AMV Contest - Participation Rules


Mechanism for checking and judging

 

  • Elimination 

Each video submitted in the contest will be going through a preliminary checking process in order to establish whether or not it is in conjunction with the Participation Rules. The contest coordinator and assigned jury will be responsible for the checking process. Any and all eliminations will be motivated and published on the Nijikon 2015 AMV contest online forum. The elimination decision is final.

  • Judging

The contest coordinator is responsible for the creation of the judging team, the latter will include individuals with a certain amount of experience in the area. The judging process will be held internally, using the same set of criterion for each video that is accepted in the contest. The results of the judging process will be made public during the Nijikon 2015 AMV Contest.

  • Public debate

All participating videos can be viewed or downloaded straight from the Nijikon 2015 AMV Contest web-page. Furthermore, the contest organizers will also offer a discussion forum to the public where the videos that will make it the Finals can be commented and debated upon in a public manner. The contest coordinator is responsible with moderating this forum, being able to answer questions and take part in the debate when they consider it necessary.

 

 

 

 


General Participation Rules


  1. In order for already published videos ( videos that have either participated in, or have been publicly seen at conventions, clubs, contests or distributed online) to be entered in the Contest, they have to have been published no earlier than the 21st of November, 2014;
  2. Each participant is only allowed two (2) entries in the Contest;
  3. There is no age limit for those wishing to take part in the Contest. Exception to this rule relates to the members of the organizational team and their family members, who cannot participate;
  4. All submitted videos must have a minimum length of forty (40) seconds and a maximum length of five (5) minutes. Videos which are shorter or longer than these numbers will be disqualified;
  5. It is mandatory that the submitted videos are personal works. In the case that the submitted videos are proven to be either stolen or plagiarized, they will be disqualified. Depending on the severity of the offence, the contest coordinator may decide to forbid, partially or completely, the offending participant from taking part in future contest or events organized within the Nijikon convention;
  6. Nijikon is a convention and an event meant for all age categories. Entries which contain excessive nudity, graphic sexual content, graphic violence or excessive obscene language will not be accepted. The contest coordinator will communicate this fact when and if the case arrises;
  7. The contest entries must contain mostly Anime content (including all type of Japanese Animation, video games and animations that were inspired by Anime content). The contest entries which do not comply with this condition might still be accepted, although this is left to the contest coordinator’s judgement;
  8. The entry videos must contain at least 70% external music (for instance, the audio must not be part of the original soundtrack of the original video source), exception being made for Trailer-type videos, which can contain a combination of dialogue and both internal and external music;
  9. All entries have to meet the technical requirements that will be listed in the following section;
  10. The Nijikon organizers reserve the right to use any and all video entries for public display. By submitting and participating in the Nijikon 2015 AMV Contest, the participants’ consent to this is implied;
  11. The contest organizers and/or members of the jury, reserve the right to award, not award or redistribute the prizes in the cases when the Participation Rules have not been respected or as a result of creating incidents which may affect the organizer’s public image, or the other contestants’ public image;
  12. Participation in the Nijikon 2015 AMV Contest requires the unconditional honoring of all the points mentioned in the Participation Rules. By submitting video materials in the contest, the contestant implicitly gives their consent as to following all the points mentioned in the Participation Rules and also gives the organizers consent for the following:
    • Publicly displaying parts of the video entries in order to promote the Contest and the convention.
    • To post the video materials on the Contest Internet page for promotional and informative reasons.
    • Keep, distribute and publish any video with the aim of promoting it.
  13. The source of the materials, as well as their relevant licenses and copyrights, used in making the video entries are the total and complete responsibility of the contestant. The Nijikon organizers cannot be held accountable for hosting unlicensed materials.
  14. The organizers reserve the right to modify, at any time, the provisions of the current Participation Rules, in case this will be required by external factors, with the stated condition that the changes will be announced on the Contest Internet page. The changes/modified version of the Participation Rules will be in effect starting from when they are published on the official Contest page.
  15. The interpretation and application of the Participation Rules, as well as the views of the coordinator and of the jury are definitive. All judging methods and decisions are final. Nijikon reserves the right to not display any and all of the videos for any reason.





Technical rules and requirements


We have the hardware and software capable of running pretty much anything that you could send. That being said, issues with the way in which your videos will look or sound are almost inevitable when dealing with tens of different videos. Due to this, we ask you to follow the technical requirements:

What we would like

  • files coded in 8-bit format;
  • files in the following formats: MP4 (H.264), MPG (MPEG2), AVI (DivX or Xvid);
  • Progressive/Non-Interlaced video sources;
  • 4:3 or 16:9 aspect ratio video sources;
  • video files which do not exceed 150 MB.

What will be rejected

  • any files in the following formats: FLV, MLK, OGM, SWF, 3GP, WMV;
  • any file that has been downloaded from YouTube, Vimeo, Veoh or other similar services;
  • videos with resolutions smaller than 640:480 (4:3) or 640:390 (16:9);
  • audio bit-rates smaller than 128kbp and/or sample rate smaller than 44.1khz;
  • any file type that requires an unusual level of effort to work with.

Mention: All participating videos will be subjected to internal processing and made ready for presenting within the Nijikon 2015 AMV contest. The processing phase can cause some changes to the original content, usually in regards to the introduction of new graphical elements. These changes are required only for presenting the materials within the convention event, the videos will be uploaded to the contest website unaltered.

Things that can get you disqualified

  • Audio/Video Quality
  • Severe artifacts, macro-blocks, severe interlacing and sound distorsion.
  • Prolonged intros, credits or other identifying information
  • The maximum length reserved for intros, credits and other graphical elements meant to identify the participant must not exceed ten (10) seconds.
  • Commercial Brands
  • The videos must not contain registered trademarks (for instance, logos of Paramount, DreamWorks, WB etc).
  • Audio dialogues
  • The audio content of an AMV must be primarily made of music. Featuring excessive non-musical dialogue can lead to disqualifying or penalizing when it comes to the judging process, this decision is up to the jury and the contest coordinator. The exceptions to this rule being Trailer or Parody-type videos.
  • Non-Anime content

 

Excessive use of video materials that are not Anime-inspired will lead to the entry being disqualified.

 

  • Trolling entries

The following offences will be considered "Trolling entries":

    1. Minimal editing of a video. These are entries that feature no editorial effort, such as a video that features large pieces of unmodified/unedited/unaltered video material;
    2. Random entries that have nothing to do with the contest.
  • Watermarks and Logos
  • Submitted videos must not contain any and all types of watermarks, such as network logos or similar graphical elements (DivX, ProTV, etc). Exception to this rule will be made for those entries which use said graphical elements intentionally and in a constructive manner.
  • Subtitles
  • The submitted videos must not feature subtitles. Exception to this rule will be made for those entries which use said graphical elements intentionally and in a constructive manner.

 

What will not be tolerated

  • Malicious entries
  • Participants who submit videos for malicious purposes are those individuals who are intentionally not following the Participation Rules, are wilfully provoking pain, ill feelings or denigrating one or more contest participants, including the contest coordinator and jury, can be penalized or excluded completely from future Nijikon-related activities.
  • Dishonesty
  • Participants who offer false, incomplete or wrong information, with the aim of misleading the contest coordinator and/or the contest jury can be penalized through either partial or total elimination from the contest.
  • Plagiarism
  • Submitting stolen audio/video material is strictly forbidden. This refers to videos which contain both edited and unedited material, in any way, shape or form, for which the participant does not own the rights to use and publish.
  • Influencing techniques
  • The use of any influencing technique which can modify, in any way, shape or form, the result of the internal judging process, or the jury’s opinion will lead to the video being eliminated from the contest.

 

Mention: A potential decision to eliminate or exclude an entry from the Contest does not take immediate effect. The irregularities will be analyzed and investigated by the contest coordinator and/or the contest jury, and a final decision will be transmitted to the participant. Any participating or non-participating individual can send a complaint about potential irregularities on the web forum or at the following address: contact[at]nijikon.ro. These complaints can be send both anonymously as well as signed, in the latter case the identity of the claimant will be kept confidential, the claimant won’t have any part in the investigation of the irregularities.

 

 

 

 

Contest categories and prizes


Contest categories

  • Best synchronizing
  • Best technical achievement
  • Best of Nijikon 2015

 

Prizes

  • Mentions

A total of 4 mentions will be awarded by the jury for the 4 best videos which did not get a place on the podium.

  • Jury’s choice

A total of 3 prizes will be awarded on the basis of the internal judging for the Best of Nijikon 2015 category and 1 prize each will be awarded for best synchronizing and best technical achievement.

The prizes and mentions will be awarded at the end of the Nijikon 2015 AMV contest and till the closing ceremony of the Nijikon 2015 convention.

In case you are not able to participate to the event and you win one of the prizes, you will be contacted via e-mail or telephone. A postal address will be requested in order for your prize to be sent to you. All the postal costs will be covered by the event organizer.

Possible supplementary prizes may be offered by Nijikon partners for one or more of the videos entered in the contest.