Woody Cavenaugh

Wow, just wow. For the third year running I have been fortunate enough to be on the "bridesmaid" team, awsome buzz, awsome product, excellent award collection, never quite enough to take the "Best Of Greensboro". I think this year my team took more awards than we have any other year with seven. I am very proud to have been a part of that. Especially since the "Best of Greensboro" film only took two awards. The other teams comming closest to matching our "medal count" did so with four each.

Now, as something of a disclaimer. The judges this year did a winner in each category as well as a runner up. Different people have different opinions of the "runner up" award. My opinion is that "runner up" equals second place. Second doesn't suck. As I have never been first in anything, second is as good as a win as far as I care. However, for the sake of those who see "runner up" as "first loser" I will break it down your way. Team Underexposed took first three times and "first loser" four times. The "Best Of Greensboro" won one and was tied for "first loser" with one. The two teams that were second in medal count one team had no first and 4 seconds. The other team took first 4 times.

Each year three different judges are chosen and they make their own rules for how they award. This is a good thing in my opinion as it means that you can't "play to the judges". If you knew exactly how the judges were going to judge you would probably end up spending all of your time trying to get all of the technical marks and this contest would degrade into figure skating. The downside of this is that each year the teams walk away not knowing how they were judged. They have no feedback on how to get better. So after the applause dies, there are always little groups of folks trying to figure out what happened and why. Especially when their favorites are snubbed.

In previous years the team that brought home the most "medals" took best overall. The judging then became clear even if you didn't agree with it. This year was odd because the team that took it all only one a "runner up" in one category (and that was judged by the fans not the Judges). I have a theory on this that might shed some light on the situation. Remember Judges perrogitive, they make the rules their way just as it should be. This year I believe that the judges wanted more teams to receive awards. They did after all give "runner up" awards in all of their categories. If I'm right, and I am just guessing here. The judges went through and judged each film. the team with the most awards took "Best of Greensboro". The judges then went through and removed them from all of the other categories, and everyone got bumped up by one. "Runner up" would become "winner" and the unnamed third got to get an award as "runner up". But this is just my theory of how it was done. I have heard some other theories that are just as plausable.

One of the outstanding members of our team Todd Williard went through and assigned a point value each "win" got two points and each "runner up" getting one point. By his system our team scored 10 points for the win. It does not take into account that the "Best of Greensboro" winner only scored one point by that system. However, if you use his scoring system with my "take the winner out and push everyone else up" theory I think it stands.

All of this of course brings up another ethical delima. Do teams do this to do it because it is fun, or do they do it to win. The first year when we did "Purely Platinum" we did it solely to have a great time. And we did. It was by far one of the most fun shoots I have ever been on. The past two years with Underexposed the emphasis has been on turning out a high quality film, excelling in every possible area, and have fun too. The third reason to do it is to make a film that the audience absolutely loves and to heck with winning anything but the audience award. For those folks a jury of their peers picking them is far superior to the technical awards given by the three judges. All in all, there is no right way to play so long as you come away happy.

I for one am pretty gosh darned happy. Maybe even happy enough to play again next year....