices awards. But that said if the same vidders win regularly it should occur to others that perhaps their vids are that good.

[obsessive24]

Personally I think there are two reasons why awards sites are dwindling.

The first is the workload, as thedothatgirl said. It's a lot of work maintaining an awards site, with or without reviews, if you're just gonna keep going round after round. Most of them tend to run full-steam for about a year before the judge/webmaster runs out of steam.

The second is I think that people do vote with their feet. If an awards site doesn't exhibit clear judging criteria and transparency of process (and pretty award graphics), then the number and quality of entries drop. And the more they drop, the more the situation snowballs.

ETA: actually I thought of another reason. I think the number of vidders who are involved on the "awards circuit" is dropping in general, as the new generation focuses more on YT, which has its own awards circuit that's actually hosted on YT, so there's both a lack of exposure to non-YT awards sites, and also a question of whether there's enough cross-pollination of judging criteria/aesthetic values for the vidders to want to submit to those non-YT awards sites.

[thedothatgirl]

ETA: actually I thought of another reason. I think the number of vidders who are involved on the "awards circuit" is dropping in general, as the new generation focuses more on YT, which has its own awards circuit that's actually hosted on YT, so there's both a lack of exposure to non-YT awards sites, and also a question of whether there's enough cross-pollination of judging criteria/aesthetic values for the vidders to want to submit to those non-YT awards sites.

I don't get involved with the YT award circuit. We get a few vidders submitting who are YouTube based - are these YT awards contests straight out award competitions or challenges? The few I've seen are to make vids to meet challenge criteria. Something that I've seen happen in forum challenges but never quite takes off successfully on Award Sites.

[obsessive24]

I'm at work so can't access YT right now, but I remember seeing both. Some are Challenge-based in the sense that the submitting vidders will have to work toward a theme (although usually pretty broad, like "demonstrate your awesome technical skills"), but some of them just seem to be "submit your vids to me and I will judge them and then make an announcement video of all the winners!"

[thedothatgirl]

although usually pretty broad, like "demonstrate your awesome technical skills")

Ha! that'd put me off straight away, no way I can meet that criteria. I'd be curious to see what you find.

I like the idea of challenges it's just difficult finding time to tackle them.

[obsessive24]

One of my favourite technical videos I've found on YT is bubbleforest's Grandfather Clock.

[legoline]

Dec 21, 2011 3:12:13 GMT -5 nos said:

But in years past, I would look at awards sites, and it was obvious bias, considering the winning fic/vids/fanart wasn't all that great compared to some others, and the same few people kept winning no matter their skill.

I think at least with the fanfic sites at least it was possible to nominate certain stories and authors, so if you were either very popular or had very devoted friends that's probably how you got nominated (and effectively voted for), and why a lot of great stuff was simply overlooked because nobody knew it was there. I'm not sure how it is with fanvids, though.

[obsessive24]

The great majority of vidding awards sites I come across, you submit your own vids.

[dragonchic]

I never saw much of a problem with favoritism towards judges' friends - if anything most award circuit vidders seem to have "met" through entering their vids at various sites. That's how I got to know a lot of my vidding friends (this forum's admin included ).

I did sometimes see bias in terms of fandom though, which is somewhat problematic at sites that purport to accept anything. Back when I regularly entered my own vids, there were a couple sites at which I could predict how well they'd do just because they were one of the judge's favorite fandoms (or pairings, etc). But I doubt it was done purposefully - it can be hard to take off the rose-colored glasses when a vid is about something close to your heart. Just wish a few judges had tried a bit harder.

I ran an awards site called the Friendly Neighborhood Video Awards way back when and my intent in creating it (besides the shameless Spider-Man theme) was to maximize judging transparency. I had a really detailed judging section laid out from the beginning and would offer reviews to anyone who didn't win an award so that they'd understand my reasoning. They were free to disagree, and this is all of course subjective, but I thought being as open as possible would at least make the process less frustrating. If someone didn't like my criteria or how I judged, they were free to stop entering. A few vidders did just that and I didn't take it personally.

The other thing I did to try and set the FNVAs apart (back when there was a veritable glut of awards sites) was an annual March Madness style summer tournament. Each vidder was seeded, placed in brackets, and went head-to-head against another vidder until only one remained. Could be tricky because you couldn't enter the same vid twice and didn't know what your opponent was going to send in. 'Twas great fun, would totally do it again if I ever had the time. ;D