AMV Contest Rules
AMV Contest: The contest will be limited to a total of 25 titles selected by a pre-judging panel. Finalists will be voted on by audience member ballot at the competition. Editors are encouraged to attend the convention to support their video during judging, and to accept any awards they win.
NOTE: Our sponsors have generously donated several items to be given as prizes for the AMV contest! Tiger Con cannot afford to ship these prizes worldwide. Because of this, you must be present to accept the physical item. Don’t worry, this doesn’t mean you are disqualified if you cannot attend, it just means you can’t get one of the physical prize items. They will be awarded to winners who are physically present. If you win, but can’t be present, you still get credit as the winner, however your prize items may be awarded to another attendee who is present to accept them.
Rules and Guidelines
General:
1) All submissions to the AMV Contest must consist of at least 80% Japanese animation, video game cutscenes, comic themed animation or video, or anime/comic-inspired stills. The remaining footage may be live action cosplay, still photography, etc.
Note: For comic themed videos, live action scenes from comic based movies such as the Avengers may be used instead of animation.
2) Videos must not contain watermarks or subtitles that were not inserted by the editor. Also, Tiger Con will be making title cards for each finalist, so we ask that your submissions not include intros, credits, studio bumpers, lead-ins, or lead-outs not directly related to the video content. Any such bumpers may be deleted, or the video may be disqualified at our judges discretion.
3) Videos must be of reasonable video and audio quality. We suggest that your video resolution be at least 640x480p, and your frame rate be 12 fps or higher. But we don’t recommend submitting files that that are greater than 1280x720p or 30 fps.
4a) Videos submitted to the AMV Contest must be under 8 minutes and only consist of footage edited solely by the entrant(s). Entries that use footage taken from other AMVs will be disqualified. Believe me, our judges watch a LOT of AMVs, we identified plagiarism in last year’s contest and promptly disqualified the entry. Editors who are found guilty of submitting another editors work as their own will lose their eligibility to enter the following year’s AMV contest.
5) Collabs and MEPs are allowed, but each participant must be listed on the submission form, and the video must only use a single audio track or a congruent audio mix.
6) Entrants are only allowed to submit (1) video to a category. Also, a single video cannot be submitted to more than one category. You may, however, submit a unique video to each of the five categories.
7) Submitted videos which contain excessive violence, language, sexual contest or content that would place it above a PG13 rating should only be submitted to the 18+ category. Videos with such content which are submitted in the other categories may be moved to 18+ at the judges discretion.
8) Videos should be new creations produced within the last year. Videos that premiered more than one year ago are highly discouraged.
9) All submissions must be in Tiger Con’s possession no later than one month prior to the con. Attendance at Tiger Con is not required to participate in the competition and will not improve your odds of winning beyond the single vote that you may cast for your own video if you are present.
10) During the pre-judging process, Tiger Con staff will notify the editor of any submission to the AMV Contest that are not selected as finalists no later than one month prior to the contest.
11) Any category which does not receive at least two entries will not be eligible for an award. Similar categories may be combined in order to have the minimum number of submissions.
Categories:
The AMV contest is split into five categories. Entrants are allowed to select the best fit category for each of their submissions, but if our judges strongly disagree with the genre of a submitted video, it may be moved to a better fitting category. The categories are as follows:
Action
Comedy / Upbeat
Drama / Romance / Character Profile
Trailer / Parody
Dance
18+
Submissions:
The entry form requires you to provide a download link of your video. If using Google Drive or Dropbox, please ensure that the URL you send is a “shared” or “public” link. If your AMV is available for local download on A-M-V.org, you also have the option of instead providing a link to it’s video information page. Note: “streaming only” links will not be accepted. Links to videos on Youtube are accepted.
If your video meets the necessary rules and requirements, we will make all efforts to send a confirmation e-mail to you within 72 hours. Note: At any time, Tiger Con reserves the right to not show or ultimately disqualify any submitted video for any reason.
File Formats:
Tiger Con is able to accept videos in a wide variety of file types and resolutions, but please do not upscale your videos. The preferred file type is MP4, but we also accept AVI, MPEG-2, WMV, MKV and many more. We strongly discourage submitting QuickTime, DivX, Real Media or Flash Video.
Judging:
After the submission deadline passes, our panel of judges will rate each video, and the top five AMVs from each category will be selected as a finalist and screened during the convention. Finalists will be announced and notified via e-mail about a week after the submission deadline passes. During the AMV Contest screening, Tiger Con attendees will have the opportunity to vote on which video they feel should win each individual category. Once the votes have been tallied, the winners will be announced at the conclusion of the contest. In addition to the awards voted on by the audience, there will also be a “Judges Choice” award.
*Judges’ Choice Award: Chosen solely by Tiger Con staff prior to the convention.
Winning the “Judges’ Choice” award will not disqualify a video from also winning an award from one of the main categories. Accepted videos that do not make the finals of the contest are still eligible to win the “Judges’ Choice” award.
Prizes and Awards:
Prizes will be donated by our generous sponsors. Exact prizes to be announced at a later date. Editors must be present in order to collect physical prizes. If a contestant cannot be present at the contest, they will be emailed a digital copy of their certificate. Physical prizes which are not claimed during the contest will be auctioned off for charity. Tiger Con will not mail/ship physical prizes.
Contact:
If you have any questions or comments about either contest, you can contact Tiger Con’s Programming Department at programming@tigerconvention.com.