Well, first, a word on our involvement. Our five judges are the official judges for the competition, and we award the top three places in the "official" vote. There is also an audience/popular vote that we take no part in.

The extent of our input on the competition is that I work with Juan (the actual "head" of the operation) to get all of the entries early and pick a day we can do the show, and prepare all of the assets and the set-up for the broadcast, and the boys watch and review the films on their own and make their decisions. Additionally, we (Down in Front) donate half of the value of the prize, and Ryan / Sabershop donates half of the value of the prize, and award it to the chosen winner. The prize is actually not associated with or mandated by the LCC proper - it's just a thing we do. That's us, not the LCC.

Beyond that, we don't make the rules, deadlines, or decide on the criteria of the judging.

As I'm not even a judge, my opinion here doesn't matter. But I have been thinking about it lately, especially because a dude on TFN has raised the same issue. Here's my unformed thoughts.

This year and last year I had my own guess as to who would win, and both years I was wrong, and both years I chose the most filmy entry. (Well, last year I guessed Nate would win - just because his entry was more storyish than JediPastor's bad-ass 300 fight.) This year I thought it'd be DX6Channel, with his light whips and multiple baddies. In both cases, an entry that didn't actually impress me at first glance won. (This is why I'm not a judge, I'm easily distracted away from choreography if something shiny is going on.)

But it betrays what I like to see, which is cool lightsaber fight movies, not cool lightsaber fights. The problem I can imagine is that it's much harder to award a winner, or at least it's a slippery slope, when you say "the winner is the person with the best movie." When it's guys who have seen a lot of lightsaber fights and have done and are recognized for their own high-quality lightsaber fights, judging those fights on their fightiness is pretty straightforward. "You did this poorly, you did this really well." If you open it up to a general filmmaking competition that happens to be predicated on fights, how do you justify choosing Zack Snyder's completely gorgeous, stunningly edited shitty fight over Yuen Woo-ping's crappy looking, technically outstanding fight?

It's not like you've reached an impossible paradigm wherein objectivity can't be attained, but you are dealing with an entirely different ball game.

What I guess I'm saying is, I agree with your outlook and that I'd rather see the really awesome all-arounders get credit for their, well, extra-credit. But on the other hand, while you might be persuaded to enter if you thought you'd have a solid chance because you can make a glorious short, someone else might not because their only hope was their actual choreography skills. Perhaps not for all, but certainly for many, the fact that we have a common denominator criteria that is judged by folks training their eyes to focus purely on that encourages them to give it a shot. The spirit of "just do it!" is something that weaves back into the early days of the contest, and is liable to be lost if the kid who'd respond "alright! I'll try!" is dissuaded because he knows Zack Snyder is entering this year. "Aw, shucks," he says. "Why bother."

I don't know. I'm glad it's not my call. I guess the bigger question is, why do we have the contest at all? If we were to start a similar contest now, how would it work, taking into consideration the state of the online filmmaking community in 2011, and setting aside the nostalgia we have for the online filmmaking community of 2002. It's a bit too wistful to imagine a contest where the rules are chosen to encourage amateurs to enter alongside professionals, but that's what we currently have, and I love that aspect of it.

Like I said, unformed thoughts. I don't know. Fuckin' lightsaber competitions, how do they work.

Yeah, it'll be up again soon.

Well, tomorrow we're not doing a commentary, we're judging the annual lightsaber thing - and afterwards recording a special, non-Down in Front thing to be announced when we record it, I guess.

But to answer your question, we start doing things at noon PST.

Torrents? Maybe? I don't know how big the underground Asylum film-trading scene is.

I'd like to live in a world where it is handled exclusively by the directors of said films.

I appreciate it. Tomorrow we're going to start playing with different recording systems to see if we can find a more stable one, so hopefully we don't need the back-up, but if by god's fucking will something goes wrong, your recording will be good to have.

Hey, thanks! Here's a pic for the uninitiated.

I'll get to it today. It's not a real site yet.

*wearing a bow tie*

The DIF kit, such as it is, goes like this.

Four microphones go into the mixer board.

The output line is split between the laptop and a second splitter. That splitter breaks off into the broadcast line-out, which goes over to the laptop handling the webcam, and the headphones. (Which means more splitters, two in fact.) The result is four headphones being connected.

So,

Output

Splitter - Laptop, Splitter

Splitter 2 - broadcast laptop, two more splitters that branch out into four headphone cables.