The Computer Animation/Visual Effects Jury on its Choice

The problem of finding adequate criterias to judge computer animations and visual effects has been the central issue in the work of this year's Prix Ars Electronica jury for Computer Animation / Visual Effects.

The Jury faced and dealt with two dilemmas that have plagued earlier juries: how to consider work from students, small studios, and big studios within one category, and how to judge the visual effects entries.

The first dilemma – evaluating the work from students, small studios, and big studios became less of a problem last year when that jury noticed with delighted surprise, that the student work competed on an equal footing with work from the big studios. The Jury found this to be true again this year, with the films Mouse by Wojtek Wawszczyk and Kikumana by Yasuhiro Yoshiura exemplifying the stunning sophistication the jury saw in student work. Remarkably, the entries themselves provided the solution to the second dilemma: how to judge visual effects.

Here are the problems, the points of discussion and debate: If the goal of visual effects is to serve the film in which the effects appear, can the effects be judged apart from the film? If they can’t, would the Jury be basing its judgment on decisions made by the director of the film rather than on the quality of the effects? And if the Jury gave an award to a visual effects entry for a film that had effects created by several studios, would all the studios share the award, or only the studio submitting its work? How could you give an award to a film, when you have seen only a small portion of the effects?

These questions led to considering a visual effects entry as a complete work in itself. But if the Jury was to judge the effects outside the film in which they appear, what criteria should be used? You can evaluate the technology and perhaps the impact on the culture of filmmaking, but how do we evaluate the art?

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