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[Amanita]

So my local con's making some changes to their costume contest. One is positive- it sounds like they're going to try for honest to goodness workmanship judging this year, instead of just looking at us as we go out on stage.

However, the other has me wondering. They set a limit of something like 200 entries last year, and ended up getting about 125. This year, they have said that they want to completely fill their quota, and get 200 contestants

This has me concerned for several reasons:

One, we're being given less time to do anything on stage, if we choose to do more than just a walk on- last year, I got about 1:15, this year they're saying less than a minute, so that gives me (and anyone else who wishes) less time to do anything more interesting than walk, spin, pose, go away.

Even with less than a minute (30 secs for plain walk ons), that's going to be a long contest- a friend of mine who sat in the audience last year doesn't think she wants to this year, partly due to length, and because last year, so many contestants hurried onto and off of the stage that she found them hard to get pics of, and further shortening the time limit for each entry will only make that worse.

I worry that emphasizing "Hey, let's get as many people as we possibly can, we want to FILL the quota" instead of "bring out your coolest outfit" will turn the event into a focus on quantity over quality. That, and having to remember and consider 200+ people is gonna be murder on the judges! Now, I think they are adding a non-competitive show category to the contest- those who enter under that will not be judged or considered for prizes, but even still, how many contestants are going to use that? True, it might be used by those who just want to walk out and get applause, but a lot of others are still going to want to compete, and with that many people, it's going to be a logistical mess to judge, I suspect.
I'm also concerned that with so many entrants, will the judges really be able to give each entry the attention it deserves?

Now, if the organizers at this con insist on "filling the quota", how do I make myself stand out? If all goes well, I'm gonna have a really nice costume this year. Not "Epic gown" or "suit of armor or giant prop", but it's still gonna look good. Unfortunately in a sea of that many people, just about anything has a chance of falling through the cracks- I suppose having a well put together set of notes might help? Apparently not a lot of people bother with those. I guess I'll have to take some advice from the Hunger Games "Make sure they remember you!"

[Midnight Dawn]

What con is this for? It sounds like like an absolute pain as the judges would be literally shooting themselves in the foot with how many entries there are. Furthermore is the problem of the chance of bias occurring without fully examining 'every' entry that enters which is 200+.

However it would still be quality depending on the cosplay as that will stick in the judges mind the best.

[Amanita]

It's not the judges who are pushing to fill the quota, it's the con organizers. They seem to think that more entrants=more fun, or something like that. I worry that it will have the opposite effect. It won't be much fun for us contestants- we have to stand in a line backstage, and if you're far down the list, that's a long time to be standing without moving much. Kinda boring, really. And there's the aforementioned reduced time limit for entries, where once we're out on stage, we won't get to do much at all.

For the audience it doesn't sound like a good plan either. Sure, they see lots of costumes. But due to a combo of stage fright which causes some people to rush on, and rush off, and the reduced time for those of us who actually want to do something, that's about all they'll see- One person after another, not much in the way of memorable acts or presentations, and too many of those shuffling off too fast to even get a good look at the costume.

[Ali]

There are some advantages to this kind of contest, mostly in showing a greater variety of costumes and encouraging people to get onstage. Sometimes it even helps raise the level of competition to have so many entries.
It's not my style of competition, however, so I'd probably skip it, and save my good stuff for another con.

[Amanita]

Unfortunately for me, this is the only con in the area, and I'm very limited as to travel options. I can't even afford my annual visit to NYC this year, let alone traveling to another distant con. In my case, attending a different con would mean airfare, hotel, and other living expenses- a substantial chunk of change indeed (I don't do hostels or room-stuffing)

I do worry that in focusing on encouraging lots of people to get on stage, that a lot of other good elements of the contest will go away. Last year, they gave us the option to provide our own music, and to do more than plain walk-ons (Still limited to a minute or so, but better than a walk-on). I would be pretty annoyed if in the interests of getting as many entrants as possible, they decided to claw back those features, and restrict us to fashion show-style walking, to somebody else's pre-selected music.

[CapsuleCorp]

I don't think that has anything to with either quantity OR quality, it's really about the con staff being DUMBASSES.

Even 100 entries is too many for a good show! 50 is the line where you start stressing out the audience and judges even with all-day backstage judging. 200 is pure insanity. Besides, you can't MAKE people enter a stage contest just because they're wearing a costume. If their solution to filling the quota is to run around the con dragging every person in a costume over to the line to sign up for the masquerade, they're going to ruin it for everybody. Judges, contestants, and audience. No one will want to enter again after such a nightmare.

If they have to cap it at, say, 50 entries, I don't care if those 50 entries are all crap, they're 50 people who really, really wanted to enter, as opposed to 200 entries who really aren't interested in going up on stage for 30 seconds. The only way to properly protest ridiculous event rules and planning is to vote with your feet: don't enter, and don't watch. Of course, nobody wants to pull so much audience away from a masquerade that it ends up getting cancelled for lack of interest, but if you can't talk sense into the organizers ahead of time, the only thing you can do is pull out.

If I were a judge handed this sort of scenario, my answer would be "no thanks, I'm going to go enjoy myself instead. Have fun filling my shoes on short notice." Attempting to judge that many entries is a nightmare. The most I've ever done is...well, it was more than 50 at San Japan I think, but I was pretty much at it all day and didn't get a break until the show was over. That is, point blank, Not Fun. Pushing your judges through 200 entries is a good way to get them to not come back a second year.

[Ali]

I definitely wouldn't say that exceeding 50 entries makes the con staff dumbasses. There are simply different ways to put on a costume contest, and several cons have successfully exceeded that limit. AWA comes to mind as a convention that simply doesn't allow skits, and is able to take a LOT of entries (I don't think they actually have an enforced limit, but I could find that in 2010 they had something like 80 entries, and the audience stayed responsive and enthusiastic all the way to the end, and the quality of the award winning costumes there can be really stunning).
I don't think it's too much to respect that it's simply another way of doing things.

It's a bummer if the only convention you can attend runs a contest you don't like, but them's the breaks. Give them your feedback, state your problems, and otherwise figure out some way to either attend a con with a masquerade you like better, or find a way to flourish within their constraints. Or simply don't compete.

It's impossible for a masquerade to please everyone, and sometimes you just wind up on the bad side of that.

[Amanita]

It does seem like they're interested in feedback- perhaps if enough people tell them that focusing on numbers is a bad idea and state reasons why, then perhaps they'll re-think things.

They're not planning on conscripting people to enter- practically dragging people over to the sign-up list or anything nuts like that. They're just hoping that as many people as possible will sign up. Now, they are planning to add a non-competitive category along with skill divisions, but I wonder how many people are really going to go with that?

I'm still waiting for them to post their revised costume contest info, but if they are determined to make a numbers game out of it, I'll tell them pretty much what I said here- that I'm worried that a contest with so many entries will run a greater risk of boring the audience- a blur of people in rapid succession, many of them hustling on and off stage due to stage fright, for starters. What's the good of lots of entries if so many of the cool options for making our presentation interesting that we had last year get pared down or clawed back entirely?

I don't want to go back to the way things were the first year, where we were not allowed to have personalized intros- everyone was announced as "This is whoever as whatever" with no variation, and plain walk-ons were the only thing permitted.

[Sarcasm-hime]

200 is just insanity. Anime North didn't want to cap the masquerade for years, but eventually when we got up to 143 one year, it had to be done. 143 was so huge that we had to cancel workmanship judging as there were just too many people and not enough judges, the masquerade took forever, it was a nightmare.

Since then we've capped it around 80, which is large but manageable, and everybody gets 1 minute. There is still so much demand to get into the masq that, as CapsuleCorp points out, it's the people who really are prepared and committed get in. Way back in the day, we had a lot of nonsense entries (people who just wanted to horse around onstage like idiots) and I suspect with a 200-entry show you'd have a LOT of those.

Hopefully if they do insist on going forward with this, they'll learn their lesson and have more realistic expectations next year.

[CapsuleCorp]

I don't know how AWA does their judging or anything so I can't speak to that. But I have been a judge for many years and I know how much stress the judges, the director, the stage staff, and the competitors go through once the number of entries starts climbing. That's something that can be easily fixed with reasonable caps so you don't get a scenario like sarcasm-hime is talking about. Seeing the staff and judges get stressed to the point of snapping at competitors, and contestants crying in the green room because they're so nervous, is something I've experienced and never want to repeat.

Interestingly enough, I've seen the non-competitive or Exhibition category NOT contribute to adding too many extra entries to the masquerade. Quite the opposite. It's nice to have such a category just in case, mostly to prevent sandbagging or to allow something that really doesn't qualify for competition still pad out your masquerade stage show. When Geek-kon began to emphasize that the Exhibition category existed and people could legitimately enter that way, they braced for an influx of dorks who just wanted to horse around on stage, but that never materialized.

Still, trying emphatically to have the biggest masquerade possible often ends badly. It's less about encouraging quantity over quality or vice versa, and more about making the entire process of the competition as smooth and stress-free for everyone involved: staff, director, stage ninjas, green room staff, audio/visual, and the competitors. Not boring the audience is also important, but when it comes down to it, you want your competitors to have a good experience and be willing to come back in future years, as well as encourage their friends to enter.

[Amanita]

Yeah, when the new info about the costume contest goes up, I'll have to bring up my concerns. I'm definitely worried that this is all going to turn into an epic mess if they insist setting a massive cap and sticking with it.

One thing I really DO NOT like about our masquerades is what they do with us contestants- they make us line up by assigned number and stand in a hallway off to one side of, or behind the stage. Yes, we're stuck standing there in line until our turn comes. To whoever has the misfortune of being near the end, that's a long time to be standing in a slow-moving lineup. Being number 70-something was bad enough, imagine being number 200?
I will definitely voice my concerns in regards to judging, especially if we plan to have workmanship judging. I certainly wouldn't care to be snapped at or spoken to with disrespect by a stressed out and tired judge or other official. And if the judges are rushing from one contestant to another, I honestly would be wondering if my work was getting the fair consideration or the attention it deserved. Especially if the judges are coming across as just rushing through the motions of inspecting my costume just to get through the lot of us.
And this might shaft those who are judged later- further down the list (if they're going down the line in order), or those who come later for their meeting with the judges.
The judges might start out attentive and enthusiastic, but sooner or later there reaches a point where even patient people start to feel like "Let's just get this over with already!", and that's not fair to either judges or contestants.

[Ashurachan]

200 ? Sounds insanely long.
Japan Expo is the biggest con in Europe, the longest masquerade this year had 45 entries, and some people in the public found it too long already.
They've given up the 3-hour-long masquerade several years ago in favor of serveral shorter masquerades over the course of the con. This year there were 6 different cosplay events on the main stage over the four days of the con :
- thurday : general contest , 90 minutes
- friday : general contest, 60 minutes + World Cosplay Summit selection, about 30 minutes (only 7 entries this year)
- saturday : European Cosplay Gathering finals, ~ 90 minutes
- sunday : Comic Con contest, 45 minutes + ECG French selections for next year, 45 minutes
I don't know whether some American cons have such schedules, but I think it's been a huge improvement to have some cosplay each day, instead of one big masquerade.

[Sarcasm-hime]

I've dealt with that kind of backstage lineup, and it sucks. Sounds like they need a real green-room!

We assign contestants 'dens' by dividing up the running order by every 10 people or so (the room has rows of chairs, and each row is a den), and then a masquerade staffer will escort each den to line up backstage, as needed. So they can sit and relax until it's time to go. Standing in line for hours is just ridiculous, especially when people are wearing unwieldy and uncomfortable costumes meant for stage.

[Amanita]

I will have to pass that idea on to our contest directors. It sounds like they will be letting us do some sort of skit, but how much time we'll get is still up in the air.
Even if my skyscraper's robes are not hard to stand in, I still hate having to stand around for so long, and I can't be the only one who feels that way.

[Kiichigo]

For the cons in Denmark we now have limits of 25-30 contestants - as in, the first 25-30 who apply to perform are allowed.

Which is AWESOME. The shows are much shorter and people are more focused on bringing something good because the ones who send in their material in good enough time are usually more dedicated and driven. They all have a maximum of 3 minutes, which is nice as well.