Anime Music Video Contest

Description

Anime Boston's Anime Music Video Contest (AMV Contest) is an exhibition and competition of fan-created music videos with an anime theme. Hundreds of submitted videos will be narrowed down to a group of finalists.

Those finalist videos will be screened before an audience at Anime Boston. The audience will vote for their favorite videos and the winners will be presented during the Masquerade intermission.

Rules

Submission Rules

  1. Any entries that violate the contest rules are disqualified. Staff will make every effort to catch rule violations prior to the prescreening so issues can be resolved before the deadline.
  2. Your entry must be your own work and no one else's. Anonymous submissions cannot be accepted. If you are caught fraudulently submitting videos, you will be barred from participating in all future Anime Boston Anime Music Video Contests and your information will be shared with the coordinators of other contests, who may take further action at their discretion.
  3. All entries must be less than one year old as of the convention. Any video first publicly exhibited (convention showing or uploaded to an online video service) prior to one year before the convention is ineligible.
    1. For Anime Boston 2023, videos that were publicly exhibited before April 7, 2022 are ineligible.
  4. Contestants are limited to one video per category, either as a sole creator or part of a collaboration. Contestants are also limited to a maximum of two videos total.
  5. Videos previously submitted to Anime Boston are ineligible, including remastered versions.
  6. All entries must be submitted by 11:59 p.m. Eastern time on February 25, 2023.
  7. By submitting an entry, each contestant agrees: They have read, understand, and will comply with these official rules, and to the extent permitted by law, consent to the use of the entrant's name, likeness, and/or biographical data for purposes of advertising and promotion by New England Anime Society or Anime Boston, without further consent, compensation, or approval.
  8. Submitted materials become the property of New England Anime Society. By submitting a video to Anime Boston, the video creator grants New England Anime Society irrevocable permission to exhibit that video. The video creator otherwise retains all rights and responsibilities relating to its creation.
  9. The prizes being awarded may constitute income under applicable federal, state, and local tax laws and winners shall be solely responsible for payment of any and all taxes, which may be due with respect to the acceptance of the prize. No purchase necessary. Void where prohibited by law.
  10. We cannot be held responsible for lost or misdirected entries.
  11. We reserve the right to modify these rules at any time without notice.

Editor Rules

  1. Due to COPPA regulations, any applicant under the age of 13 will need a parent or guardian to submit an entry on their behalf. The minor may include their name or editor handle in the "Name for Credits" field on the form.
  2. Contestants do not need a badge membership to Anime Boston to enter the contest.
  3. Each finalist and one guest will be granted access to the preferred seating areas for all Anime Music Video Contest screenings at Anime Boston. This does not qualify the contestant for complimentary admission to the convention.
    1. If the finalist and guest are not in their seats 15 minutes before the scheduled start of the screening, Anime Boston reserves the right to fill the spot with someone else.
  4. Winners may designate a proxy to pick up their awards on Sunday. Unclaimed awards will be mailed to the winners after the convention. Winners outside of the United States may be asked to pay a portion of the postal fees and are fully responsible for any taxes or duties levied.
  5. Anime Boston and New England Anime Society staff members — except those directly involved in planning and running the contest — may enter the AMV Contest.

Technical Requirements

  1. Entries may not be shorter than 30 seconds, nor longer than five minutes.
  2. The online file upload form will accept the following file extensions: .avi, .m2t, .mkv, .mov, .mp4, .mpg, .mpeg, and .wmv.
  3. For your best results, we recommend the following settings:
    1. Resolution: 1280x720 or 1920x1080 for widescreen, 960x720 or 1440x1080 for fullscreen
    2. Frame Rate: 23.976 frames per second
    3. Video Codec: H264, 2 mbps or higher
    4. Audio Codec: AAC, 160 kbps or higher
    5. Audio Sampling Rate: 44.1 kHz or 48 kHz. Lower sampling rates will be disqualified.
    6. Container: MP4 or MKV

An excellent tutorial for encoding your video to these recommendations is located at AMV 101 here.

  1. The maximum file size of each entry is 1 GB.
  2. Videos that have significant video or audio quality issues may be disqualified depending on the severity. Examples of issues that qualify include:
    1. Interlacing
    2. Squashed/stretched aspect ratios
    3. Chunky/blocky video (often caused by a low-quality source or excessive data compression)
    4. Extreme banding (i.e., color gradients caused by video recompression)
    5. Jagged/sawtooth lines (i.e., line aliasing)
    6. Audible distortion
    7. Audio levels that are too high, overdriven, or clipped
    8. Pitch-shifted or speed-adjusted audio (unless by obvious artistic necessity)

Content Requirements

  1. At least 75% of the footage in an entry must be from anime, Japanese-origin video games, or properties that have a significant influence from anime (e.g., "Avatar: The Last Airbender"). Shows that do not originate from Japan are evaluated on a case-by-case basis.
  2. Footage of active game play from a video game where the game interface is visible is not acceptable.
  3. Live-action footage is not acceptable, but may be counted toward the 25% for non-animated sources.
  4. Footage recorded from live TV broadcasts is eligible, but not encouraged, as it frequently contains watermarks and is often of lower quality.
  5. Footage may not contain:
    1. Watermarks, even if partially obscured
    2. Subtitles from any commercial or fansubbed release. Editors may add their own subtitles where appropriate, but many find these distracting and thus they may reduce the chances of an entry being a finalist.
    3. Title screens, logos, credits, or introductions. If these appear before or after the video, they will be replaced with Anime Boston's standard title screen.
    4. Audio from the commercial English dub of the anime.
  6. At least 75% of the entry must be set to music. This rule does not apply to trailer and commercial parodies.
  7. Videos may not be collections of shorts. "AMV Hell"–style videos are not eligible for entry to the contest.
  8. Entries must conform to CARA PG-13 rating standards as defined in the official ratings guidelines. In particular, there should be no sexually oriented nudity and violence should not be excessive, gratuitous, or constant.

Categories

  • Action — Action videos feature adrenaline. Whether through combat, competition, or just plain speed, these are the videos that get the heart pumping faster.
  • Drama — Videos that tell a story, tug at the heartstrings, or feature an emotion such as sadness, nostalgia, or anger
  • Fun/Comedy — Videos that make you smile, if not laugh out loud
  • Other — Videos that don't precisely fit into the rest of the categories: horror, experimental videos, art pieces, WTF'ers, etc.
  • Romance/Sentimental — Videos about relationships: platonic, familial, or romantic love that a person feels for someone or something else
  • Trailer/Commercial — Original or parody movie trailers, commercials, and opening sequences
  • Upbeat — Dance, trance, techno, or happy slice-of-life videos that get your body moving, make you feel the groove, or just bring a smile to your face

The Anime Boston AMV Contest Coordinator reserves the right to change a video category if it is determined that the video more properly belongs in a different category than the one chosen by the creator.

  • If this recategorization results in an editor having multiple entries in one category, the editor will be given the opportunity to withdraw one if the deadline has not yet passed.
  • If the deadline has passed and the video is recategorized at the prescreening, one video will be disqualified at the coordinator's discretion, and will only play during the overflow showing.

If any category does not receive a sufficient number of entries, it will be removed and videos that were submitted to it will be recategorized to the next most appropriate category. Any recategorized video will not count against the one-per-category entry limit for the creator(s).

Awards

Audience Voting

  • Best Action
  • Best Drama
  • Best Fun/Comedy
  • Best Other
  • Best Romance
  • Best Trailer/Commercial
  • Best Upbeat

Judges' Awards

  • Best Concept — The best-executed idea behind a video
  • Best Editing — The video demonstrating the best technical accomplishment in editing
  • Judges' Choice — The favorite video of the panel of judges

Coordinator's Choice

  • All videos submitted to the contest that are not disqualified are eligible to win this award; it is not restricted to only the finalists.

Made in New England Award

  • The executive staff of Anime Boston and the New England Anime Society will select the winner of this award. All videos that are not disqualified and submitted by editors residing in one of the six New England states (Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont) are eligible for this award; it is not restricted to only the finalists.

Best of Show

  • Best of Show will be determined by a combination of audience votes and votes by the Judges' Award panel.

How to Apply

  • Entries may be submitted by filling out the electronic submission form.
  • When an entry is submitted, a MD5 Checksum value is provided to confirm the file uploaded correctly without any corruption. This is the only way to verify the file's integrity, as uploaded files cannot be redownloaded due to the AMV Contest file storage method.
    • An MD5 Checksum is a fingerprint of a file. Based on the content of the file, a 32-character value is determined. When transmitting large files online, the MD5 Checksum of the original and destination file can be compared. If the MD5 Checksums are identical, the file was transmitted successfully.
    • There are several utilities for getting the MD5 Checksum of a file. For Windows computers, we recommend FastSum. For a Mac computer, check this page.
  • Entrants will receive an email when their entry is received and processed. Due to the high volume of entries near the submission deadline, this email may be delayed. Please be patient.
  • If you do not hear from us after two weeks or within two days after the deadline, contact the AMV Contest Coordinator.
  • All entries are prescreened by Anime Boston staff to determine five finalist videos per category to be shown at the convention. Contestants will be informed prior to the convention if their entry was selected as a finalist.
  • Anime Boston schedules overflow screenings for entries not selected as finalists. We show as many videos as time allows, but cannot guarantee that all videos will be shown.

Hentai AMV Contest Additional Rules

The Hentai AMV Contest is held in odd-numbered years.

All rules of the standard contest apply with the following exceptions:

  • The deadline for Hentai AMVs is March 12, 2023, at 11:59 p.m. Eastern time.
  • Hentai AMVs must have been completed no earlier than two years before this year's convention.
  • The contest is rated 18+.
  • Editors must be at least 18 years of age by the time of submission. By submitting an entry, editors are certifying that they meet this requirement.
  • Graphic violence, including sexual violence (e.g., rape) is strictly prohibited.
  • Lolicon/Shotacon videos are strictly prohibited.
  • Compilations of shorts ("AMV Hell"–style videos) are eligible.