[ngsilver]

The purpose of our category based competition is to assist in judging with objective criteria. Below are some short explanations to give you a feel of what we and the audience is looking for. Please be aware these descriptions do not cover everything and are merely to help guide you in choosing what category to classify your video in.

Action - Excitement & adrenaline are the first two words that come to mind when thinking of this category. Videos do not have to contain fight scenes from anime like Naruto. Some creators have even done action videos featuring just flying planes. This category is often heavily reliant on editing when competition enters the final stages of judging.

Comedy - Make them laugh. The simplest way to explain success in this category is can your video make an audience laugh or chuckle consistently. Concept and timing are key in this category. Be aware that stretching a single joke for 3 minutes can test the audience's patience.

Dance/Upbeat - Whether a electronic rave inspired video, a video featuring characters cutting up the floor with dance moves, or maybe just some sweet happy-go-lucky sentimentalism this category actually carries a fairly broad group of stylized videos. Historically speaking this category is often internally talked about as crowd pleasers.

Drama - Story, conflict, emotion. Those three words are often the triple crown when it comes to this category. First time submitters should beware as Drama has always been the most heavily submitted category every year. This is a category where AMV creators often take their own spin on things and want to convey something to the audience. The competition will be tight and creativity will be highly important.

Romance - Love, attraction, relationships. While this category often focuses on couplings in anime it can go well beyond that. This category does not require that the portrayal of a relationship be happy. For example while one person may submit a video featuring dates another may submit a video covering a breakup in a relationship.

Freestyle - If you build it they will come. This category does not mean "other". This category exists to give a voice to videos which are often more esoteric or highly original in terms of their muse. Many AMV creators have often bemoaned the ability of some videos to reach an audience because they do not compete well in a traditional setting where specifics are being looked for in a category. This is the necessary evil and at the same time inherent weakness in most AMV contests which use category based judging. Several years back when the dance/upbeat type videos were becoming very popular they were failing to win awards because of audience reaction or restrictive categories. Thus other conventions seized upon the need to make a new category. You will now find Dance/upbeat categories at many contests. This year the AMV staff at ACen is hoping to make the term Freestyle a success that can see broader acceptance in the AMV community. A good example is a video which is predominantly horror but at the same time makes deadpan jokes a couple times throughout the video. At some contests these videos have flip flopped between comedy and drama hoping to judge better in one or the other. The reality is that the video cannot be constrained by a label and will not see success in judging because of this. We look forward to seeing where you can take us.

Epic AMV - Due to time constraints many contests put a time limit on videos submitted. This leaves out those videos that use music and tell stories on a more epic (read long) scale. To accommodate such works we have introduced the Epic competition. For a video to be deemed epic it must be longer then your average AMV. It should be at least 6min30sec long. An Epic AMV should tell a story, one that usually centers around a hero of some type, and should follow said hero until the very end. Music that often could be used in Epic AMVs are Rock Ballads and Progressive Rock; however a mix of multiple songs such as mixing a whole album together could also be seen as a good source for such an Epic video. Of course any long song could be used in the production of an Epic AMV. While Epic AMV could be interpreted in various other ways we will primarily be sticking to the definition listed here, however what is listed here is not exactly written in stone and could still be left up to interpretation. We would love to be surprised by an innovative use of the freedom given to potential editors when they are allowed to submit videos of greater length. Videos in this category will compete outside of the rest of the AMV contest in their own competition.

[Sir Viver]

My entry seems like a mix of drama and romance. It feels like more of the former than the latter, though a fair share of the "dramatic" content is based upon the relationship between the pairing involved. It has its sappy moments and depressing/tension-filled moments (correlating to the pair), but there are parts of the video which don't correlate to their relationship at all. Because of that, would this still classify as a "drama" entry? And could I ultimately leave what category it falls under in your hands?

This post has been edited by Sir Viver: 23 January 2011 - 10:10 PM

[ngsilver]

You must select a category when you submit your entry. However, if we feel that it was mis-categorized we may move the video to the category of our choice, however this doesn't happen very often. Also, you can request us to change an entry's category as well. Though based on your description, it seems like it more relates to Romance. Romance essentially is a subset of Drama anyway. I would suggest submitting the video to whichever category you believe best fits the video, or if you truly feel it doesn't quite fall into either, then Freestyle may be a choice for you.

[Sir Viver]

ngsilver, on 24 January 2011 - 03:15 AM, said:

Romance essentially is a subset of Drama anyway.

Thanks for the response. The only reason I'm asking is: I know some past Drama AMVs have featured romantic content, i.e. the drama was because of the romance between the characters, and still won Best Drama at Acen's contest.

A lot of the depicted interaction between my video's coupling has dramatic (oftentimes depressing) undertones; i.e. there isn't too much fluffy/ lovey-dovey romance (although there is some). About 1/4~1/3 of the video doesn't really focus on their relationship with one another at all. Would you still say I should enter it under Romance?

Sorry to bug, I just don't want to upload it to one category if it had a better chance of winning in another. ^^;; It's nice to know you'd move it to another category if you really felt that it was misplaced, though.

This post has been edited by Sir Viver: 24 January 2011 - 04:43 AM

[ngsilver]

TBH, I can't really advise without actually seeing the vid. A description doesn't really help. In the end, it's really up to you what category you think fits best.

[Sir Viver]

Well, thanks for the help. ^^

[Allieelly]

I have a question. I'm making an AMV, and I'm not sure if it's action or drama.

How do the two differ?

[ngsilver]

Think of the differences in Drama and Action like the difference between an action movie (think Rambo) and a drama flick (The Green Mile). That's pretty much it.

[LoveGaara]

If I have a video between two guys, but it isnt yaoi and I don't want it in the romance category, would it go in drama?

[ngsilver]

Well the really depends on you're choice. People forget that most drama is technically melodrama, which is to say, the drama between people. Often this is equated to romance but it often isn't the case (though romance is a form of melodrama.) So really, it's up to you. If it isn't a romance between two guys then it isn't a romance.