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Awards
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Despite all that, what soured me on the whole process was watching the judges do the actual judging. There was NO protocol, NO criteria to follow, and NO scoring sheets. Each year, five years in a row, they’d walk around, spend 30 seconds looking at a print piece, video or website…one judge would dominate the discussion, and like Todd said, their biases would determine the winners and losers. One year, a judge gave a PSA for an AIDS Walk an addy because he said, “I’ve got a soft spot for people with AIDS.” It was a crappy PSA.
Sounds like the selection process for almost all but the best film festivals now!
Dual 2.5 G5, IO, Kona LH, IO, Medea Raid, UL4D, NVidia 6800, 4Gig RAM
Octocore 8 GB Ram, Radeon card, MBP, MXO
Windows XP Adobe Studio CS3, Vegas 8.0, Lightwave 9.2, Sound Forge 9, Acid Pro 6, Continuum 5, Boris Red 4, Combustion 2008, Sapphire Effects -
I once volunteered to be a judge for a fairly well-known organization that supports documentary filmmaking. Twenty of us spent ten weeks and hundreds of hours viewing and discussing documentary series from all over the world, and after submitting our three top picks to the final jury, we were told a decision had been made to give the award to HBO, for a series that was not among our three selections. HBO just happened to be the largest supporting sponsor of that awards show. Needless to say, I don’t volunteer my time to judge anymore, nor am I a member of that organization.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.
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“Out of about 5 years of doing this (at a great investment of time by all involved), there were 2 years where we were left off the credit list (printed and spoken at the end of the show). It was incredible. Each year we bit our lips and convinced ourselves it was still helpful, that we were helping the advertising community…yada yada. “-Chris Blair
Well, to be fair, Chris, weren’t those the two years where you had Debbie Allen do a protracted, choreographed interpretive dance number, in tribute to “screen-captured interactive database application demonstrations”? That was a rough night. It still haunts my dreams on cold winter nights…
🙂
Seriously, There are and will be horror stories, but I have to believe they are exceptions and not the rule. I still say that particularly early in the career, these awards are a good thing to strive for. Just don’t let chasing the award drive all your creative choices and material. Meaning, don’t throw a bunch of extraneous and unrelated eye candy into a client’s project in hopes of winning an award; the first goal, and what the project should really be judged on, is how effective a communications tool it is. Did it do the job it was designed to do. I will always grade functional over flashy. Do your best for a client. Then, if its good, and good enough for you that you think its your best, enter it. At least one time. And if you’re asked to judge and you feel capable, agree and give it the same maximum effort.
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Inquiring minds want to know, David, what organization was this?
:o)
Boomer
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[Ron Lindeboom] “what organization was this?”
Ron,
You can drag the information out of me with just a little prompting if you really want me to go on record in public, however, I was trying to play nice by not naming names. Let me know what’s right…
David
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.
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Just don’t let chasing the award drive all your creative choices and material. Meaning, don’t throw a bunch of extraneous and unrelated eye candy into a client’s project in hopes of winning an award; the first goal, and what the project should really be judged on, is how effective a communications tool it is. Did it do the job it was designed to do. I will always grade functional over flashy.
Mark…excellent advice…Thankfully…we’ve always let this philosophy guide us. I’ve never been one to care much about awards because I know when a project is well done or not.
I’ve always told both clients and employees that our job is to communicate and persuade viewers. Virtually everything we do is marketing related, so for me, the work’s creativity and effectiveness is judged by whether it gets people to pick up the phone, walk in the door, or log onto a website.
I’ve even told clients that it doesn’t matter if they like what we produce for them…all that matters is if it get’s people to respond the way the client wants. Of course…a lot of clients disagree with me on that one!
But I agree the awards gigs are good to get involved in and we did “our time” early on. I just don’t think they’re as important as you become more established.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
We applied for awards until we had a wall of plaques and a showcase full of statues and glass thingies. A surprising number of people decline looking at a reel and point to the awards and say “I can see that you do great work”.
I could have purchased those awards at an auction and gotten the same results.
https://www.sntvideo.com/awards.asp
They do get us hired.
Steve Wargo
Tempe, Arizona
It’s a dry heat!Sony HDCAM F-900 & HDW-2000/1 deck
5 Final Cut (not quite PRO) systems
Sony HVR-M25 HDV deck
2-Sony EX-1 HD . -
[Steve Wargo] “I could have purchased those awards at an auction and gotten the same results.”
Hey that just might be the best idea yet. Maybe even throw in a bowling trohpy or two. I’m semi-serious, that’d be fun.
Of course with a lot of these contests (depends on which ones), that’s pretty much what the entrants are doing anyway… buying a trophy.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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[Todd Terry] “Of course with a lot of these contests (depends on which ones), that’s pretty much what the entrants are doing anyway… buying a trophy.”
Exactly
Steve Wargo
Tempe, Arizona
It’s a dry heat!Sony HDCAM F-900 & HDW-2000/1 deck
5 Final Cut (not quite PRO) systems
Sony HVR-M25 HDV deck
2-Sony EX-1 HD . -
That’s a brutal over-generalization, IMO. You’re tarring all the awards with the same dirty brush. I’ve entered some before, paid my money and NOT won, so it is NOT automatically “buying” an award every time, in my experience. OTOH, you can probably find industry people to claim certain Emmy’s and Oscars have been “bought” over the years as well. Yet we all still yearn for one, such of us as care for awards at all, I mean…
Would I be wary of a new award with no track record and unknown judges, heck yes. If an award has been around over twenty years, with well-known, well-regarded judges attached to it and no horde of video villagers has yet come with flaming torches to run it out of town, then I’d have to say it must have SOME legitimacy to it.
And if you stop to think it through, the folks that run these awards KNOW that the only way to keep the gravy train rolling long-term is if people believe in and respect the way it is run. If you believe in Adam Smith, it is exceptionally counter-productive to the award organization to get caught “selling” awards. Sure, a fly-by night can get away with a rip-off *once*. What does he do the next year, after his name’s been smeared all over the production community by internet?
Now if somebody wants to put up documented evidence of such a case, say for the Telly, let him step forward and present, I’m all eyes. Be wary, sure. But to dismiss ALL of these type of awards without proof is unfair, I say. If you’ve been burned, I’d like to hear your story.
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