Opticlash 2

This was an interesting event, I didn't go to the first one in 2005 and I had my doubts about the format going in- and I still have my doubts, but overall it was a success in terms of promoting VJing- and also VJ Scobot won, and I think he did do the best VJing there.

There were three sets of screens at the front of the room, the center had camera views of the two competing VJs and the outer ones had the video they were outputting. This seemed less than ideal because of difficulty in viewing both simultaneously- you could either watch one or the other except from the most distant points or oblique angles.

It's possible the VJs at some points were glimpsing what the other guy was doing and responded in some way, but I think mainly they were just concentrating on their own stuff- which is unfortunate, because the most crowd-pleasing aspect of a competition is any kind of interaction and drama that can be generated between the contestants. It would be great to have one contestant go for a minute or two and the the other goes, trying to outdo the other, maybe playing a similar sort of clip, or mocking them somehow, or anything like that- and they would go back and forth a few times.


Opticlash 2 from binarymillenium on Vimeo

I didn't actually see the last set, since the show was going on a bit longer than advertised- the 15 minute sets for the later rounds should have been at most 10 minutes on schedule or not.

The judges didn't add a lot besides the rote rating judgements they offered, the MC initially wanted some kind of vocal rationale or something out of the judges but they were microphone shy.

Here's a writeup from one of the judges, and he posted some video (Pixelflip vs. ?) on dailymotion.