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Greetings fellow sceners,

I'm aMUSiC, musician of Andromeda Software Development. I'm not usually posting threads in the Pouet BBS, but this time I felt the necessity to share some thoughts with you, regarding a subject that has deeply worried and disturbed me the past few days.

This is about the FMX festival, and more specifically how the Bitfilm crew discriminated against our entry (Iconoclast) in the festival. Before I go on, I'd like to express my sincere congratulations to LKCC & Bauknecht for their winning entry Perfect Love.

All was well and sound, until 2 days ago, Gargaj came to me asking me if I was being self sarcastic about the comments on our demo in the FMX festival, which were printed on the brochure that was handed out, as well as on the fmx site http://www.fmx.de/E.262.html. I was naturally curious about what Gargaj meant, as I didn't write any comment regarding our demo. So I checked it out, and came upon this segment:

Iconoclast
Andromeda, Greece, 2005, 8:00min
Winner of Assembly 2005, considered one of the most important productions of that year – despite the terrible music..

I thought to myself.. big deal.. they didn't like the music.. me and Leviathan write on a controversial genre.. nothing new here.. and let's just forget the misprinting of our group name. However, after close examination, I noticed that Iconoclast was the only production in the whole realtime film section of festival (all flash, cut scenes, demo, machinima and VJ), that was actually labeled with a personal opinion about its content. Suddenly that comment about the music felt vile, unneccesary and very discriminating.

Gargaj contacted both fmx and the bitfilm crew bringing this to their attention. Bitfilm replied to him that the comments were written by them, that they decided to select Iconoclast as a nominee for the FMX realtime festival mainly due to the fact that the demoscene likes it, but at the same time they wanted to express their opinion on the music, as they are known to be highly opinionated and they'd have their reputation at stake if they weren't, concluding that this is a free society and everyone's entitled to their own opinion as well as expressing it the way they like.

Now I can't disagree with the last part.. I'm an avid supporter of freedom of speech, but this is not a case of likes and dislikes. Everyone's free to like or dislike a musical piece, art or a plate of food, and certainly I don't expect the bitfilm crew to like our music or lose any sleep over it. However, discriminating and getting just one production sigled out of the lot as fundamentaly flawed is disrespectful.

Furthermore this raises the question of "Why include it in the finalists, if you don't like it after all?".. with their reasoning being selecting it for FMX because the demoscene likes it. Is this a marketing scheme after all? Include popular productions in the competition to boost its appeal, only to bash them to create controversy?

Well I'm sorry ladies and gentlemen of the Bitfilm crew, but we supported you by providing you with the content for your festival competitions, for which we all worked hard for and disrespect is all that we get in return. Yes.. feel free to dislike our production and express your opinions freely in an article, a blog, a review.. but not on an official brochure for the festival, where every other production gets a fair and neutral commentary.

If Bitfilm wants to be "highly opinionated" by blatantly discriminating one single entry, then I'm deeply sorry but their reputation has already been directed to /dev/null.

We, Andromeda Software Development, would like to state that from now on we will be opposing any use or reference of our demos in any activity that has to do with the Bitfilm crew and/or festival and naturally we will not ever again submit any of our works there.

Thank you for the time you took to read this. Comments are always welcome.



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Update:

After Gargaj contacted the bitfilm crew for a second time expressing his shock towards their reply and letting them into more hindsight regarding the situation (note, that Navis has also contacted them but never got a reply), they have replied with a semi-apologetic e-mail noting that they should have been opinionated towards all the demos that participated, admitting a sloppy work, but still feeling they needed to distance themselves from Iconoclast and another Indian film, as those productions didn't meet their quality standards. Fair enough, but this doesn't negate my question, "If you don't like it.. why nominate it?".

Personally we (ASD) are semi-satisfied with their semi-apology. This is posted for your information. Our decision to abstain from future Bitfilm related event remains.

quit being such a whiner.

I am disappointed to see how this turned out. Traction will not participate in the said festivals again.

admittedly they acted a bit immature... (tho the style of writing in all of the short descriptions of the demos are a bit 'bleh'...)

i do second kusma too.

preacher: while i totally agree with amusic, please remember that FMX -hired- bitfilm to realize many of the realtime events at FMX. the FMX-festival was really well done, so there is no need to drag their name through the mud. :)

HAHAHA,

don't be sad Amusic, your music is ACE (i listened it every days during two month after I've seen the demo for the first time) and I guess that BitFilm organizer are a bunch of unproductive LAMERS who never pop out their fingers from their asses to create something. Instead, they prefer to criticize other's people work...

Ha, ha, ha: the scene as its best. Wars about music: just read really old Amiga diskmags and you'll find that 4mat, tip and mantronix also get such issues.

aMUSIC your zik is great IMHO and it doesn't please some people because it's quite new and different from what we are used to listen in demos since a few years. They can't understand such a diversity and are opposite to any change: the cons of tradition if you want to know the deep down of my hearth! My point about this affair is that the festival orgas have said themselves: "This demo is a must and we can't select it because if we do, we will get sceners on our back. But the music is not loved by some and this can be annoying because few sceners will say 'What? This demo has a so lame music!'". aMUSIC, you're an artist, you create stuff with your hearth, that means with love and with your own experience and sensitivity. You make things like sound for you at first. That's a bit like me with my articles. Whatever others said, you're on your right to get respect for your music because it's honestly great and you can ask others people outside the scene and even professional musicians. Sceners and especially the non active tend to be pure consummers and don't understand art: if it's not commercial music with limited harmony, no style and such attributes real artwork present they tend to not understand and to reject. So we can say that the Bitfilm is made of a team who don't know anything about music and don't defend their choice: they want the butter and the money of the butter, they want to please everybody and on the end they have no personnality.

Honestly don't take this affair too seriously because ASD is a leading group and yes there is jaleous guys here and there in the scene: especially inside those who do nothing and are unable to make such a good tune like yours.

stop crouching into other ppls asses dear ep.

gloom, please note that I don't have anything against FMX, and that is why I'm refering to the Bitfilm crew specifically in my post.

ep, this is not wether people like my music or not. I respect everyone's opinion. My point focuses mainly on demo groups (who have worked hard to make the demos that were used as material for the competition of the said crew) being treated with respect and in all fairness, on an event that has a wide outreach. If the Bitfilm crew expressed their opinion for all the demos participating, even if they said all good things about everyone else, and bad things about our demo, all would be nice and I wouldn't have any reason to "whine" as kusma says. But anyway.. you might think (and you might be right) that I make a fuss out of something not noteworthy. However I felt that I was unnecessarily bashed and disrespected, and that this matter might interest other people. That's why I posted this.

"but we supported you by providing you with the content for your festival competitions" ... didnt you submitted it for the money? come on... just say it :)

they only put in popular demos... ?!??!

whats the excuse for having included this one then.. ?
http://www2004.bitfilm-festival.org/cgi-bin/festival.fpl?op=movie&mid=138h7K7&partner=bitfilm_de

was neither popular, nor music any decent..
blunt attempt to support experimental stuff? (which the prod also is not!!)

support for fast made pseudo-artycrap and no support for good demos with guitar music.. ?!

bitfilm crew support, never again. -_-

aMusic: nothing against you or your demos but Kusma is right.



and that one was so hypocritical... also thanks for providing poor Assembly Party with your work, you're such a good patron :)

Seriously, that one really sucked.

i imagine they probably made a demoscene category expecting some cute "nu-media" things with fractals made up of lines, glow and some flat shading, accompanied by bleepy idm. the kind of thing they can show to guys with pony tails and macs as a nice little curio, who can then go home and copy it in flash.

anyway, i submitted one of our 64ks this year, so fuck knows what they'll make of that :) (and yes, i admit it - i submitted purely for the chance of winning some money without having to put in any effort.)

Why was Gargaj replied, and Navis wasn't?
Above all what they did is extremely uncorrect. They are suposed to tell about the production, not comment it, that's the Juri's work. It's like anouncing the winner, before the contestants.

Scene: for sceners, from sceners.

Dear xeNusion: I don't crouch into other ppls asses, I simply say what is prooved by previous issues of mags in a past only a few known (1990-99).

And to get back to the topic, it would be great if aMUSIC can contact by phone or face to face and talk directly with the responsible(s) of this message so he can know what really happened.
But well this is nothing really surprising: we love controversary in the scene because it's part of the spectacle.
Such things has happened: see Hugi 29 and generally the scene attitude (see Wade article in latest Pain issue).

Generally people around the world love fights even if it's only plain words like it's usual in political speeches.
Other example of fights are seeable in sports like football / cycling / volley ball / and others competition driven attractors.

As it takes times to produce something in the scene because it's of high complexity and we are very demanding users (consummers), people tend to take everything seriously.
I've made this mistake and also Dipswitch.
It took 1,5 year to solve the issue but hopefully nowadays we have skype and so the aMUSIC's issue can be solved faster.

Or this message is perhaps a strategy to get even more fame!!!
More we talk and more famous they became!
Strategy used in the past too!
But it's time and energy consumming so please less and less stupid ego wars or at least release demos about !
Yes make a F**K U ??? demo and fight so we can see how far you can go! :)
Remembers me Kefrens V Melon Dezign.

Here is example of fun we can get from "wars" and important events:

http://img8.picsplace.to/img8/15/chichi-explique-saddam-a-pas-la-bombe.jpg
http://img8.picsplace.to/img8/15/chichi-mobilier-but.jpg
http://img8.picsplace.to/img8/15/cpe-pas-concerne-villepin.jpg

But of course all these events are not fun at all: however I prefer laughing than crying.
That's a positive attitude. And about money in the scene: this bring crap because nobody knows if you do things for fun or for money. This could be (if still possible) far better with less money involved and no prize just for the fun and the sport.

I thought that there was no prize to be won anyway - and how could there be ? Where would it come from - this is only one category in god knows how many!

But now I found out that there was, and it was a video editing tool.

So indeed, nothing to win (or lose) here...

BAM. good old honesty, we see too little of you nowadays.

As keops, kusma and the gang already pointed out, quit being such a hypocrite fucktard. Demos are typically submitted at these nu-media lollercoaster art festivals for money and bonus fame. There's little to be gained aside from submitting there, since they rarely "get" demos anyway. Don't be such a sore loser over something that isn't that big a deal.

what's this shitfilm festival thing anyway?!

Haha, finally someone had the guts to honestly comment the music..

Considering the FMX audience's reaction to ASD demos, I'd say you're wrong :) Trust me on this one, or if you don't, ask Gloom :)

and another thing: controversial genre? I don't think that music has been "controversial" since bad hair bands ran out of hairspray.

Gargaj: two people reporting on one event does not make up for most.

Depends. One of the most debated bands in the metal-scene is Dream Theater, and how they sometimes sacrifice "songs" for "solos", etc.

what a load of bollocks... I saw the pouet bbs asking for demos for the festival - No mentioning of any prizes, and how much fame would you get by not physically *being* there anyway I don't know - it only costs 20 minutes of your time.

"Demos are typically.." well how many demos did you "typically" submit, or know others that did so, so that you have constructed a statistical measurement ?

i don't like the soundtrak stylewise either - but such a biased comment from the festival organizers themselves is purely unacceptable.