so, antville, what criteria should music videos be judged by? here's what's been suggested so far:

most fun best new director best low budget worst (overhyped/lazy/derivative) breakthrough best art direction best cinematography best animation best visual fx best dancing best narrative best performance shortest deadline most calm/silent best urban (r&b/hip-hop/rap) best oblique/not-obvious treatment most resourceful best online video quality best antville comment biggest creative gamble/wtf-omg-roflcopter

post your own suggestions in the comments - the full list will then be polled to select the final ten.

ps: a proper logo and tagline would be nice, too...

         

how about.... best video of the year?

logo is dope.

tagline should be: "Don't think we haven't noticed, Cathy Pellow"

         

best dancing or best choreography?

         

Should it be 'Best oblique/not-obvious treatment'? I think that's what I meant

         

• K-Fed award (I wish whoever did this was here so I could beat the crap out of him)

• best song/video matching

         

best editing. Tricky to judge, since so much is contingent on what was shot.... but should probably be there amongst the categories.

         

How about 'Best New Category'

         

Best Low Budget is hard to judge as everything is low budget. Maybe it should be changed to best promo under 10k...? 5k?

I think captainmarc's tagline is right on.

And am I the only one a little vague on the following:

• most calm/silent
• best oblique
• most resourceful
• biggest creative gamble

         

Sounds good, but I think you should nix:

• best dancing (pretty much included in rap/r&b section)

• breakthrough/new director (keep only one unless breathrough refers to the band?)

• shortest deadline (not really interesting topic and hard to know everyones) -most resourceful (thats part of low budget) -best online video quality? what? -biggest creative gamble (part of oblique treatment)

• I agree to add best song video match

• and how bout most Cliched video

         

terri: "best recursive comment"

good to discuss these now.

there'll obviously be some finetuning of proposed categories - and then all of them will be polled; unpopular/obscure ones will drop by the wayside.

         

Isn't best song-video match another way of saying best video?

         

Oh, and for 'best oblique', I mean best unexpected treatment, best leftfield treatment. best treatment that came out of complete left field. etc etc - Needs work, I know. Most unexpectedly successful video? .. .. ..

How about Best Ringtone? ;)

         

contests suck...

how about "worst critic", "worst critique"

please do not include "touch the sky"

         

For animation I think you should separate it in at least 2 categories. "Best Stop Motion" and "Best CG Animation" or something like that.

Or, "Best Hand Made Animation" and "Best Animation Assisted By A Machine That Is Evil And Will Destroy All Mankind In The Near Future"

         

I got another one...

"Best Video Thats Not A Menudo Video"

         

"Most Immature Antville Comment/Post"

         

• most blatant product placement

         

goat, what about "Best Video that has somthing to do, whatever you want, with Kayne West"?

         

I vote for less categories. Also, I think some of the 'film-school hour' categories like "best oblique", 'calm/silent', and "best online quality" are kind of silly. The tighter we can make the list, the more valuable and interesting it will be. Let's get rid of the ones that are too specific or seem like antville in jokes.

         

"biggest circle jerk"

Anyway, should there be 'body of work' categories? The hard-working directors or good-taste-having artists behind consistently solid videos, as opposed the odd lightning strike.

"Best animation" should be "best animated video." That would concern videos where the central focus is fabricated. "Best visual fx" would concern whatever is being used to augment the central footage. However, roto and stop-motion videos are sort of grey between the two.

         

spit: yes, the idea is to narrow this list down to ten final categories by poll (which will appear in a separate post once suggestions here are all in).

         

My bad prog, I didn't read closely enough.

         

• best found footage video?

         

im with najork. it'd be great to give propers to a director/directors that have put out a ton of great shit this year. 'hardest worker' or something along those lines...

         

also, I think it's counter productive to have the 'worst' video category. I think anything with negative connotations is the opposite of what this community should be here for.

Sure it's fun to talk shit or whatever, but without a constructive aspect to a critique, I think it hurts more than helps.

         

naj/vs: Director of the year, is the name of that category. MVPA has the same category - I'm 100% for it

         

I agree with vs that any negative awards would seem snarky and lower the value of the awards overall. We should try to make it more than just an inside-joke fest. We should aim for something where the results could get posted elsewhere on the internet and would still be interesting to the uninitiated.

         

"I think anything with negative connotations is the opposite of what this community should be here for."

I agree with that quote, but I've read way more negative comments than positive ones on antville.

this competition is wrong!

         

Good point about worst video, actually. I wonder how it will fare in the vote.

We need to start talking DVD/logo/prize soon. Someone e-mailed me saying T-shirts would be nice. ???

Also, voting for categories isn't going to be easy in the antville polling system after all. You can only vote for one item. A comment-vote may be awkward, but it may be all we have. ??

         

no problem with the polling: the post will contain X number of polls, each of which you can vote or not vote - it'll be up to everyone's scruples not to vote for more than ten of them (again, shouldn't be a problem).

oh, and: i love goat's suggestion for the tagline: "this competition is wrong!"

         

here are my suggestions:

biggest/best contribution/body of work for the entire year best editing best unknown

i agree that we shouldn't have a 'worst' award. utterly pointless cheers

         

best unknown what? band? director? cellphone the video was shot on?

         

if you do this, antville will be quickly raided by every single PR department on music video earth. It will kill this site.

so why not!

hhahhaa

         

most underrated video

         

lifetime achievement award? select a pioneering director who you would like to honor

         

costume design? does anyone care about that? i know there's an art direction category but...

         

does Best Performance mean best 'acting' or best 'performance video'?

         

do the majority of you guys work in post?

         

dbowie: hipvideos attempted to do this a while back. they lasted about a week.

best performance video, iliketowa (a category antville loves to hate...)

         

best unknown director - i.e. someone who is not signed, is not professional - who did it perhaps for his mate's band.

and i don't think the PR companies will effect anything. this is a public vote. if anything, it could restore power back to the people and make the PR/record companies sit up and take note - that you don't have to swamp a music video with close ups just to make it work.

         

How about 'best unsigned director'?

         

logo?

         

more logos! (we'll poll those too!)

         

Logo - Its supposed to be an ant holding the 'Golden Ant' but it looks more like an anarchist bomb Which may suggest a more militant subconscious desire than was first intended!

         

the little ant's having one mighty crap!

nonetheless: post it to the call for logos.

         

Careful prog u might be feeling its crap splattering all over ur Barnett, as it mysteriously bounces off ur bonce!

         

Best music video blog (antville itself excluded), no?

         

category idea:

this might be messy/inappropriate but I would love to have a 'classic' category. Particularly those lost videos that popped up on youtube that are now brilliantly retro.

For example, I've watched Little Superstar more than any other legit music video this year. I feel it needs to be honored.

Maybe "Hall of Fame" which would be a tongue-in-cheek reference to these bizarre music videos. Or "Best Found video." Apache could be one. Average Homeboy. Etc...

         

how about

"most overlooked video"

i like the idea of doing best video categories for different budget levels. is it fair to compare a vid made for $25K to one made for $100K?

         

c-marc: 'best viral video' sounds right, no?

Someone e-mailed me saying the same thing about Captain Ahab: "I think i've watched this video more than any other this year." How about: 'most watched video'?? (though 'overlooked' might be something too..)

joan: name your categories, to put them on the ballot! Then convince your voters.. Though perhaps industry folk here can pitch in on the numbers??

         

justj: insofar as overlooked=underrated, got it. not sure we'd ever get reliable info in order to do budget-tiered "best" awards...

cap'n: "classic" might mean too many different things (personally i'd associate it with "hall of fame" in a fairly non-tongue-in-cheek way).

"best found video" sounds interesting, and somewhat different from "viral" (okgo).

k: "most watched" is going to be very personal by definition - "most fun video" was an attempt at a more communicable version of that.

         

• best mashup video/video mashup

         

what does everyone think about:

Best Production Company

probably sounds weird at first but the intention is to choose a) a prod. co. that has (over the year) consistently put out incredible work. b) the company that has the highest level of creative/brilliant videos produced under it for the year.

i think it would be truly interesting to point out, to the video community, which prod. co.s consistently support and nurture brilliant vision. this category could even be helpful in aiding the 'about-to-be-signed' in choosing which company they want to go with.

thanks for your consideration,

kalstark