Tim Nikias wrote:

> IRTC's guidelines say that sound may not be available everywhere.

Yes, but that's rather theoretical - I don't know anybody who has no 
soundcard and no speakers or headphones. (I don't think that the makers 
of this rule had the hearing impaired in mind).

I interpreted the rule about sound as: Not everybody has got expirence 
with sound mixing or has the hard- and software needed to record 
dialogs, compose/perform music, record sound-effects, etc. So it's not 
about being able to hear the soundtrack, but about being able to create 
a soundtrack. And as this contest is about animation, the judges should 
focus on the animation, i.e. not give an entry a better score just 
because it includes a soundtrack. That does IMHO not imply to penalize 
entries that do!

Some entrants/judges also seem to destinct between sound and spoken 
words. Take a look at the 1st and 2nd place winners of the January 2004 
round (finale and rpaz_teo). Both rely on the soundtrack, the first one 
on the piano playing, the second one on dialog. By reading the comments 
I got the impression that rpaz_teo was penalized because it had a 
dialog: "Concept:  Weakened by reliance on soundtrack." (John VanSickle)

> It's not a "Short-Movie" contest, but "Animation", and there
 > definitely is a difference between the two.

Well, if the difference is that a "Short-Movie" may include or rely on a 
spoken dialog but an "Animation" must not, then this should be 
explicitly mentioned in the rules, e.g. "The animation must not contain 
spoken words".

However, the rules say: 5.d "MPEG audio streams are allowed in the 
animation file, but not everyone will be able to hear them; also 
remember that judges are instructed to focus on the rendered animation. 
For the time being, audio streams will probably be just a waste of space."

To sanction a general "background" soundtrack, but penalize dialog seems 
a bit random to me.

If the distinction in fact is "dialog", then I don't understand John 
VanSickles comments: Most of his Rusty animations rely heavily on dialog 
(he uses this fancy LED-displays on the robots, which can be considered 
as subtitles) - [btw, I like his Rusty animations!]

Ok, lets come to the point: Do you think that, if a stroy relies on 
dialog, addind subtitles is ok (and will not lead to penalizing the 
entry), or do you think that a story that relies on dialog is generally 
weak (for an "Animation")?

-Sascha

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