GMV Awards 2015

Hey everyone! It's that time again! We literally just released the results for 2014, but time is pressing on.

So Jessie has entrusted the Awards to me now that she's stepped down, and I'm really determined to make this year a really great year for the awards. Due to various reasons we were waylaid with getting results out last year, so this time around, our focus will be efficiency, teamwork and planning.

Changes for 2015:

- I will be personally recruiting people to be judges, as well as opening the sign-ups to the general public. We were far too few in number this year, which is part of the reason we got so far behind. Sometimes people just need to be invited.

- As soon as the deadline for entries passes, all categories will go up to allow people to start judging right away. Each judge will have 4 categories that they are assigned to judge. There will be an overall deadline for all categories, but judges will be expected to complete their first set by a certain date, and continue to hand in the other sets at intervals so that the deadlines are staggered.

- As shown by the result of the public and judges' polls carried out last year, the majority were in favour of having all category videos and results videos on the main GMVA channel. All entries and marks should be submitted on that channel too.

- I will be going through mark schemes and making sure they all adhere to the universal weighting implemented last year (5 sections /20 all with 4 /5 sub-sections.

- I want to open the awards by the beginning of November. A bit short on time, I know, but I've already started making the opening video.

- The categories are as follows:
• EOTY
• SOTY
• Group
• Collab
• Short
• Flow
• Effects
• Basic
• Raw
• Storyteller
• Newcomer
• Trailer
• Masker
• Canon
• Romance

I'm thinking of scrapping:
• Tributes, as it can be incorporated into canon or other categories where editing is the focus.
• Comedy, as humour could be incorporated into emotion?
• Crossover, as crossovers are generally stories or pairings, and can therefore fit into storyteller and/or romance.
• Perhaps combining Group and Collab?

Feel free to fight to keep any of these categories. I just feel like 18 categories is A LOT.

Please let me know if you'd like to return as a judge for this year! Also please let me know your skype so I can add you to the chat :)

Hm... Suggestion time!

Suggestion One: The Categories
I think in terms of categories, taking out Tribute and Crossover is a pretty good idea. Though I also think that crossover is more of the technical side of storytelling and shipping things. Or, if anything, substitute canon for tribute. They're essentially the same thing, but Tribute is a dedication and Canon is just clarifying what the story actually says. With Tribute, it can be more interpretive, which I like more honestly
I also think that Group and Collab should stay separate. These two, despite it being similar, are two different structures completely. Two to tango, but three's a crowd, you know? The technicalities of it are too different, I think.
I think Romance can also be dropped though, to be honest. Usually in falls into emotion and storytelling, so I don't really see a need to have it... Might be me though.

Suggestion Two: Five Man Panels
This is my thought, but I think that one of the reasons why we were so late on getting everything judged was we because we always had those last few people who couldn't do their judging. Maybe by narrowing down the amount of judges, we won't have an issue finding judges to replace or get their parts in. Means we can also have less issues with collecting all the scores. It might scale out the final results a bit differently, but it might help with organization at least.

Suggestion Three: Opening to All Videos
I like to think that as an editor, some of my older videos are much better than my newer ones. Either that or when the categories closed, it was sometimes in that awkward in between (December 31st or January 1st). So sometimes, I personally miss the chance to enter because categories close on the dot or at that one moment where I'm all 'Gah! This video's perfect, but it'd be too old to enter into the next year's competition.' Thus, I think that we could do this as a test in 2015.
Instead of making it so that editors can only enter 2015 related videos, they could have the option to enter in anything for this year, new and old. With how inactive 2015 became suddenly, it'd be a good idea to spark interest in older and newer editors. It'll get alot more entries this year than last, so a bit more work, but it'll hopefully spark interest in the GMV Awards again.

Erm... I think those are all of my suggestions at the moment... c:

Thanks for your suggestions Steph! Can I add you to the skype chat and assume you'd like to be a judge/head-judge? :)

I like the idea of opening to all videos, the only problem is that we might get people entering videos that have been entered/won in previous years. Idk it might be a little unfair. We can definitely consider it though!

About the panel sizes, it's a good idea to go smaller. I think 7 is a good number personally, not too many, not too few, but we can put it up for discussion.

Categories: I think Romance should stay personally, as there are types of shipping videos that aren't necessarily canon or story-based, and they may not be represented using a particularly emotional song. Shipping videos are very common, so it kind of makes sense to me to have something that encompasses them.

I think you're right about collab and group, upon reflection the way they are organised are quite different. Collabs might have the advantage over group entries if they were in the same category, as managing it/communication is easier between smaller numbers of people.

As for Crossover, we can focus some of the technical aspects into the Storytelling markscheme without getting too specific about it being from two different footages.

I like the changes you guys considered so far! Fewer judges and essentially categories makes sense and in the long run it would just be less stressful.

I had the same concerns about handing in older videos as annabel, I also rather preferred the Awards being year-orientated, because it is after all about the best video/editor/studio of 2015. Entering an older video might defeat this purpose. That is to say, I am not fully against it, it is not a bad idea, since I know the feeling of liking older videos more than recent ones, but I'd be rather careful here.

As for the category cutting, I would prefer keeping tribute rather than canon as well since it is, like steph said, less specific and people have an easier time editing tributes than canons in my opinion.
Comedy would be better off being included in emotions, I do agree here, especially seeing its decline over the year comedy doesn't seem to be popular enough to be its own category.
I agree with you guys on the distinction between collab and group, since I personally never turned anything in group but always in collab - there is just a different dynamic to the editing when it's just two people. One also has to acknowledge the effort that goes into group projects, it is often just that much bigger than a collab.
I like the idea of fitting crossover into storytelling, as difficult as that may be, since I am for romance as a separate category as well.

oh and btw how many judges do you plan on having in total for 2015 annabel? Was is 25? I don't know if you're ok with this, I would run them by you before deciding anything, but I could look around and ask some people that would like to join the judging?

TheAnimegirly wrote:I don't know if you're ok with this, I would run them by you before deciding anything, but I could look around and ask some people that would like to join the judging?

Oh my goodness, that would be super helpful. Especially if you have people on skype so that we could get them in on the chat. Please let me know any people you think would be good. <3

I feel like Comedy and Romance are genres of storytelling, so wouldn't it make sense to scrap those two categories in favour of throwing them in with Storyteller?

Group and Collab could stay separate, but Collab could be a maximum of two editors whereas Group could be three and up.

I also don't see much distinction between Basic and Raw, so could they possibly be combined as well?

Canon vs Tribute is a difficult one because I guess they could be considered similar. Canon could be how the editor portrays an aspect of a particular game (such as a theme or a relationship etc.), whereas Tribute could be how an editor portrays a game and its characters/story as a whole (for example: not focusing on just one or two characters). So it might be okay to leave them separate as well and not cut either of them.

Other than that, I think keeping the awards year-orientated makes more sense. I understand the issue with thinking of a video to enter and then realising you made it the year before so you can't use it, but people will most likely feel inclined to re-use past entries in the hopes of placing in a category better than they did before.

Oh! Also, Crossover - I feel like it should stay a separate category, because there are alot of crossover-centric editors out there. You could easily draw a distinction between Crossover and Storytelling, because Crossover tends to be central to two main characters from different games. Storytelling would normally combine a lot more than two separate games in order to add to the story they're trying to tell. However, I'm not in favour either way because I can see how it can be easily combined with the Storyteller category. I guess it just depends how complicated we think it's going to be.

I'm a little late, but I'll tell my ideas.

I agree that Group and Collab should stay separated, they are two different things.

Romance imho could go into Emotion AND storytelling. If the video has a story, then the editor could put it into Storytelling. If it's a general shipping video, then he could put it into Emotion.

Comedy could go into Emotion too.

Crossover could be deleted as a category, because, like Romance, the video could go into: Storytelling, Masking or Emotion, depending on the focus of the video. Or, a person could enter it into all three categories.

Basic and Raw, instead, are very different: Raw means you are not using effect, regardless of your program. Basic means you are using a basic program, but this basic program could be used to make amazing effects - look at some of Jessie's videos, she even did masks. Her video definitely are NOT Raw.

I agree that Canon could be put into Tribute. We could specify that an editor could enter a video that portrays in some way at least one aspect of the game they are making a tribute of. For example, one could make a general tribute to FFX, or just a video focused on the relationship between two characters from FFX. Or, again, an interpretation - still in canon, so no "Tidus secretly loves Rikku" - of the events or of the feelings of the game. It could still be a tribute.

As for the entering videos, I think it should remain year-based. We could time our auditions better. For example, we put the audition on December 2015, and we say that we accept all the videos from December 2014 to November 2015. This way, one already has all the videos ready. If they want to enter in next year competition, they know they can work from December 2015 to November 2016.
I hope that's clear XDDDD, I got confused just explaining it.

Of course you can count on me for judging :)!

Thanks Gwen! :D What's your skype btw, so I can add you to the chat?

I am Gwenelan Ai on skype :). I don't use it so often, though, because I don't always have the time, but I check it once a day :).

My only concern with the fewer judges, is we had so little this year, and it was alot for us. I don't think fewer judges would be the best idea, i think more but solid judges and back up judges should be assigned to each category, and if maybe we can scale some of the mark schemes just to reduce the amount of time it takes to fill out the number's before having to write a paragraph of our notes lol. 

That's just my opinion ^^

Sweetie, it's awesome that you're so enthusiastic about the new awards, but could you PLEASE PLEASE help finish the current ones and finally hand in your results for SOTY? Deadline passed and you're the last judge who hasn't submitted yet! ;D

I agree with the category mergers, I think I suggested some of those last year. It's always been my view that we should make the awards a little bit simpler and smaller. It's nice to have lots of categories but I think we get too excited and carried away each year adding more, someone who is new to entering is going to find it all very confusing :) 

I'd just say make sure it's clearly signposted, so if you do put Comedy in Emotion then put a line in the description saying "You can submit your comedy entries here" or something. Being honest, we do end up with mostly sad/soppy stuff in Emotion :p

So do you want to be on the panel again this year sunny? If so I can add you to the IVI panel and skype chat (if you let me know your skype). Here's the judge sign-up video, with remaining categories in the description if you want to be a HJ: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqwT1wpMsv4

sunheart wrote:So do you want to be on the panel again this year sunny? If so I can add you to the IVI panel and skype chat (if you let me know your skype). Here's the judge sign-up video, with remaining categories in the description if you want to be a HJ: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqwT1wpMsv4

Sounds great, I'll pm you my skype info soon and comment on the video x

I like all these ideas :)
I'm very tempted to participate again in the Awards, although I won't be able to judge everysingle category like I did with the 2014awards, that was unbelievably stressful. If you dont mind that I wont be able to judge every category, please include me for the jury <3

Thanks Bex! That's super helpful! Yep, if all goes well, we will all only be judging 4 categories at most. :)