AMV Competition

For the sixth year in a row, AniMatsuri is inviting submissions for its AMV competition!

We are welcoming both experienced AMV masters and newcomers. Our rating system has changed slightly from last year, with two titles awarded: one by a special panel of judges and the other by popular vote.

The Details

AMV stands for Anime Music Video. The idea is to take one or more of your favorite animes, find a fitting piece of music for the soundtrack, and edit together an exciting self-made music video.

The Rules

1. The video must be between 2 and 5 minutes
2. Each participant may submit up to two videos.
3. The AMV must be created entirely by the submitter – it is not permitted to use AMVs created by others, even partially.
4. The organizers have the right to remove works from the competition if they contain pornography or other improper materials.
5. At least 70% of the video content must be from an anime, anime-style game, or other animation following the same style. The rest is up to the author’s creativity.
6. The selection of music is free. You are allowed to use several different tracks, dialogue, and sound effects. Still, remember that this is a music video above all, so music should dominate.
7. Teamwork is allowed. When submitting your video, list all members of the team.
8. To give everyone an equal chance, it is forbidden to publish and promote your video before the competition. It is forbidden to advertise your video via YouTube or social media, as well as submitting videos that have taken part in any competition before.
9. The submission must not contain opening and closing titles (such as the name of the author and the work, acknowledgements, etc.) The organizers will add an introduction with the names to each video. Use of titles for purely artistic purposes is allowed.
10. The video must be submitted digitally. All common formats are accepted, as long as they can be played by VLC and MPC-HC players. Organizers have the right to disqualify submissions whose video quality is too low to show on a big screen in a large hall.

Some suggestions

1. To ensure a good result, we suggest you use high-definition source material (1080p or 720p) and output the finished work in 1920×1080 or 1280×720 resolution as well. All other resolutions will be re-encoded by the organizers and we cannot guarantee that the picture quality will not suffer. Be sure to use standard 16:9 HD formats.
2. We recommend using H.264 encoding for the video output.
3. If the source material used in the making of the AMV contains text (clips of intros and outros, incidental subtitles, etc.), this is usually not specifically forbidden, but is highly discouraged – it makes the result look unprofessional, and certainly will not improve your chances with the jury or the public.

The competition

1. The panel of judges assembled by the organizers will review all submissions, and rate them on a scale of 12-10-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1. The first place will be awarded to the work that receives the highest number of judge points in total.
2. The top 8* works rated highest by the judges will be screened at the festival, and will be eligible for the public vote. The judge ratings and the exact standings of the works in the judge vote will be revealed only after the public vote is completed.

* The organizers reserve the right to increase this number if necessary, based on the number of submitted works and their average length.

How to submit

Submission deadline: September 12th, 2016, 19:00 Estonian time.

Competing works may be submitted via a personal file server or a trustworthy public file exchange (Dropbox, Mega.nz, etc.). The video must be downloadable without special software (YouTube links are not allowed). The organizers do not provide a file server for submissions.

Alternatively, the video can be submitted on CD, DVD or Blu-Ray disks. The disks shall not be returned to participants.

The maximum file size for videos submitted digitally is 1 GB. The video must remain available on the server until the end of the AniMatsuri festival (September 25th, 2016). Videos submitted on physical media have no file size restrictions (but it would be best if they fit on a single disk).

To register for the competition, please send an email to amv@animatsuri.eu or snail mail to MTÜ Animeklubi Asashio, Munga 12, 51007, Tartu, Estonia.

Include the following:

• The name of the competing work;
• Full names, ages and emails of all team members;
• A link to the video, or the media containing the work (preferably in a rigid box, packed securely);
• The names of all tracks and animes used in the video;
• Preferably, the names of the video and audio editing software used (optional, used for our own statistics).

By submitting your works, you are giving the organizers the right to publish them and promote them in media channels associated with the festival, including the AniMatsuri website, its YouTube channel, and forums.

Happy splicing!

For inspiration, here is the Top 3 from last year.

1. Melani Hansson – Drop it at random

2. Naatan Seeba – Just Do It

3. Norman Seeba – Unravel: XII

This year’s AMV contest judges:

Galina Zaitseva
Gerli Carol Koppel
Martin Kusmin
Mikk Mägi
Sander Peerna
Rait Piir