Rules for Submissions

The following rules apply to all music video events at Anime Weekend Atlanta. All events operate at the discretion of The Video Art Track and Anime Weekend Atlanta crew. Rules are subject to change without notice. Category and Award descriptions available on this website are guidelines only. Crew may add, change, or eliminate categories as they see fit. Awards have no significant cash value. Often, they have no tangible value whatsoever.

By submitting an entry to The Video Art Track, the video editor grants The Video Art Track non-revocable permission to exhibit and distribute that work. The video editor otherwise retains all rights and responsibilities relating to their creation. The Video Art Track and Anime Weekend Atlanta supports Remix Culture. All participants retain all rights to the value added by their creative endeavors, and respect the rights retained by the original creators of the material they transform. The Video Art Track does not dictate decisions of artistic judgment. The artistic design of your entry can be anything you choose and may draw from any type of source material, aural or visual.

We encourage all artists to seek out new and original projects. You may enter as many events as you wish, but a single work may not be entered into more than one of our events, present or past. The Music Video Exposition accepts works that have participated in other events, even those that have previously won awards. Other events require new works that have not been publicly exhibited in any fashion, either at an event or online.

Submission Instructions

Read all the rules, especially the rules for the event in which you wish to enter. The majority of disqualifications that occur every year could be avoided if people simply review the rules before submitting.

All submissions must be in H.264 MPEG format. A proper discussion of video encoding is beyond the scope of these rules. You can avoid it all by downloading Handbrake and using the Legacy High Profile preset to encode your video. Please understand that re-encoding your video may may result in reduced quality through recompression, which is a component of the judging for both The Professional Awards and The Masters, and that you may get better results by other means or more fine tuning.

It is critically important that you review your video for audio sync issues, and we recommend playing your video in VLC to do so, regardless of your usual media player or editing software. Both VLC and Handbrake are available for Windows and Macintosh platforms. It is generally beneficial to include one second of black silence at the start and end of your submission. If you have any questions about video format and conversion, please contact us at videoart@awa-con.com.

We only accept submissions online. We only accept online submissions through the following form. We will not obtain your video from YouTube or any other website unless special arrangements have been made. The entire form with contact information must be completed for each video. Professional Awards participants will be contacted at the email address provided with voting information. Multi-editor Projects (MEPs) and other works created by more than one person will need to designate one person as the point of contact for the work. This person should complete the submission form listing all editors in the Legal Name field.

http://submit.videoarttrack.com

The Music Video Exposition

The goal of The Music Video Exposition (sometimes “The Exposition” or just “The Expo”) has always been to exhibit as many videos as possible while awarding recognition to as many deserving videos as is practical. The Exposition is just that, an exposition and not a contest. Recognition is awarded, but there are no prizes. Entries are judged by The Video Art Track crew members, taking into account primarily artistic elements. Often new awards are created on the spot for innovative and creative entries. The Exposition has no official list of specific awards, and thus the awards presented change every year.

Typically awards are at least given for Best Action, Best Comedy, Best Drama, Best Romance, and a “Grand Prize,” which traditionally has been given to the most surprising, unconventional and well-executed submission each year.

  • Deadline: All entries in The Music Video Exposition must be received by 11:59 PM Thursday, September 6, 2018, Eastern Time. We expect your video to be completely uploaded and in our hands at this time. If there are technical issues, we will work with you to complete your upload.
  • Quantity: Multiple submissions to this event are allowed. You may include a note letting us know which single video you would most like to have exhibited during the convention, however we may choose to show any video submitted. Because of time constraints, while we’ll make an effort to show one video from everyone who submits to Anime Weekend Atlanta, we can no longer promise to do so.
  • Identification: We ask that submissions to this event be free of any creator identification, including but not limited to studio bumpers or credit rolls. We strongly suggest one second of black silence before and after your submission and nothing more.
  • Participation: Anyone may submit a video to the Exposition, even if they will not be attending Anime Weekend Atlanta.
  • Content: Videos exhibited during the convention are generally limited to the standards of an “R” motion picture rating. Videos containing extreme violence, adult situations, nudity or other mature content may be restricted to exhibition at night during Anime Weekend Atlanta and may be excluded from screening during the Gala Awards Show. Such restrictions will not affect eligibility for any award. There is no restriction on what you may submit. Submissions of a pornographic or “hentai” nature may be eligible for special consideration during our “18 And Up” adult programming on Saturday night. Videos with excessive profanity may be eligible for special consideration during our “F-Bombs for Charity” event, also on Saturday night.

The Professional Awards

For the first Video Art Track, we wanted to offer something new in the way music videos were judged. Instead of having crew review the videos (which we do for the Exposition), or letting the audience vote on entries (common at many other conventions), we created an event judged exclusively by those who participated. Much like the Academy Awards, The Professional Awards (or sometimes “The Pro Awards” or just “Pro”) represent the opinion of your editing peers, and hence a higher standard for those who wish to participate.

Here’s how it works: once all entries have been received by the Video Art Track, they are made available to review exclusively to those who submitted. What follows are two rounds, nominations and voting.

During the first round the participants may propose the categories of awards that will be given for this event year and nominate videos in each category. The initial awards of “Best Video”, “Best Action”, “Best Comedy”, “Best Drama” and “Best Romance” are always included. Additional specific, inventive, humorous and non-derogatory categories may be proposed by the participants. The nature of and support garnered by the proposed categories will be considered by the crew members when deciding the trophies to order for the year.

During the final round participates vote for one video from the top videos nominated in each category. The crew of The Video Art Track adjudicate ties.

  • Deadline: All entries in The Professional Awards must be received by 11:59 PM Thursday, August 30, 2018, Eastern Time. We expect your video to be completely uploaded and in our hands at this time. If there are technical issues, we will work with you to complete your upload.
  • Right of First Exhibition: By submitting a video to this event, you are granting the Video Art Track the right of first exhibition of your submission. Submissions may not have been presented in any public venue nor published online in any fashion prior to their initial screening during the Gala Awards Show at Anime Weekend Atlanta.
  • Quantity: Each individual editor may only contribute effort to two submissions to this event. This includes any submissions made as an individual, as well as participation in any multi-editor projects (MEPs).
  • Duration: The longest running time we will accept for this event is 18 minutes total. This may be divided between the permitted submissions. Running time in excess of this may result in one or both of your submissions being moved to The Music Video Exposition.
  • Content: We ask all editors to consider limiting themselves to the standards of an “R” motion picture rating. Videos that in the sole opinion of Video Art Track crew exceed this standard and may be judged by a subset of all participants of the event and may not be screened during the awards ceremony. This is to continue to permit those who produce videos with adult content to seek the recognition of their peers through The Professional Awards.
  • Participation: While anyone may submit to The Professional Awards, the event is intended for those who have solid experience in video editing and music video contests. We have no standard for calling yourself a professional beyond acting professionally to your fellow editors as you review and vote the submissions to this event.
  • Identification: Submissions to this event must be free of any creator identification, including but not limited to studio bumpers or credit rolls. We strongly suggest one second of black silence before and after your submission and nothing more. Participants may choose to make a reasonable effort to keep their identity as the editor of a specific entry a secret. While this is up to each individual editor, the no bumpers, credits or identification rule applies to all submissions.
  • Voting: By entering this event, you will be expected by your peers to review and vote on hours of submitted content. However, no participant will ever be required to review or vote on any specific submission that they may find objectionable. Voting in this event is a privilege, not an obligation. We also ask that judges vote their own conscience, making their own decision. Online and in person discussion by participants of the merits of the entries is expected and encouraged on The Video Art Track’s Discord server.
  • Multi-editor Projects: Multi-editor projects (MEPs) are welcome, subject to the participation rule above, however a multi-editor project will only be granted a single vote regardless of how many people are involved in the project, and if any person involved in the project also submits a solo project, no additional vote will be granted for the MEP. Only the registered voting participant of a MEP may cast the vote.
  • Age of Participants: All participants must certify that they are 18 years of age or older through our web site before they will be granted access submissions with adult content.

The Masters

The Masters is held every two years. This is an off-year for The Masters. The following rules will apply when The Masters is next held at Anime Weekend Atlanta in 2019.

Every two years, the Video Art Track is proud to host The Masters, representing our highest standard for both artistic and technical music video production. The Masters is judged exclusively by Director of Music Video Events. While the director may consult with anyone on matters artistic or technical, the final decision is theirs alone. The judging for The Masters Competition is blind and the director’s only consideration is the finished submission.

  • Right of First Exhibition: By submitting a video to this event, you are granting the Video Art Track the right of first exhibition of your submission. Submissions may not have been presented in any public venue nor published online in any fashion prior to their initial screening during the Gala Awards Show at Anime Weekend Atlanta.
  • Quantity: Each individual editor may submit a single video to this event.
  • Duration: The longest running time we will accept for this event is 9 minutes. Longer entries will be moved to The Music Video Exposition.
  • Content: We ask all editors to consider limiting themselves to the standards of an “R” motion picture rating. Videos that in the sole opinion of Video Art Track crew exceed this standard may not be screened during the awards ceremony.
  • Participation: While anyone may submit to The Masters, the event is intended for those who have solid experience in video editing and music video contests.
  • Identification: Submissions to this event must be free of any creator identification, including but not limited to studio bumpers or credit rolls. We strongly suggest one second of black silence before and after your submission and nothing more. Participants must make a reasonable effort to keep their identity as the editor of a specific entry a secret.
  • Multi-editor Projects: Multi-editor projects (MEPs) are not permitted in this event. Each entry must be the work of a single editor.
  • Award: The award for the Masters Competition is a green sport coat in the style of that awarded by The Masters golf tournament in Augusta, GA. All participants must include with their submission their coat size (e.g. 34 Long). Women participating in the event are encouraged to ask to be measured for a sport coat in the men’s department of a department store, in addition to including a more typical women’s size. We apologize, but while we can sometimes source a sport coat in the Masters style in women’s sizes, we cannot guarantee we’ll be able to do so.
  • Attendance: Participants in the Masters Competition should, if at all possible, attend the awards ceremony at Anime Weekend Atlanta. We do award that very nice jacket we mentioned, and part of the delight is helping you put it on for the first time in front of a thousand screaming fans. We will, of course, make allowances for any burdensome or unfortunate circumstances that might unexpectedly arise.

The Hentai Music Video Exposition

“Adult” entries in Video Art Track events are handled by the Chaotic Bad Raptor studio. This includes any content we are unable to screen without verifying the age of all attendees present, including pornographic or “hentai” entries. Chaotic Bad Raptor awards a unique, custom trophy to the best adult video each year.

The rules for submitting an adult video are the same as for The Music Video Exposition, above, with the following exceptions:

  • Source Footage: Only entries in the form of a music video using animated sources will be considered. Specifically, home made pornography of any sort is not permitted.
  • Age of Participants: All participants must certify that they are 18 years of age or older through our website.
  • Award: The award for The Hentai Video Event is a single trophy custom-made by the editors of the Chaotic Bad Raptor studio. Only one trophy will be awarded in any given year. The appearance of these trophies may vary greatly from year-to-year. CBR often posts a sneak-peek of the trophy to their Facebook and Twitter, if you are curious.
  • Attendance: Participants in The Hentai Video Event should, if at all possible, attend the awards ceremony at Anime Weekend Atlanta. We do award that trophy we mentioned, and part of the delight is watching you heft it in the air in front of hundred screaming fans. We will, of course, make allowances for any burdensome or unfortunate circumstances that might unexpectedly arise.

F-Bombs For Charity

Entries consisting of music featuring a very large amount of swear words are encouraged. They are screened during our charity event.

The rules for submitting an F-Bomb video are the same as for The Music Video Exposition, above, with the following exceptions:

  • Content: Aside from the profanity, we must insist all editors limit themselves to the standards of an “R” motion picture rating. Videos that in the sole opinion of Video Art Track crew exceed this standard may not be screened during this event.
  • Source Footage: The source audio must contain a large number of F-Bombs and/or other profanity. The occasional swear word here or there will not suffice. The song should literally be littered with profanity.
  • Age of Participants: All participants must certify that they are 18 years of age or older through our website.

The Thunderdome

The Video Art Thunderdome will return at Anime Weekend Atlanta 2018.

Frequently Asked Questions

  • My video has been entered in another event that hasn’t happened yet. Is it still eligible to participate in events at Anime Weekend Atlanta?
    • Both The Professional Awards and The Masters require videos that have not been publicly exhibited prior to the Gala Awards Event at Anime Weekend Atlanta on Saturday at 3:00 PM, Eastern Time.If the event to which you’ve submitted your video will occur prior to this time, then your video may be disqualified from these events and moved to The Music Video Exposition which does not have this restriction.
  • My video has been uploaded to YouTube, but only a few people have seen it there. Is it still eligible to participate in events at Anime Weekend Atlanta?
    • Both The Professional Awards and The Masters require videos that have not been publicly exhibited prior to the Gala Awards Event at Anime Weekend Atlanta on Saturday at 3:00 PM, Eastern Time. Uploading your video to YouTube counts as a public exhibition according to these rules.Infractions of this rule in The Professional Awards must be reported to The Video Art Track crew, who investigate each allegation. If we cannot confirm the video is publicly accessible, we will not take action against an entry in this event. If we do confirm the public release of the work your video may be disqualified from this event and moved to The Music Video Exposition which does not have this restriction.The Masters has a similar requirement. If we find your video is publicly accessible during our review process it may be disqualified from this event and moved to The Music Video Exposition which does not have this restriction.