The winners!

After much debating, designing, nominating, voting, and loads of hyperlinking, here are the true magnificent winners of the Antville Music Video Awards 2012.

• MOST FUN

Die Antwoord: "Baby's On Fire" - DIR. Ninja & Terence Neale

Also nominated: Die Antwoord: “Fatty Boom Boom” - DIR. Ninja, Terence Neale & Saki Fokken Diplo (ft. Nicky Da B): "Express Yourself" - DIR. @LILINTERNET Major Lazer (ft. The Partysquad): "Original Don" - DIR. Kyle Frere Sebastien Tellier: "Cochon Ville" - DIR. Alex Courtes

• BEST ANIMATED

Liars: “Brats” - DIR. Ian Cheng

Also nominated: Flying Lotus: “Putty Boy Strut” - DIR. Cyriak Harris Hot Chip: “Don't Deny Your Heart” - DIR. Peter Serafinowicz Kris Menace (ft. Miss Kittin): “Hide” - DIR. Mathieu Bétard Lorn: “Ghosst(s)” - DIR. CRCR

• BEST PERFORMANCE

M.I.A.: "Bad Girls" - DIR. Romain Gavras

Also nominated: Bat For Lashes: "Laura" - DIR. Noel Paul Grimes: "Oblivion" - DIR. Emily Kai Bock PSY: "Gangnam Style" - DIR. PSY Solange: "Losing You" - DIR. Melina Matsoukas

• BEST NARRATIVE

The Shoes: "Time To Dance" - DIR. Daniel Wolfe

Also nominated: Flying Lotus: “Until The Quiet Comes” - DIR. Kahlil Joseph The Hickey Underworld: "The Frog" - DIR. Joe Vanhoutteghem Spiritualized: "Hey Jane" - DIR. AG Rojas Sébastien Tellier: "Pépito Bleu" - DIR. Sanghon Kim & Mathieu Tonetti

• BEST HIP-HOP

2 Chainz (ft. Kanye West): "Birthday Song" - DIR. Andreas Nilsson

Also nominated: Jay-Z & Kanye West (ft. Frank Ocean): "No Church In The Wild" - DIR. Romain Gravas Jay Z & Kanye West: "Niggas In Paris" - DIR. Kanye West JJ DOOM: "Guv'nor" - DIR. Ninian Doff Solange: "Losing You" - DIR. Melina Matsoukas

• BEST CHOREOGRAPHY

PSY: "Gangnam Style" - CHOR. Lee Joo Sun

Also nominated: Die Antwoord: "Fatty Boom Boom" - CHOR. Ninja, Yo-landi, Manti, Tarryn & Robin Flying Lotus: “Until The Quiet Comes” - CHOR. Storyboard P Grimes: "Oblivion" - CHOR. Claire Boucher Sigur Rós: "Fjögur Píanó" - CHOR. Ryan Heffington

• BEST ART DIRECTION

Woodkid: "Run Boy Run" – AD. Pierre Pell

Also nominated: Björk: "Mutual Core" - AD. Thorgeir Odinsson Flying Lotus: “Until The Quiet Comes” - AD. Kahlil Joseph Major Lazer (ft. Amber of the Dirty Projectors): "Get Free" – DIR. SoMe The Hickey Underworld: "The Frog" - AD. Yves Verstraete

• BEST EDITING

The Shoes: "Time To Dance" - ED. Tom Lindsay

Also nominated: Flying Lotus: “Until The Quiet Comes” - ED. Luke Lynch Kirin J Callinan: "Way To War" - ED. ??? Major Lazer (ft. Amber of the Dirty Projectors): "Get Free" – ED. Tom Lindsay Woodkid: "Run Boy Run" – ED. Flavie Doubesky

• BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

M.I.A.: "Bad Girls" - DP. André Chemetoff

Also nominated: Flying Lotus: “Until The Quiet Comes” - DP. Matthew J. Lloyd Jay-Z & Kanye West (ft. Frank Ocean): "No Church In The Wild" - DP. Mattias Montero Woodkid: "Lolita Lempicka" – DP. Kasper Tuxen Woodkid: "Run Boy Run" – DP. Baptiste Chesnay

• BEST VISUAL EFFECTS

Björk: "Mutual Core" - POST. Moo Studios

Also nominated: Flying Lotus: "Tiny Tortures" - VFX. Dustin Bowser JJ DOOM: "Guv'nor" - POST. Ninian Doff Justice: "New Lands" - POST. Glassworks Barcelona St. Vincent: “Cheerleader” - VFX. Bonnie Brae

• BEST COMMISSIONING ARTIST

M83

Also nominated: Flying Lotus Justice Sébastien Tellier Sigur Ros

• BEST NEW DIRECTOR

Emily Kai Bock

Also nominated: Andrew Thomas Huang Fleur & Manu Kahlil Joseph Ninian Doff

• BEST DIRECTOR

Romain Gavras

Also nominated: AG Rojas Andreas Nilsson CANADA Yoann Lemoine

• VIDEO OF THE YEAR

M.I.A.: "Bad Girls" - DIR. Romain Gavras

Also nominated: Flying Lotus: “Until The Quiet Comes” - DIR. Kahlil Joseph Grimes: "Oblivion" - DIR. Emily Kai Bock PSY: "Gangnam Style" - DIR. PSY The Shoes: "Time To Dance" - DIR. Daniel Wolfe

Congratulations to the winners and to the antvillers who made this once again possible. And a happy 2013!

         

It's a wrap!

Here are the lists of AMVA 2012 most awarded and nominated music videos:

• MOST AWARDED MUSIC VIDEOS M.I.A.: "Bad Girls" - DIR. Romain Gavras (Three: Best Performance, Best Cinematography, Video of The Year) The Shoes: "Time To Dance" - DIR. Daniel Wolfe (Two: Best Editing, Best Narrative)

• MOST NOMINATED MUSIC VIDEOS Flying Lotus: “Until The Quiet Comes” - DIR. Kahlil Joseph (Six: Best Narrative, Best Choreography, Best Art Direction, Best Editing, Best Cinematography, Video of The Year) Grimes: "Oblivion" - DIR. Emily Kai Bock (Three: Best Performance, Best Choreography, Video of The Year) M.I.A.: "Bad Girls" - DIR. Romain Gavras (Three: Best Performance, Best Cinematography, Video of The Year) PSY: "Gangnam Style" - DIR. PSY (Three: Best Performance, Best Choreography, Video of The Year) The Shoes: "Time To Dance" - DIR. Daniel Wolfe (Three: Best Editing, Best Narrative, Video of The Year) Woodkid: "Run Boy Run" – DIR. Yoann Lemoine (Three: Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Editing)

And, finally, the lists of AMVA 2012 most awarded and nominated directors:

• MOST AWARDED DIRECTOR Romain Gavras (Three: Best Performance, Video of The Year, Best Director)

• MOST NOMINATED DIRECTORS Romain Gavras (Four: Best Performance, Best Hip-Hop, Video of The Year, Best Director) Emily Kai Bock (Three: Best Performance, Video of The Year, Best New Director)

In the best new director category, I'm not 100% sure if the fellow in the photo is indeed our Kahlil Joseph. If it's not, tell me and I will change it.

         

@almotasim great job

except the hip hop category im dissappointed with the winner, antvilleans dont know their hip hop

but yeah, guy in the photo looks like kahlil joseph

         

almo: The ad. for Woodkid is Pierre Pell, not Bell.

         

Thanks, legion.

kev: corrected.

         

Hey, i like the hip-hop winner this year! @legion don't fret, like all year-end lists, this says more about the collective musical tastes of the people who frequent this site than anything else. antville has always had a penchant for the pitchforkian, and is an increasingly older crowd. Most of the dedicated viller's have been on the site for almost a decade- it skews older and more male (am i the only female on this site?) than the average video watcher, which is why mainstream hip-hop is usually under-represented.

My 2 cents: I strongly believe that the only video from this list that anyone outside of this site will remember in a year is gangnam style. But still, lots of great stuff this year!

         

am pretty sure there's 2-3 other girls on the site i voted for bad girls as video of the year, but i always hoped until the quiet comes would deservedly get the award for best cinematography

         

There were only two surprises on the last day of polling: Bad Girls overtook Until The Quiet Comes on best cinematography and Brats overtook Don't Deny Your Heart on best animation. Sigur Ros came pretty close to PSY on best cinematography.

I also love Andreas Nillson's video for 2Chainz, but the song is quite awful indeed.

Too bad my favorite video of the year didn't make the cut: videos.antville.org

         

Kahlil Joseph picture comes alive

         

Thanks everyone :) what a kind Christmas present.. Never would have imagined this a year ago. really thankful for the support. Ps - dont let shooting permits stop your ideas. Love. xo

         

@BockKai Thanks to you for making great music videos in this sad age for music videos.

@almotasim My favourite music video of the year ( videos.antville.org ) hasn't even been suggested by anyone but me in the nominations call :-(

         

wow thanks antville! didnt expect this honor-- "a new world demands a new language..." xxx

         

This post is WAY too long on the home page. It needs to be cropped as a preview. :(

         

How do I do that, antdude? I'll be glad to fulfill your wishes (I tried the "more" HTML code but it didn't work).

         

Don't listen to him.

         

almotasim: I don't think you can do anything unless you put on another web page as a link? Anyways, I think the owner would have to tweak the design to make it not show very long web pages on the home page.

         

Very worthy winners overall, but I'm a bit disappointed that "Until The Quiet Comes" went home empty-handed. Should have won in cinematography at least.

         

I have to agree: six nominations and zero awards. Kinda cruel.

         

Too bad, Ruben Sznajderman's "Ima Read" for Zebra Katz, was not in any category.

         

just briefly:

• keep on keeping this place this place relevant, all; almo did the heavy lifting for this year's edition of th'awards, but it's constant little contributions that are the secret 'ville sauce. no other dedicated mv site has been around for so long (more than 10 years - a net-eternity!) and lived to tell the tale; just always keep that in mind: you're all building something here.

• to corroborate a historical net-mv perspective, would be great to keep the Links page annotated/updated (e.g. almo's in-depth bibliography)

• would also be great if someone did a round-up post of other site's 2012 mv awards

great to see this place alive, on its talent-scouting, creativity-curating toes. year after year, the 'ville will be what you all want it to be.

¡on to the next one!

         

(oh, and: spiegel'ed /perlentaucher'ed., and variously twitter'ed.)

         

Several interesting topics, progosk.

1. Music videos are more important than ever thanks to today's emerging digital media landscape. Several studies show that the medium is already the most used by digital natives in musical fruition, both online and offline, overtaking radio and CDs. Antville's digital curatorship is, therefore, more crucial than ever.

2. I love Antville. I never suspected to have the honor to organize this year's AMVA. All I wanted was for them to happen again and hope that brigs or progosk would repeat the amazing work they did in the previous years. But it was fun and challenging to do it. And, believe me, if I was able to do it, anybody can do it next year. :-)

3. Next semester I will present my Ph.D. thesis about the convergence of music videos and the participative dynamics of the Antville community (Porto University). And I am already preparing a funding proposal for a post-doctoral international research project about the community as well. Antville is one of the most interesting and fascinating online communities and it's for me a real mystery how nobody else that I'm aware of didn't chose it for a research project before. Lucky me.

4. I'll be more than glad to give Antville the music video bibliography (about 200 references) that I compiled during my research project. Just give me some time and I will send it to progosk.

5. I'll post a round-up of other sites 2012 best mv selections.

6. One wish: that Antville would migrate to another platform. I also have an emotional attachment to this old bugger, but Wordpress and Tumblr have such great tools for online communities. Antville has to evolve, Perhaps we need a collective funding. If so, I'll be more than glad to contribute.

         

big thanks to almotasim for the great work! really appreciate it. just a little sad that i didnt find the time to participate as much as i would've liked to because of my job. otherwise this and that would've been nominated for sure ;)

         

the actual antville platform is v user friendly, i can log on very easily from my nokia 8110 however, itd look so much better on wordpress or tumblr

         

Antville is not in best form at the moment, so it's not the best time for a transition like that.

I've witnessed many websites dying because of desperate platform transitions.

You should wait until it's more popular and relevant again.

         

Kozoru: i've also seen many websites reborn due to successful platform transitions. I think we must be the operators of change and not wait for change to come when we don't do anything for it to happen. But, of course, I understand your concern.

         

also, could someone please tell me where i could find a torrent to download dis? thx

www.imdb.com

         

put simply: videos.antville is not transitionable to another platform.

put differently: you could run a tumblr (or wordpress/other blog) withe a similar intent, but for a whole bushel of reasons, it would be (and become) a totally different thing. that's not saying it couldn't be a better thing - just that it would be fundamentally different.

my years of dealing with this place (and closely following others) has taught me that

1. the 'ville is remarkably resilient, both structurally and in terms of its identity/mission
2. its ebb and rise is obviously subject to "market forces" (= existing alternative outlets for the mv-bug), but ultimately/intimately
3. its excellence/relevance is directly proportional to the quality of posts and comments, and nothing (nothing!) else.

so the real challenge is the transitioning not of its architecture (tho tweaks and fine-tunings have been and still are definitely useful/important), but rather the transitioning of its core audience - from the original founding fathers, to the first wave of expert/enthusiasts, to the mv professionals, to the advent of YouTube(rs), and on to the next generation.

case in point: someone like legion, who's contributed loads, has no concern about posting comments like the one above, that's completely unrelated, because... well, i guess because that's just how things are done these days. it's a kind of noise that might be part fo the loss of distilled focus that some would be nostalgic for - at the same time it's a signal of live energy that is perhaps still looking to add something to this place, rather than a. abandoning it, b. hit&run junkposting, c. trolling/stinking it up.

is there enough energy/time that enough mv-nuts are willing to dedicate to making sure they have a special place they know they can turn to for their passion/obsession? that only depends on... all your good selves.

         

If its excellence/relevance is directly proportional to the quality of posts and comments, and nothing else, then Antville could easily migrate to another platform and still be an excellent and relevant site.

Why change then?

Because Antville structure is pretty bad in terms of accessibility, usability and desirability, three basic heuristic notions for any online communities platforms. This has nothing to do with spam or non-related comments or content. That really doesn't bother me at all.

What bothers me is how archaic it is for us to post a video, load an image, create a poll or code a simple hyperlink. What bothers me is that Videoville is gone and that there's no easy way for each one of us to add content other than posts. Members should be able to create wikis, forums, topic pages and so on in a converging and unified way. Technology is getting user-friendlier everyday and Antville blog platform hasn't almost changed in the last six or seven years.

This, of course, has nothing to do with the driving force of the community. But I do believe Antville could be stronger if its members had the proper tools to be empowered to participate in it more actively.

Of course, if nothing changes, I'll still be here delighted and I guess most of the other members as well. But that's a sorry excuse to stay put and to not evolve.

Finally, the transition of Antville core audience is obviously related to a transition of its architecture. New audiences crave for the graphic user interfaces they are used to and not some mid-2000 blog interface.

I'm probably alone on this matter and that's ok. I just wanted to add my 5 cents. And long live Antville!

         

What makes Antville great is that it has its history and integrity. For example, look how the awards logos are actually based on the layout design.

Everyone is so internet-weary these days, that the layout's relative archaism and minimalism are actually a plus. You can't seriously expect anyone older than 16 to be excited about "new user-friendly internet technology". For posting links to cool music videos and commenting on them, Antville is perfect, and you don't fix something unless it's broken.

For many people here the layout is a source of nostalgia, and the fact that it still works perfectly makes it a comfort zone. There's a character to this place, which can't be said about many of today's websites and blogs, all based on the same platforms like tumblr and disqus and wordpress, etc.

Say, I don't want IMDb's layout to change either. (They did some cosmetic repairs to it a couple of years ago though.)

BTW Antville does have a wiki.

         

1. Award logos are only based on one thing: the orange and dark red color, nothing else. That's far from being a "layout design". There's thousand of blogs using these colors.

2. Antville blog platform is not minimalistic. It is simplistic.

3. Nobody wants to fix anything. Nobody said that something was broken. Your words. I'm suggesting a discussion, first of all, then a path for a possible evolution.

4. As I said before, I am also attached to this platform and I do have an emotional bond with it. What I am talking about is a change of Antville back office. I don't care about looks but functionality. You said it's fine to sign up and post links to cool music videos. I can agree with that. But there' so more the community could be doing if they had the means to it. Maybe you don't want to, but I would like to know what other antvillers think of it.

5. I didn't know the Antville wiki was back on. I'm sorry for my mistake. Could you please be kind and give me the link to it? The old one doesn't seem to work.

         

i like antville cuz it hasnt got a facebook or like button

         

I like antville cuz it has my name is legion.

         

the best comparison i know of in terms of the 'ville's set-up and character, though admittedly it's a lofty one, is to metafilter. it's similarly been around ages, stayed minimal (graphically/structurally) and true to itself (its audience/community) while still managing to expand its scope and function. compared to all those places that hev come and gone, it's a definite outlier in its continued richness&relevance.

it's not a model that could be replicated - there are too many fundamental differences - but it's a great inspiration on how to nurture/further a place of collective interest. (on an academic note, I do believe it's been seriously phd'ed.)

your passion burns bright, almo: animating what antville is now with contagious, continuous quality is likely the best way to convince Tobi & Co (the founding/coding Vaters of the platform) to make actual back-office betterments. but keep in mind (again, mefi docet): everything easier maketh not everything better...

         

small aside: the logo design also takes account of another quite distinctive 'ville trait: the whitespace. (never underestimate whitespace...). as regards the wiki, koz, it was subhosted on kev's videoville server, which is no longer up. it was an experiment in another format of back-end memory cache / off-site mulling ground, which, possibly due to the dryness inherent in wikidom, never attracted much of an active crowd. so far the only net-extensions beyond the site itself that have worked out have been its (now defunct) video-rich podcast feed, back before YT, when quicktime embedding was the preferred norm, and its twitter. i honestly think there is scope for more net-extensions, but each one needs careful consideration/planning/tinkering. i also still think there's potential for 'ville forays into real life - but that's another topic for another time.

         

Thanks Antville, made my day! Lil´Ho a.k.a Andreas N

         

The Birthday Song vid is awesome because it's fun to think "what would a 2 Chainz video look like if it were directed by a guy who does Target commercials?"... I love that video. Great awards lineup this year and thanks for putting it on!

Although for hip-hop, I would've added Danny Brown "Grown Up", Earl Sweatshirt "Chum", and of COURSE... Krispy Kreme "Best Friends"

         

Thanks for the selection, nice 2012 mv overview!:)

I concur with progosk's comparison of VA with Metafilter.
I would like it if some minimal music genre (e.g. rock/electronic, vocal/instrumental) and visual genre (e.g. realistic/fantastic) tagging/categories could added to the current site's posts though.

         

Romain says thanks, The Shoes are happy, we get called "the ultimate music video awards of 2012"

         

wow :-)

         

Btw it's Chemetoff not Chémétoff

         

almotasim, January 1, 2013 at 3:56:48 AM CET

Thanks. Corrected.

         

Videoterapia, January 2, 2013 at 12:20:33 AM CET

Great list!! Thank You.

         

motzes, January 2, 2013 at 11:19:20 PM CET

i didn't think that will happen in 2012: as an oldie at that weblog, thanks to all who still care about antville and talk about antville. its still around, after - äh - many years, and that is simply great! (i've a sentimental moment, and reading the comments sure made my night)

and i love the videos!

         

almotasim, January 4, 2013 at 1:19:56 AM CET

Two more gaps filled regarding "Until The Quiet Comes" (I just received an email from What Matters Most staff): choreography by Storyboard P and Art Direction by Kahlil Joseph.

Now there's just "Way To War"'s edition credit to go. Anyone?

         

progosk, January 5, 2013 at 10:50:44 PM CET

whirl: antville tags exist, but are currently off here - still waiting for kino to return to base in order to make a little something more of them... oh, and: ciao motz - hattip to the founding Mütters, too!

comment!