The following takes you through the judging process, from the moment you submit your video up to its eventual cut or award. I hope that reading it will give you a better understanding of why decisions are made the way they are and help you decide which videos would be best to submit.
Before we begin, please note that I will NOT at any point take the following into consideration when judging:
- Enabled DivX Logo
- TV Station watermarks
- Mixed Aspect Ratios*
- Quality and Bit Rate
- Fancy Credit Sequences
- Stretched or Smushed Clips
*As long as you don't consciously draw attention to it through things like overlays or cross-dissolves.
Stage One - Preliminary Cuts
Videos are subject to two levels of judging. First, I check for basic mastery of key vidding techniques. At this point, your video is being judged solely on its own merits.
The criteria being used to judge videos is as follows:
- Pace - When and why do you change shots or switch to a new scene? Is there a purpose behind it or is it largely arbitrary? Are any clips dragging on for too long, e.g. riding over several lines of lyrics?
- Musicality - Do you acknowledge major shifts in dynamic? How about the beat? Are you mismatching slow-paced clips with a fast-paced song, or vice-versa?
- Scene Selection - Do you stick to a coherant theme throughout the video? Does your choice of clips make at least a little sense? Is there a lot of distracting lip movement?
- Editing - Are your cuts clean and inobtrusive? Are there any leaked scenes? Do you overuse the slow motion effect in hopes of getting clips to last longer? Do you use effects that, besides being uneccessary, aren't even aesthetically pleasing?
Videos that display a solid grasp on vidding basics as judged by the above criteria will be placed into categories and move onto the next level of judging. Videos that do not will be removed from the judging pool.
Before I move on, I would like to draw attention to the matter of lip-movement, mentioned under 'Scene Selection' above. No matter how inventive, evocative, or visually stunning your video is, unless it qualifies for the Comedy category, TALKY-FACE WILL KILL YOU. In other words, if your video contains a lot of lip-movement, you will effectively be barred from winning anything other than a Notable Entry, if that. Something to keep in mind.
Stage Two - Specialized Judging
Videos that survived this first cut will then be evaluated on a stricter, more nuanced set of criteria to better judge them both on their own merits and relative to other entries in their categories.
Advanced judging criteria is as follows:
- Pace - Does the pace appropriately rise and fall over the course of the video? How do you handle build-up, especially towards choruses or other climatic moments?
- Musicality - Are you able to acknowledge more subtle changes in dynamic or unique moments in the audio? Is there a sense of synesthesia, in which the clips look the way the music sounds?
- Scene Selection - Are any of your clip-lyric matches particuarly clever or insightful? Is there at least some purpose in why you chose the scenes you did, i.e. are you not just inserting random clips over stretches of music? Do you use clip connections to bring out further insight into your subject matter? How well do you use internal motion?
- Editing - How precise is your editing? For example, if you are choosing to cut or use effects on the beat, are you actually hitting them right on the beat or do you end up missing it? Are you using any distracting transitions?
- Misc - Does your use of effects actually add something to the video? Are you able to take advantage of in-source external motion or add some of your own? How well-composed are your overlays and masks? Do they ever make it hard to see what's going on in a shot? If you use dialogue, does it have a purpose and is it easy to understand?
These videos will also be judged on artistic merit, that is to say, their concept, structure, complexity, and overall insight into the subject matter. A boost will be given to videos that are particularly innovative or unique.
Category winners and runner-ups will be finalized. Remaining shortlisted vids move on to stage three.
Stage Three - Discretionary Awards
Videos that made it onto a category list but were either pushed out due to intense competition, or did not quite measure up to the winner and runner-ups, will be given Awards for Merit. If there is room left in a round for Notable Entries, I take a look at videos that did not win anything in spite of making it onto our lists of possible contenders for an award. These will then be evaluated on a more subjective basis, in which I look for videos that I really liked or felt displayed great potential in spite of some shortcomings. These "shortcomings" can range from moderate technical gaffes to talky-face.
The Judge's Choice award is selected from the pool of stage two winners. I make no qualms about there being some specific criteria for this award; it is granted to a video that I truly loved, for whatever reason, and would like to grant some extra recognition. A Judge's Choice can overlap with a winner in any other category except Notable Entry (on account of its being a stage three award) and Best Video. The latter is excluded because if you managed a Best Video award it is safe to say I truly enjoyed your video and a Judge's Choice on top of that would be a bit redundant.
With that, judging is finally complete.
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