VF48Hours 2020 Forum

For me, if I think it is close to the finals then I'd give it 6 or 7 stars,
If it is solid but not quite at that level, 4 or 5 stars
If it has major issues, the 2 or 3 stars
I rarely give one because it isn't helpful

in reply to Rastinha:

For example, there are a lot of films I'd want to rate 3, 3.5, 4, and 4.5, but the only choices are 3.6 or 4.3. Most people go for 3.6 when they'd probably quite happily give a film a 4 out of 5.

This is interesting because I recently looked up the reasoning behind the 7-star system again. I've been told in the past why its better but had forgotten. The interesting thing is that with both 5 and 7 most of us think of half that number as being a Par/middle score. Like 2.5 stars out of 5 should be an average pass mark. Which can be frustrating as you feel as though you are forced into either giving an average film an above or below average score. But the way we are meant to think of it is this. THREE stars mean there are two stars either side of that mark to move up or down. So 3 is the middle of 5. The reason 7 is better is that basically 4 becomes the middle point and you get one more star either side for more accuracy between good, quite good and great films. And the same goes for under 4 stars.

I'd like an out pass to be created if you hit the same genre for the 'x'th time.
We've had mystery a couple of times, buddy a couple of times, and if we got it a couple more times then it would start to be a hassle.
So, I'd like to propose a solution.
If this happens at the launch, and only at the launch, you may approach the city managers and ask for a new genre. They either roll a dice on the remaining genres or have a secret genre for this situation which they then reveal.
You can't do it because you don't like it or whatever, but for this specific reason.
I'd make 'x' quite large too- like 4+
Thoughts?

in reply to Clayton Hiku:

Like 2.5 stars out of 5 should be an average pass mark.

See that's interesting to me, as I have always looked at it as giving 3/5 would be an average film, simply because it's a 5 point rating system so in my mind it looks like this:

1 - well below expectations
2 - below expectation
3 - meets expectations
4 - exceeds expectations
5 - far exceeds expectations

I'm surprised people would think of 2.5 for the middle ground (numerically I get it's a 50% score for sure, but in terms of stars it seems weird).

I had read the rationale for it as well, but still wasn't a fan TBH I think it ends up with people underrating things a little because 4/7 and 5/7 are both not quite the 3/5 they probably want to give...

I'd like an out pass to be created if you hit the same genre for the 'x'th time.

I think this would be very fair, as the competition goes on for longer, statistically this will happen to more teams too I guess. It's great knowing there have been over 100 different genres in the history of the competition, but that only makes it even more annoying if you happen to have had the same one 3 times, haha. Luckilly I haven't, but if you kept getting given one and especially if it was one of the more 'tropey' genres, like "alien", that are way more restrictive if you follow them, or require you to subvert them to open your options up, it could get old pretty quickly.

I suppose apart from things like Buddy it's more often open-ended genres that get repeated like time travel and musical etc. But yeah, I would support this for 4+ times if swapped at launch.

It might sound a bit odd, but after the #1 reason of not having enough time, the #2 reason I don't get round to writing and/or posting a 48HOURS review is because I feel choice-paralyzed in trying to decide what star-rating to give a film.

I would love to have the option of writing a review without giving any star rating at all. Except a moment after thinking that, it also occurs to me that I like receiving star-ratings from others, so I'm a bit of a hypocrite.

But yeah, I seriously struggle with the 7-star rating system. I usually trying to pre-rate the films in the heat that I'm going to be reviewing. But this year, I got to an annoying point, where I basically ended up shunting everything up a point, in that situation of "well if I give x stars to this film, but this film with the same stars is obviously better, then that rating has to go up by one, but then that other film has to go up by one, but then..." I ended up having two films in my heat ranked 7 stars, and neither is actually a perfect film, of course - they're in the 4.5/5 territory, which 6/7 feels inadequate to capture. It's weird, a 7-star system strangely gives you both too many and not enough options at the same time.

(Of course, it should be noted that if we're complaining about the lack of a 5-star system that allows half-stars, then really what we're asking for is a 10-star system.)

in reply to TheNimbleMarmoset:

(Of course, it should be noted that if we're complaining about the lack of a 5-star system that allows half-stars, then really what we're asking for is a 10-star system.)

This I realise, and would also be OK with, I just think the stars you give it on the review page should match how the ratings are displayed. So give us a 10 star system, and display them as 7.x or 9.x averages etc., or give us 5 stars with half stars if it stays displayed as 5 stars.

I, too, felt like maybe I should bump all of mine up a rating to try to stratify them a bit, but I struggled with the top ones as none of them were really 7s based on rating them relative to the whole pool, and none of them were quite 6s based on previous ones I've rated (relative to national quality), but 5/4/3/2 felt too low for everyone and a lot were school teams that I didn't want to discourage with 2s because I could see what they tried to do even if the execution wasn't there etc.

I'm definitely in favor of a higher resolution in the options (10 stars, or 5 stars with half stars) to help

I have no issue with the number of stars that can be given.
Nothing is perfect and so everything can be criticised and will never suit anyone, let alone everyone.
For me, 7 works as well as 5 or 10.
Anything under 5 would be pointless and anything over 10 is probably equally redundant.

It was 10 stars in the past so I wonder what the reasoning for changing it is. I don't know if that would cause people to rate the films higher or lower but I do think the scores would translate into the out of 5 averages a bit better.

7 stars gives you more granularity than 5 but isn't as stupidly granular as 10. There's a middle rating, 4, and high/medium/low ratings for either side of that. It's great.

So 4 stars is a mediocre film.

Here's my general star rating guide, and it's subjective from film to film as star ratings are always based on what that particular film set out to achieve.

1 star = reserved typically for films that are diabolically offensive (racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic or worse) or where the team might have done something horrible at the heats (it's happened)

2 stars = typically technically very challenged, copyright issues (big beef of mine) or mean spirited might get this rating too (thank goodness horror is gone as so has the needless let's kill women approach that a lot of teams took)

3 stars = potential with flaws, or a genre misfire. slightly more on the side of where the negative aspects outweighed the positive, but there's likely to be something enjoyable in there.

4 stars = good film with flaws. a film might be technically proficient but the story might need a bit of work, or it might be entertaining with sound issues for example.

5 stars = very good film, it's likely I find the overall tone highly enjoyable. Stuff that usually holds back a 5/7 from a higher rating is usually little things like not nailing an ending, editing hiccups, other films simply using the elements better etc.

6 stars = loved the film, would expect it to be regional finals, possibly even in contention for awards.

7 stars = competing to win at least regionals, expected to be in nationals if I'm giving this because I think the film is objectively great, and hard to see any flaws.

Of course for stuff that just makes me laugh and laugh I'll probably chuck out the odd 6 or even 7 from time to time :)

Now that another thread has hijacked the ratings discussion I've thought of another thought I had at the heats. The amount of teams who credited a "Set Mum", I found that somewhat interesting. Maybe it's more of a student thing since you are still at that age where you've got a mum pretty active cooking food for the crew or whatever or maybe it isn't even a mum maybe it's someone playing the role of a mum to your family of filmmakers. Anyone else notice that? Or maybe you had a "Set Mum" yourself.

Yeah I noticed a few "Set Mum"s too, but in all fairness Taranaki had 18 school teams and 8 adult teams, lol.

I'm glad I won a free lunch this year as a solo, most years I forget to eat anything except toast in the morning and some jellybeans at night to keep me awake, lol. It did help a bit last year having a bigger team and some kids as the parents usually remember to feed their kids so we remember to get food for everyone, haha. I guess we had 2 set mums last year in that case!

One of the biggest things I noticed being a duo team for the first time was the lack of a "set mum". We ate a lot of fishfinger sandwiches and chicken nuggets and the kitchen was a bombsite by the end of the weekend 🤣

In bigger teams I have been part of there is usually at least one person who naturally takes on the role of keeping everyone fed and the kitchen at least somewhat hygienic for the weekend. Not an actual mum or a designated role but someone just not directly involved with whatever was going on at the time. No kids or students in our teams either.

2 things to comment on in this thread. We are in the process of redesigning the screening room and combining it with the reviews site. We are ditching the stars system as we came to the conclusion the feedback for the teams should be written rather than rated, and after seeing this thread about the issues with the star system makes me think we are heading down the right track. It doesn't mean they can't come back, but we are keen to simplify the site for coding and cost reasons and for better engagement.

We love the idea of set Mum/Dad, and always tell the teams if you are planning on not planning anything at least plan some meals, imagine instead of winning a stuntman or an editor for the weekend if you could win a cleaner or a chef! I don't know if we would ever do that (logistics and all) but we enjoyed the idea of that in the comp.

It's a shame to get rid of the star ratings. They're helpful in the sense that you can see what people think of the film at a glance. I really like the 7 star rating system and have been using it in a way pretty close to steelpotato's breakdown a few posts up. While written reviews are definitely more valuable than a number out of 7, removing the ability to rate films isn't going to mean that the trademe-style reviews ("great film A+++++++") are going to disappear.

Combining the screening room with the reviews site is a great idea I think! As long as it's optimised to review films during the heats when the films won't be uploaded yet, as that is the most valuable time to get reviews.

Re: Stars, I agree with Steppenwolf, I quite like being able to see at a glance which films seem to be the ones to look out for, especially not being able to attend heats, it's good to get an overview. Rather than having to read through 5-10 reviews for all 100 or so films in Chch to get an idea of what's goin' on. I always just kind of look at the star ratings keeping in mind that it's an inherently flawed system since people value them differently.

For instance, I'm such a star whore, whenever I have to rate things I'm quite happy to give full stars if I thoroughly enjoyed it, anything from A- to A+++ would warrant full stars from me, with a major gripe usually pulling it down one or two stars. An average to low rating is my polite way of saying that I didn't really enjoy it and I'll usually try to put something positive or constructive in the review.

1-2 stars is reserved for offensive films or teams or anyone that I just have a vendetta against for whatever reason.

The other thing I like star ratings for is given that each year i try to get a handful of reviews through forums etc, so from a varied crowd, I like being able to compare the films I've made year on year with each other. Especially since there are always some of the same people reviewing. It's interesting to see if the overall impression is improving over time, or if the first one I did has a higher rating than this years etc.

I'm always a fan of quantitative + qualitative data for the best picture... So would prefer to keep 7 stars (even though I hate it) rather than have no stars at all...

I don't know how much I'll miss a ratings system, I'm always looking for some sort of a positive to bring away from the weekend and the star rating always seems to bring me down more than anything.
It also takes a bit of the stress away from the reviews, I can focus on commenting on the film rather than thinking "well I liked this film more than the last one I reviewed but for some reason I'm not sure it deserves this rating which I gave the last film so..."
I'm going to have to wait until more films appear in the screening room as well.