If there's something we've noticed, it's that PMVs rarely get big, awesome events. There's compilations sure, but by and large, it's a big part of the fandom that doesn't get as much credit as it deserves, considering the work that often gets put in.

To clear that up, Everfree Northwest is announcing a contest for all of the hard working PMV makers out there.

The contest itself is fairly basic: Make a new PMV (don't recycle an old one, please!) and submit it to us. After we round up all the submissions, our judges with take a look and bring it down to a select few that will be screened at a special panel during the convention. The audience will vote for their favorites, and the winner(s) will get prizes!

Not much more to say, really. We don't want to impose many limits on creativity. Check out the full rules below!

Official Rules:
1) The work must be created by the submitter (or submitters, in the case of collaborators), must be original work, and should be a new work (We're relying on the honor system here, folks).

2) The Creator(s), upon submission, are giving the convention Everfree Northwest permission to use the work for the purposes of the contest, including but not limited to: public viewing and web-posting.

3) All entries must be submitted by 11:59 PM, Pacific Standard Time (PST) July 14th, 2012. Any submissions after this date are invalid and ineligible to take part in this contest.

4) Winners will be determined and announced during the convention (August 17th - 19th, 2012). Public announcement will follow.

5) Submissions are to be emailed to contest@everfreenw.com, in appropriate video format, with PMV, your name, and the name of the PMV in the email Subject Line. In addition, for the sake of our judges, a link should be provided to an internet hosted version of the PMV (ie. Youtube).

6) The guideline for length of the PMV is around 4 to 6 minutes. This is not a hard rule, so we do encourage longer submissions, if you wish.

7)As a family friendly convention, we will not be accepting any submissions using elements that would be above a PG-13 rating.

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Forgive me if this seems like a silly question, but what exactly is your definition for a PMV here? Are we talking just lip synced show animation over music, or can original songs or live music video covers be entered as well?

Hey, I'm Isaak, better known as Shiropoint on Youtube and I'd happy to help with this in any way

I'm not sure whether sending the files in via email is for the best, not as attachment at least. Video files can get fairly big if you want to squeeze out enough quality. A great lossy format is for instance Quicktime with the animation or h264 codec but for a video of a few minutes that could mean several hundreds of megabytes. You could go with the mp4 format and h264 combo, but again this can mean dozens of megabytes.

So maybe the videos could be given via flashdrive, or perhaps they could be uploaded to a Dropbox or Google Drive?

Also, not every player can play every file. VLC player will play just about everything, but Windows Media Player won't accept some files without the appropriate codecs.

My two pennies

I second this question.
Are PMVs visually appealing fancy effects with perfect sync, or a more general ponies-with-music kind of deal?
Also, is .swf a friendly format? The file sizes are really small, and only require what pretty much every computer already has.

Both count to me, and you can do that or upload it as a private video to Youtube & give us the link

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Are we still able to enter this contest even though we may not attend the convention? I am still in the phase of convincing people to go, and I just want to know if making a PMV would still be accepted even if I am not there.

From this, I get the impression that we're not allowed to publicly upload the submission before the announcement of the winners.
Is this incorrect?

Also wondering about this.
EDIT: Okay, can I still submit even though I'm not going.

I sent in my video a while ago but I publicly uploaded it to youtube & after a few events that happened I really don't want to change it to private so would I have to make yet another video for this contest then upload it privately? I spent about seven hours working on that music video & because of a mistake of uploading it publicly I really don't want to end up making another. Although if I have to I have an idea for the new one although I don't know if it will end up over four minutes or not. *looks up song to see if it's over 4 minutes long* Well yeah it is over four minutes but barely. So did my submission count or do I have to make another?

Scratch my original question, I am going to the convention now =D

But I would still like to know if we can upload the PMVs to the public before the convention begins, or if we need to keep them on private until the winners are announced.

Hi, new here and I might enter this contest , but I also would like to know the answer to this.

Also, does it have to be 4-6 minutes long? If I end up making one it'll be on the short side. Dunno.