Server & Event Culture

RICE is not for everyone, and that is okay.

RICE Videos should not be publicly available before the event is over.

Blind judging is a central component of RICE, so videos must not identify their editors.
RICE is semi-exclusive. You can submit your video to other places, as long as it's reasonably certain the other RICE participants won't see it and/or know it was made by you until RICE voting ends, which is approximately one month after the submission deadline.

• The video must not have been posted online publicly, and must not have been seen in an identifiable state by other participants of the contest, to the best of your knowledge.
• If there is not a reasonable amount of ambiguity to who edited your video, it will be disqualified from RICE.
• It is generally best practice to refrain from sending your RICE videos to any conventions or contests that announce their winners during the months of February and March.

The RICE event was created as a reward for BentoVid regulars and its community.

New server members are welcome to participate, but know that this event is run differently from most.

• The event is run in a casual manner.
• All information and updates are given via Discord. There are no email reminders.
• The event organizer actively participates in discussions and sometimes video feedback (but does not submit videos or vote outside the Omakase).
• RICE is not actively promoted outside the server, and the coordinator has no intent to do that in the future.

RICE tries to be accessible to people who want to participate, but the core values behind the event (geared toward server regulars, blind judging, peer review, custom categories) will not change.

RICE's goal is for every video to receive some type of constructive criticism and/or feedback.

Please read our server guide on how to give, receive, and ask for critique, and for people have never given critique before, try our Musubi Method.

While there are avenues to exclude your video(s) from certain levels of critique, the main purpose of the event is to provide a forum for feedback from several editing peers at once.

Because of this, you may hear opinions about editing you may not agree with. Assume good intent behind editors' comments.
Our server has many nationalities and communities represented with different ideas, beliefs, and/or linguistic customs.
Give the benefit of the doubt to people who are leaving feedback, and ask for clarification if necessary. But people attacking or disrespecting videos or editing opinions is NOT acceptable and WILL have ramifications: both from the event and the server as a whole.

Differences of opinions, beliefs, goals, and techniques will occur and debating or discussing these things is absolutely okay and encouraged! But respect each other and do not ignore, debase, insult, or disrespect someone just because they are voicing an opinion you do not agree with.
Our server's #1 rule is to not be a jerk! Remember: no one's editing is "wrong."

The contest part of RICE is secondary to the feedback aspect. Categories may be silly. Videos may win because they're funny or "just because."

If a majority of the entrants want to have a serious competition, this is certainly possible, but it is not the default goal.

Watching a ton of videos, leaving a bunch of comments, and of course making cool videos takes a lot of time and effort. We want to reward it!
Even feedback for videos that editors do not plan to change after the event can be useful and applied to future works.
But giving prizes to people based on what type of feedback or how much feedback they give can be problematic for a number of reasons, so RICE has decided to stick with rewarding videos and their concepts instead.

What's problematic about awarding feedback?

Feedback should be catered to each video individually. Giving thorough and useful feedback takes time.

• The amount of words used does not dictate how useful the feedback is.
• The only one who truly knows the worth of the feedback is the person who receives it (did they find it useful?)
• Incentivizing any particular type of feedback, even accidentally, can drastically alter what people are willing to write.
  (Did the person who won "Best Reviewer" last time write mostly positive, critical, or meme-y stuff?)
• Awarding feedback would be the only thing that is not blindly judged in an otherwise completely blind contest.
  You can leave anonymous feedback in RICE, but moderating an event where everyone is anonymous by design would be a nightmare.
• There are a lot of videos. People simply don't have the time to leave feedback on most of them.
  It's easier to dedicate time to making a video over the course of several months for RICE than it is to give feedback to an unknown but usually large number of videos in ~4 weeks.
  Setting aside time to simply watch the videos for voting is difficult. Every year there are people who never finish. Awarding feedback feels like it is devaluing people who cannot commit to whatever the perceived feedback award requirements will be and incentivizing quantity over quality.

The coordinator would personally encourage everyone to give feedback to every video they are comfortably able to, without the added pressure of the comments being competitive.
RICE participants have the freedom to write whatever type of feedback they want, to however many videos they want, without any type of perceived award judgment criteria or competitive rivalry looming overhead.

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Categories, Voting, & Awards

Once videos are submitted, RICE participants suggest which categories (and their names) should be used during the event. These can range from common categories like "Best Drama" to more obscure/funny ones like "Best Food."

The top voted-for categories will be the ones that receive awards at the end of the event.
The amount of categories/awards scales with the number of video entries. Each winner of these categories will receive only an award certificate.

Category Award Scaling
≤ 49 videos → 8 categories
50 - 70 videos → 10 categories
71+ videos → 12 categories

Permanent Awards

In addition to the above category awards, there are some permanent awards:

• The Omurice Award (オムライス・アワード)
  This is the most-liked video overall, as voted on by RICE participants. It cannot be renamed, and the winner claims a unique RICE-related sticker in addition to the award certificate.

• The Omakase Award (お任せ・アワード)
  The coordinator awards this to their favorite video. It may have a different name when given. The winner also receives a unique RICE-related sticker along with their certificate.

• The Okonomi Award (お好み・アワード)
  The previous year's winner of the Omurice Award gives this to their favorite video. It is similar to an honorable mention, and may have a different name when awarded. The recipient of the Okonomi Award receives a special double-sided award certificate.

• The Umami (旨味)
  The Umami is the most-liked themed video. The theme is changed every year and is announced at the end of the previous year's RICE Awards video.
  The coordinator chooses the theme, but the entrants ultimately decide what videos qualify and win the Umami. The winner of this award receives a unique RICE-related sticker along with their certificate.
  Participation in the theme is optional and has no bearing on the other awards.

• NEW in 2024: The Tamago Don (玉子丼)
  Voted on by all RICE participants, this is awarded to the most-liked video that did not make finals.

• The Wandering Samurice (ライス・ア・ロニン)
  This prize is unattached to a category when the event begins. Once entry submission has closed and the initial categories have been finalized, entrants will vote on which category should receive the Wandering Samurice. It cannot be combined with any permanent awards.
  The Wandering Samurice prize is a sticker of the wandering samurice character, which is shipped in addition to the category's original award certificate.

  More on how Wandering Samurice works

  Because not every category has a prize associated with it, The Wandering Samurice exists as a sort of wildcard prize that goes to the winner of a category participants select.
  Participants vote where to place the Wandering Samurice during Finalist Voting, and the winning category is not revealed until the awards show.
  
  As an example, let's say there are 3 categories: Drama, Cats, and Foods.
  Normally, the winners of these categories would only receive an award certificate, and nothing else.
  Perhaps the Drama category has more finalists than usual, and you want to give an extra prize to whoever wins this category. In this case, you would vote for The Wandering Samurice to go to Drama.
  Or, maybe the Cats category only has 3 finalists, but all the videos are extremely good. You could put The Wandering Samurice here, so the editors of videos in that category know you really liked their idea!

Voting Phases

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Accessibility

Content Notices

When Hosting RICE Events

RICE takes place in a few dedicated Discord channels visible only to the participants.
During the event, members are encouraged to create their own voice chats, streams, discussions, mini-events, etc.
You may run any type of event you like during RICE - as long as it has something to do with the videos submitted, follows server rules, and you declare what type of discussion will occur.

Everyone has the ability to create threads and events using the Sesh bot. Scheduling events using Sesh will allow you to title and describe your event (which is required by the discussion rules) and give others the opportunity to receive private reminders before the event occurs through RSVPs.

We require a statement about the type of event you are running for accessibility. Some people want to participate, but do not want to hear particular types of feedback.
While harsh constructive criticism is 100% acceptable in RICE, there are few things worse than hopping in a chat just to have fun and unexpectedly being greeted by people tearing apart your or your friend's videos!
We just want people to know what they are getting into before they join it so they know what to expect. 🤗

Some example statements are:

• Positive comments only
• Light critique
• No commentary at all
• More or less a panel where you're simply giving reviews of videos while people listen

Additionally, we have two voice channels during RICE - one with enforced "push to talk" and another which uses the standard "voice activity" so you may run your event in the channel with your preferred setup.

Attached to Videos

You do not need to label your videos - the coordinator applies them after video submission.
RICE video submissions can be about anything as long as they follow the video submission requirements and content restrictions.
CWs are applied to videos as a courtesy to others. They do not place a judgement on your video and they have no affect on awards.

When participants submit their videos to RICE, they are asked if they would like to be notified of any content that appears in other videos. These are compiled and listed in the CW (content warning) section of the video infosheet, sometimes with expansion in an Extended VPR & CW document.

Vidding Photosensitivity Relay (VPR)

RICE is a testing ground for our VPR system. We use the event to actively use VPR, get feedback, and improve our system throughout and following RICE.

Your video does not have to be safe for photosensitive people to watch, but RICE specifically accommodates our members with those conditions by giving detailed VPRs for every video. Entrants do not need to make VPRs, but know that your submitted videos will receive them. The content of the VPR is not a judgment on your video or your editing. Here's an example of what the detailed VPRs can look like.

About PSVs (depreciated information)

[2024 did not accept PSVs]
That being said, entrants are encouraged to create "photosensitive versions" (PSVs) of their videos. PSVs are entirely optional to make and submit, but we get more every year as accessibility information improves.

There is no one way to make a video friendlier to photosensitive viewers, but removing certain effects and/or flashes, replacing particularly problematic scenes, and/or covering the video with a gray overlay at ~70% opacity helps. If you're interested, please see our VPR page for lists of common triggers to look out for, and/or feel free to ask questions about methods of inclusion on our #photosensitivity channel.

Critique/Feedback

RICE also functions as a workshop to improve our videos and our feedback. All videos will likely get detailed feedback, many down to specific timestamps. All members are encouraged to participate in doing this.

The feedback given does not preclude any video from winning. Critique that is not constructive is removed and users warned/disqualified based on the content. Look to #vid-critique for examples of how this feedback may look.
You may also view comments left on the 2023 RICE videos here.

Critique Tags are labels we use in video titles and filenames to tell participants how detailed the editor would like the feedback on the submission to be.
Entrants choose the video's tag during submission.

Stress & Managing Expectations

RICE is a stressful event.
RICE typically gets 50+ videos.
Viewing them all and voting within the timeframe by itself is already stressful.
Trying to give good feedback to one video can be difficult enough, but during RICE we want you to give it to as many videos as possible. Assessing, critiquing, and wording useful comments takes time and dedication.
And that's only half of RICE.

The other half of RICE is receiving the feedback. You may not like what you see, and things which may not have upset you in another environment may hurt you more in this one due to the time crunch.
We understand RICE is stressful, and we try to make the contest part of it as laid back as possible. But that, too, may upset people as it may not be run how you expected. Please see the Server & Event Culture page for more insight on what to expect.

Please understand that if you have not participated in an event like this before, you may respond in a way you did not expect. Check in with yourself; protect your mental health. It is okay to step away if you have to.
Please read our server guide on how to give, receive, and ask for critique, and for people have never given critique before, try our Musubi Method.

Despite this, BentoVid does NOT condone harassment. Please #contact-staff if you see this (Ping @Staff, DM Vars (@standardquip), create a ticket, or use the /report command).

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