Your Club Competitions

A forum for sharing views on the art of film, video and AV sequence making as well as on competitions, judging and festivals.
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Ian Gardner

Your Club Competitions

Post by Ian Gardner »

Dear all,
I was just wondering, when you enter a film into your video Club competition.
How do they mark it?
He is the back ground to this question............

Our club is going through a difficult time in judgeing our films and giving
them marks. It is starting to make me not want to enter them. Our marks are
divided up into 4 sections, Camera Work, Sound, Editing and Impact. These
are then sub divided into other sub sections. Each section has a max possible
top mark and then there added together to give a final score. The problem
is this.........

The editing comp that I entered didn`t use any Ambient Sound but music instead.
This is ok, it`s in the rules. Ie you can do anything with the material supplied.
For the sound I got 2 points out of 20! I lost 18 points because I didn`t
use the sound provided. Remember I didn`t have to. Sombody added Narration
(very poor and distorted!). They would have got a few marks for this. This
would push there score up and they could actually win with an inferriour
film!!

Your responces please.

Ian Gardner
Michael Slowe

Re: Your Club Competitions

Post by Michael Slowe »

Ian, my response is 'What a load of rubbish' Make the films that you want
to make, that your creative instinct insist you make, and let the rest take
care of itself. I have done that for 35 years and come to no great harm.
The judging system that you describe is the very opposite of what good judging
represents. As has been said so many times on this forum and others, a good
judge watches the films and makes his judgement on the overall piece of work,
how it succeeds in it's aim of informing and entertaining, not by how well
the separate skills are employed. Obviously if one of these skills is so
badly employed that it affects the success of the film then that would be
to the detriment of the overall judgement of that film. As to feeling aggrieved
about a judgement of your film, don't let it concern or deflect you from
doing what you feel is right artistically speaking - if it's good all judges
will like it!




"Ian Gardner" <forums@theiac.org.uk> wrote:
Dear all,
I was just wondering, when you enter a film into your video Club competition.
How do they mark it?
He is the back ground to this question............

Our club is going through a difficult time in judgeing our films and giving
them marks. It is starting to make me not want to enter them. Our marks
are
divided up into 4 sections, Camera Work, Sound, Editing and Impact. These
are then sub divided into other sub sections. Each section has a max possible
top mark and then there added together to give a final score. The problem
is this.........
Ian Gardner

Re: Your Club Competitions

Post by Ian Gardner »

"Michael Slowe" <michael.slowe@btinternet.com> wrote:
Ian, my response is 'What a load of rubbish' Make the films that you want
to make, that your creative instinct insist you make, and let the rest take
care of itself. I have done that for 35 years and come to no great harm.
The judging system that you describe is the very opposite of what good judging
represents. As has been said so many times on this forum and others, a good
judge watches the films and makes his judgement on the overall piece of
work,
how it succeeds in it's aim of informing and entertaining, not by how well
the separate skills are employed. Obviously if one of these skills is so
badly employed that it affects the success of the film then that would be
to the detriment of the overall judgement of that film. As to feeling aggrieved
about a judgement of your film, don't let it concern or deflect you from
doing what you feel is right artistically speaking - if it's good all judges
will like it!
Thank you Michael. That`s how, if I was a judge, would do it. It`s just at
club level. Certain competitions require certain things to do. In this case,
it didn`t matter if I included the original sound or not. That wasn`t the
excesise. The exersice is to edit the footage how you like. The footage was
of a local St. Georges Day event. One of the judges said my film didn`t keep
in with the local touch of the festival! It didn`t have to! I could have
do one about the Austin cars that were in the footage, or how to play tug
of war, or even why clouds are different! You just had to use the footage
that was given to you with a max of 5 minutes. We all had the same 30 minute
footage. Most just did the basic coverage of the event. I don`t do this.
I`m not a sheep! I do what I can to just stay in the rules!
Cheers Mike.
Ian Gardner
Ned C

Re: Your Club Competitions

Post by Ned C »

Hi Ian,

Take heart from that fact that judging art competitively is slightly ridiculous.
(yes, I know we run the AMPS Festival). Imagine the reactions to well konw
painters, Picasso, no concept of reality; van Gogh, terrible brushwork; Miro,
is he ten years old? and so on. I would suggest that you try to invite a
complete outsider in to judge the club films, preferably someone who loves
movies but doesn't make them. I think you will find the results an eye opener.
I saw this in the days when I belonged to a cine club in England, the films
the club members would have chosen on the basis of technical skill got nowhere
and the ones that grabbed the invited judge won. This was not over popular
but it did eliminate any "friendly bias". Give it a try and let us know what
happens

ned c


"Ian Gardner" <ian@gardner44.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
"Michael Slowe" <michael.slowe@btinternet.com> wrote:

Ian, my response is 'What a load of rubbish' Make the films that you want
to make, that your creative instinct insist you make, and let the rest
take
care of itself. I have done that for 35 years and come to no great harm.
The judging system that you describe is the very opposite of what good
judging
represents. As has been said so many times on this forum and others, a
good
judge watches the films and makes his judgement on the overall piece of
work,

Thank you Michael. That`s how, if I was a judge, would do it. It`s just
at
club level. Certain competitions require certain things to do. In this case,
it didn`t matter if I included the original sound or not.
Dave Watterson

Re: Your Club Competitions

Post by Dave Watterson »

There is a difference between a general film competition - like the IAC, Cotswold
and Guernsey festivals - and one with particular rules. The big comps are
all about the quality of the finished film - and nothing else is important
(per se).

A special comp requires people to stick to its rules, which can be as quirky
as you like. It is mainly about how well you follow the rules, not about
how good or bad the film is (!).

There used to be a long-running argument about comps with a theme (like 'North
v South') - people asked: was a film eligible if the words of the theme were
not used somewhere in a title or in the dialogue? So if the theme were "thirst"
and you showed someone crawling across desert sands to a waterhole but did
not use "thirst" in the title or have a character say the word, then some
judges ruled your film out.

In this case Ian's interpretation of the rules is not the same as the judges.
There's no point worrying about logic, arguing about the meaning of words
etc ... it's just a silly set of arbitrary rules interpreted in one way by
the current judge/s. It's not real!

I'm much more concerned about the notion that films should be judged by a
scoring system. It does not work for me at all - despite the fact that I
try valiantly to use it when judging the Cotswold Festival. It's like language
teachers who mark student papers with a half-mark here for a grammer point,
a half-mark there for a tricky spelling. That approach all too often misses
the overall impact of the piece. It may be valid when teaching a language
and checking exercises but it would be a poor way to value an essay and I
think it a poor way to value a film.

Dave
Ian Gardner

Re: Your Club Competitions

Post by Ian Gardner »

"Dave Watterson" <david.filmsocs@virgin.net> wrote:
In this case Ian's interpretation of the rules is not the same as the judges.
There's no point worrying about logic, arguing about the meaning of words
etc ... it's just a silly set of arbitrary rules interpreted in one way
by
the current judge/s. It's not real!
The only rule in this compertition was that we all had the same footage and
we could do with it what we like! And it had to be less then 5 minutes! The
rules were followed to the tee.
We have 3 judges of which 2 are normally `normal` members. In this case
THEY got it wrong! But there is a saying that `The judges decicion is final`.
I `im not taking the matter furthur. I`m not out to get blood, unlike, what
happened in the past at the club by two members. We won`t dig up old wounds
and go into that.......
I'm much more concerned about the notion that films should be judged by
a
scoring system. It does not work for me at all - despite the fact that I
try valiantly to use it when judging the Cotswold Festival. It's like language
teachers who mark student papers with a half-mark here for a grammer point,
a half-mark there for a tricky spelling. That approach all too often misses
the overall impact of the piece. It may be valid when teaching a language
and checking exercises but it would be a poor way to value an essay and
I
think it a poor way to value a film.

Dave
Thank you guys, for your valued input. I`ll try and direct the club committee
to your comments. Nothing will be done untill November at the club. Everybobys
comments were most welcome. Thanks.
Ian Gardner.
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