Audiences prefer bells and whistles

[trailertrash]

Well last night my Auschwitz show went to the club for inclusion among 13 for consideration. We needed to select 4 for our coming competition against 2 other clubs.

I watched in horror as verticals replaced horizontals and cut outs flashed across the screen.Images with nothing to hold them in their position panned and zoomed with abandon. No mounts or textuers on the BG's to compliment the images were in evidence.No presentation of any kind could I see. "I'm in with a chance here " I thought.

Then up it came...Auschwitz played its soulefull refrain from Schindlers List and the intro slide scrolled smoothly giving the viewers time to read the preface. I was bursting with pride and thanking everyone of you for the help you had so freely given. It looked wonderful up there on the big screen as it transitioned from Camp 1 to Camp 2 and displayed the horrors of the place in full colour.

Then it was over and a few minutes later the voting papers were collected and counted. "This is it" I thought,I must have a chance.

The president read out the 4 in reverse order of ballot. Not #4 ..ok not #3 I was getting excited, could I have got the top spot...not #2 Here we go Andrew...And the top spot goes to....Not Auschwitz!!!!

I didnt get selected. Then the reserve was called ...maybe...no...not even #5. WTF!!!! How could they. Conspiracy abounds I thought. Rubbish !!! The 4 chosen only proved that audiences prefer bells and whistles.

So now I'm going to sulk for a while before I find another subject, and on the competition night I shall be there to cheer on my club while secretely shouting "I told you so" when they get pulverised.

Mind you at may age I thought I had used up all my disappointment genes. Guess not.

Andrew.

[fh1805]

Andrew,

There's no accounting for taste - and obviously your club's selection committee was lacking something in that department.

Don't let yourself get dis-heartened. I'm fairly certain that most, if not all, of the members of this forum who make A-V sequences primarily as a hobby or leisure activity will agree that there is only one person who has to be pleased with your A-V sequence - and that's you! (If you are building sequences as part of a commercial enterprise then the situation changes - you have to build what the client asks for).

You - and we - know that your Auschwitz sequence was a very good one. It's not your fault that others didn't have the intelligence to appreciate just how good it was.

regards,

Peter

[Esc]

Hi Andrew!

Sorry about the outcome.

Are the members of the Selection Committee

also members of the forum?

If so, we will ...

/Lennart

[trailertrash]

Nah its cool guys really. I guess I'll just have to learn a bit more and do better next time.

[orizaba]

Nah its cool guys really. I guess I'll just have to learn a bit more and do better next time.

Hi Andrew,

I understand your surprise and disapointment!

Just one year ago I got the same when presenting a short movie to a contest, I just had to smile when results were announced, but... this is life!

Anyhow, I got curious about your "Aushwitz project". Is it possible to see it and have my own opinion?

Best regards,

Jose

[Ken Cox]

Hi Andrew,

I understand your surprise and disapointment!

Just one year ago I got the same when presenting a short movie to a contest, I just had to smile when results were announced, but... this is life!

Anyhow, I got curious about your "Aushwitz project". Is it possible to see it and have my own opinion?

Best regards,

Jose

see

http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=9983&hl=Auschwitz%20&st=0

ken

[Guest Yachtsman1]

Hi Andrew

Your comments on the comp' really made me chuckle, there is no justice in this world. When I look back at my early stuff, I really cringe, but I still keep trying. What you musn't do is try to make stuff to please judges, just keep looking back & I'm sure eventually you'll crack it.

Regards Eric

PS I did suggest it should be in mono.

[Lakelandlass]

Nah its cool guys really. I guess I'll just have to learn a bit more and do better next time.

Andrew - please don't be disheartened. YOU know you have done a good job and WE know you have. If your club members have poor taste, then it's their problem. Don't let it be yours. Just carry on pleasing yourself and enjoy what you do and at the same time please let members of this Forum also appreciate your work.

Maureen

[KyDan]

see

http://www.picturest...schwitz%20&st=0

ken

The link above leads to an earlier discussion.

The links in the earlier discussion lead to

Invalid or Deleted File

I find it troubling that some call the judges "tasteless" while not having seen the other shows to compare.

We have judges to choose or decide things. While we may not agree with their judgments we must

respect that they were chosen to judge and we were not.

Most will agree that at times "life is not fair".... don't loose heart!

[coopernatural]

Nah its cool guys really. I guess I'll just have to learn a bit more and do better next time.

Hi Andrew,

Sounds like there may have been some Eurovision Style political voting going on.

Would the 4 chosen AV ers like to have their work scrutinised here?

I’m sure we can give them a fair trial. (Roland Freisler style)

Your findings back up my thoughts on Judges/selection committees.

You were concerned about stirring things up too much with the elderly club members.

Now you know what to do next time. Bells, whistles, and to be sure...The odd bribe

Keep the shows coming.

Davy

[dpeterso]

Well last night my Auschwitz show went to the club for inclusion among 13 for consideration. The 4 chosen only proved that audiences prefer bells and whistles.

So now I'm going to sulk for a while before I find another subject, and on the competition night I shall be there to cheer on my club while secretely shouting "I told you so" when they get pulverised.

Mind you at may age I thought I had used up all my disappointment genes. Guess not.

Andrew.

Andrew –

I can imagine how you must feel; I’d be disappointed and hurt. However, I applaud you for having the courage to put your work out there for others to judge. It’s emotionally risky, and it takes courage and an inner conviction that what you have produced is good -- maybe not to everyone, but at least to the judge that counts the most: yourself.

The same thing goes on when people post their shows on the WnSoft forum or other sites. The poster is likely to feel judged, one way or the other. Of course the judgment is less definitive than in a competition, but it’s still there. For me, I can lament that with only a couple of responses; people must not have liked my show. Or I can rationalize that everyone liked it, but were too shy or busy to respond.

I believe that completion, as hurtful as it can sometimes be, is good. It forces us to raise our bar and to keep trying for better work. Can you imagine what it would be like to never be able to show others our creative work? Frankly, I don’t trust just myself to say what is good and what needs work. I depend on other to balance out my view.

I do hope that you’ll continue producing your shows Andrew, and above all, I hope that you’ll continue to share them with us.

Regards,

Dave

[jfa]

Andrew

I feel for you and like many others here I thought your AV was of a high standard. Don't stop trying and competing as we learn by listening to the opinions of others, excepting or rejecting some and building on that in the future.

Would it be worthwhile approaching the judges and quietly asking why your AV was not selected? There just may be a good reason and you may learn something for next time. Of course it may just be bad taste.

A comment from the other side of the competition --

On the few times I have had the honer to be asked to judge a photography competition my opening remarks always include something like the following--

"........you have asked me to judge your competition and I welcome any criticism of my decision and would be happy to discuss this after the formal part of the night. However I am the judge tonight at your request and its my opinion/decision that, right or wrong, counts......"

It may be a little blunt but it is a reminder has mostly been appreciated.

The only way to really know if ones judging has been appreciated is if one is invited back to judge again.

Keep trying Andrew.

[trailertrash]

Thanks for the kind encouragement. Yes the judge must be respected in that they are our choice to make the selections/comments.

I think if the 4 selected were shown here there would be a revolution. They [honestly] are that bad.

Still on the + side, I learned a lot, and next year I'll do it very differently. My sulking day is over, so its back to the learning curve.

You guys just wont let a chap get to far down will you!!!

[Ken Cox]

The link above leads to an earlier discussion.

The links in the earlier discussion lead to

Invalid or Deleted File

I find it troubling that some call the judges "tasteless" while not having seen the other shows to compare.

We have judges to choose or decide things. While we may not agree with their judgments we must

respect that they were chosen to judge and we were not.

Most will agree that at times "life is not fair".... don't loose heart!

see

http://www.picturest...chwitz%20&st=40

his last post is in the whole thread -- you have read the whole thing - Andrew had a heck of a time and he entered many trials

http://www.mediafire.com/?qnz5dywjygy

ken

[cjdnzl]

Andrew,

Well, commiserations on your show not making the grade. FWIW, the reason IMHO is not to do with the presentation, or the lack of 'bells and whistles' effects. You hit the nail when you said "and displayed the horrors of the place in full colour."

The fact is, a serious show about a tragic situation will lose because of the message, and not because of the presentation, especially when shown together with non-serious shows containing no poignancy or introspective qualities.

I took the liberty of showing Auchwitz to my camera club here (New Zealand) when we were offering help on fine-tuning it and the dead silence, broken only by one member getting up and leaving the room, was disconcerting to say the least. The member who left is an Austrian immigrant to NZ, and he later apologised for leaving, saying the show opened bad memories for him. He was quite upset.

I hope this post doesn't offend you, Andrew, just my take on your loss there.

Regards,

Colin

[trailertrash]

Hi Colin,

I'm sorry the show upset your friend. I sort of thought along those lines myself. Maybe it wasnt really suitable for that type of selection, but it was my choice and you all helped me to do the best I could. So I really wasnt downhearted, and I was joking about sulking.

It is back to the drawing board tho.

Andrew

[Ed Overstreet]

This experience is one of many reasons I stopped entering my photographs and my AV shows in competitions, some years ago. Awards often reflect the judges'/audiences' personal tastes, comfort zones, and moods more than the "quality" (however one defines that) of the photographs or the AV production.

I produced an AV show on Dachau about ten years ago and showed it at the club. I showed it at our first annual AV showcase, which at my influence (I was co-manager of our AV Group that year) was a non-competitive, non-voting showcase and not another annual competition (which we'd been running for some years). There was no way I wanted my Dachau show to be part of a competition, because I thought the idea of getting an award based even very remotely on something so horrible was not my desire or intent. I wanted to remind the audience that photography isn't only about pretty women, stunning landscapes, and nice wildflowers -- it's also about documenting, or reminding, us about the horrors that can and do exist in the world around us, "lest we forget."

My co-manager and I deliberately ran my show at the end of the first part of the evening, just before the break. The show we slated before mine was a relatively low-key show, as was the first show after the break. We both wanted the show to run, but we wanted the audience to have time to de-compress afterwards before moving on to some lighter-hearted shows. You can't do that in a competition, but you can in a showcase. In a competition people want the shows or images in random order initially, to "level the playing field." But the order in which you view two shows or two images, especially in short time frames and when at least one of them is emotionally moving or upsetting, inevitably colours your experience of the next thing you view, no matter how "objective" you think you are.

How can you possibly "level the playing field" between a show about the Shoah and a show about kids having a great time swimming in a lake at a summer camp (my colleague's excellent show for that program)? The concept of trying to put those shows on a "level playing field" is obscene, in my view. How can any judge (and I've been one) possibly rank or score a show about death camps and mass murder against a show about happy children? Why even try? They're both excellent productions, they are very meaningful to their producers, and what is the point of proclaiming "this is number one" and "this is number whatever?" Who cares and why? And don't tell me people need competition to motivate them to produce excellent shows -- our annual interclub AV night is strictly non-competitive, not even a "people's choice" vote, and we get some exciting and superb shows each year. People who care about AV don't need bloody competitions to motivate them.

Re Colin's experience: I also had an elderly gentleman of German or Austrian descent come up to me after the showcase and ask, "why did you show us this? Some of us want to forget." I said some of us need to be reminded, because if we aren't reminded, we might let it happen again. Having known survivors and children of survivors, I think I owe them that.

At the international AV competition circuit that was held here in Ottawa (and other places) a few years ago, I attended one session in which an incredibly powerful and brave (for the producer, who still lived in China) show about land-mine victims in North Vietnam and the bordering area of China, ran right before a show by one of my Ottawa colleagues showing children snow-sledding during Winterlude here. The shows ran about 30 seconds apart. I was horrified and so upset, I walked out at the intermission and never returned to the rest of the festival. Running those two shows back-to-back did major injustice to both of them, in my opinion, and trivialized the subject matter of both of them. Sitting through them back-to-back in so short a time was like being taken out of freezing water and plunged into boiling water, it was an awful experience. I needed time to catch my breath and to reflect on what the Chinese producer had just shown me. I would never want to try to attach a numerical score or a ranking to something like that.

Since that last experience, I've never entered, organized, judged, or sat through an AV competition. Nor will I again.

My only advice to you is, next time you have a photograph or an AV show that really means a lot to you personally and emotionally, don't waste it as an entry to a competition. You'll likely only get yourself upset, and what's the point?

My two cents' worth anyway. Others may well disagree with my views on this, but that's their right, as it's my right to have these views.

[trailertrash]

Ed, These are points I never even considered before I put my show up. Perhaps I should have. It's funny you mention the position in the set, 'cause mine was #4 on the list when we handed in, and they didnt show it till #12 of 13. After the interval. I wonder if they like you had thought it out, and perhaps I'm being unkind.

However, as you say shows like mine must still have a place no matter how upsetting. Perhaps tho as you point out not in a competition. It just never occurred to me.

I find it amazing the things I learn here, and I thought at my age I had a good grasp of life and its trials.

Andrew

[cjdnzl]

Ed, These are points I never even considered before I put my show up. Perhaps I should have. It's funny you mention the position in the set, 'cause mine was #4 on the list when we handed in, and they didnt show it till #12 of 13. After the interval. I wonder if they like you had thought it out, and perhaps I'm being unkind.

However, as you say shows like mine must still have a place no matter how upsetting. Perhaps tho as you point out not in a competition. It just never occurred to me.

I find it amazing the things I learn here, and I thought at my age I had a good grasp of life and its trials.

Andrew

You're right about that, Andrew. Life is a continuous learning curve, and sometimes goes in directions one would never have thought of.

Ed's experiences, along with mine and yours, makes me think that those who organize AV shows should lay down some guidelines about what subject matter is suitable - not so tight as a 'set subject' as in still photography, but designed to eliminate disconcerting or upsetting subject matter etc.

I am a radio amateur (ham) and there is, or was when I was active, an unwritten law that one could talk about anything except politics and religion, a wise move. Maybe a similar no-go in AV show competitions and displays such as religion, politics, and war could be made part of the entry rules.

This is not to say that such shows have their place, but that place is not in general AV screenings. Maybe shows could be graded as in commercial movies, e.g. General, Parental Guidance, R18 etc (or variations of for AVs). This might give an audience some warning of what is to come, rather than just dumping the show on them.

Regards,

Colin

[Almark]

Colin, I could not agree more.

I recently organised an AV night at my camera club. The shows included stuff done with PTE, ProShow, mp4's, DVD's, Video CD's and so on. The only guidelines set were that shows should not be too long and suggested two 5 min shows would be much better than one 10 min show. Members were asked to provide three shows each (and rank them 1,2,3 for their preference order) and they were placed in folders under their name, which were sorted alphabetically and I showed one from each member until every contributor had their number 1 show presented. Then I went back and started again with the number 2's, and so on. (We didn't have time to show all the number two shows and none of the number 3's.)

While I had seen some of the shows before and knew what was coming, I didn't think to ask or check about the content of the others. Luckily there were no surprises, but this thread has made me think that the next time I should give this more thought.

As you might expect camera club members are interested in seeing good photography, but they also welcomed the informative documentary style and also the entertainment style - just for a laugh. As an aside - the PTE shows in full HD 1920x1080 got the best response. Sadly the DVD's and Video CD's were either too small on the big screen or too blurred when blown up to full screen.

[Almark]

Some comments about judging.

The criticism often raised at photography competition judges are the same for competition AV's. Quite simply, your AV may do better with a different judge or panel of judges - it is quirk of human nature - perhaps sub conscious. I have found that many AV judges, prefer the simple fade in/out without any fancy digital stuff (which, to them is seen as an unnecessary distraction.) They also like a beginning, middle and end - with a change of tempo for each section. I have also found that AV's that include narration are valued more than mere photos/music AV's.

You have to accept that the judge is doing what he/she thinks is right. A different judge may do things differently. As a photographer, foremost, what I would like to see in all AV Festivals/Competitions is an award for the best photography. The Av may not have narration, a beginning, middle or end, tempo changes, but may have great photography!

If I was asked to judge a AV competition, good photography would be one thing I would be looking for. Which only highlights my point - I have seen wonderful AV's with well below average photography, but they have a great colour blend, or good story, or are informative, or sad, or fun, or simply capture your interest from start to finish!

The bottom line is that if you AV does not feature well in one competition, do not lose heart. Re summit it again at the next one!

[trailertrash]

Hi Mark, so many things now to consider, but a better understanding now to help. This discussion has opened my eyes a bit. I guess I got carried away with my 'masterpiece' and didnt stop to consider the impact such a show might have. There were a lot of elderly members in that audience!

What you doing still up at 01:30am?

Andrew