Voting Format

[Alan Mills]

I know we're still the better part of a couple of weeks away from this but I was wondering what format the voting will take. i.e.

Will we simply submit a tick against our personal favourite as we did in the last comp or maybe vote for each entry and mark it out of ten or what?

My preference would be to submit a mark out of ten for each entry and do it blind, like in Eurovision ( ) so no 'strategic' voting can be performed.

So, what's the intention then Marc?

Also, I've only seen messages from two people stating that their entries are in. You are all entering aren't you?

[NoBudget]

"'strategic' voting"

I was just looking at the scores. They are so close it is easy to change the top contenders, and I noticed about 8 to 10 votes for each movie so one vote can drastically change the average. If I vote 5 for one film and 1 for another I can change the whole outcome. I haven't voted myself but I thought I can just "bump" my movie to first place if I wanted to ("1st place" would look nice on my website!).

What have other filmmakers done? Vote for yourself too or just for others?

Reindert.
www.nobudgetvideo.com

PS. You are already a winner just by competing...yeah right!

[Marc Peters]

As topic starter for all topics, I couldn't vote for anyone :-(. It's not really cricket to vote for yourself though, is it?

Reminds me of game theory Not happy memories!

[bgarthp]

I just voted for others, not me,
although I'd give me a worse mark than others anyway if I was honest.

[Alan Mills]

I noticed about 8 to 10 votes for each movie so one vote can drastically change the average.

It's a shame isn't it? Marc's post reveals that on average, each movie has been downloaded about 70 times yet each one is averaging less than ten votes. Why download and watch and then not vote or comments in some way? Doesn't make sense to me.

[Alan Mills]

"'strategic' voting"

I was just looking at the scores. They are so close it is easy to change the top contenders, and I noticed about 8 to 10 votes for each movie so one vote can drastically change the average. If I vote 5 for one film and 1 for another I can change the whole outcome. I haven't voted myself but I thought I can just "bump" my movie to first place if I wanted to ("1st place" would look nice on my website!).

Which is why I suggested 'blind' voting. However, I appreciate that the tools at hand, for Marc building this web site and the voting mechanism, might not have made that do-able.

What have other filmmakers done? Vote for yourself too or just for others?

You should really just vote for others. But then, given your post and working through the numbers, as you did, I would say that wouldn't I?

[Marc Peters]

Maybe I wasn't clear enough on how/who could vote.

Also these are complete downloads, so tell a true picture of views (unless people downloaded more than once for some crazy reason).

[Mike Thorpe]

It's because I downloaded each video 50 times so you had to pay for lots of bandwidth.

[Marc Peters]

You're a nasty, nasty piece of work Mike Thorpe. You'll go a long way.

It's a good job I pay a silly amount of money for hosting really, isn't it? On that note, I can offer hosting for a reasonable one-off anual fee for anyone that needs it... (but I know that a few of you have mates that provide it for free/discounted anyway).

[NoBudget]

Well, I guess maybe it is best for "competitors" not to vote in this case. It puts too much weight on the outcome either way and every video had a completely different style so comparison is difficult. Just look at the Sinister soundtrack category (I'm in that one), four completely different entries. Mine (Paper Cut) has the imaginative concept but lacks in the technical execution, the Hitman has the Twilight Zone storyline but is too slow, the forest film has the atmosphere but is light on content and the spider movie is ambitious in CGI integration but technically flawed.

Purely in terms of sound editing (it's a sountrack comp after all) Paper Cut and Final Hit have the upper hand because the track has been edited to fit the visuals. "Hit" uses the music at key points and "Cut" has rearranged the sountrack to fit the whole film.

One thing about the music, I have to say I was not too impressed. Sinister was about 6 minutes long but there was not much diversity. It would be nice to have a slow build-up, some heavy scares leading to a climax and a satifying end. The editor can then use the appropriate pieces at any given time. I had trouble emphasising the "shocks". Take it as constructive critisism, not a put-down.

Reindert.
www.nobudgetvideo.com