There are four ILDA Offline contest rounds in 2020. Anyone can enter the first three rounds. Then the First Place winners in each round are automatically entered in the final round, "Best of Show".

Here is the schedule:

• ROUND 1: Entries submitted Monday March 30 - Wednesday April 8, with voting Friday April 10 - Sunday April 12 and winners announced Monday April 13. The Round 1 entry and voting deadlines have passed.

• ROUND 2: Entries submitted Monday April 13 - Wednesday April 22, with voting Friday April 24 - Sunday April 26 and winners announced Monday April 27. The Round 2 entry and voting deadlines have passed.

• ROUND 3: Entries submitted Monday April 27 - Wednesday May 6, with voting Friday May 8 - Sunday May 10 and winners announced Monday May 11. [Note: This was changed on May 11. Due to voting irregularities that invalidated the results, a second vote was scheduled for November 17-19, 2020.] The Round 3 entry deadline has passed.

• "BEST IN SHOW": For this round, the First Place winners in each category are automatically entered. Voting will be from Tuesday, May 12 to Sunday, May 17. [Note: This was changed on May 11, so the final voting round will take place at the 2020 ILDA Conference as described in the purple section "Final Round" below.] Winners will be announced November 22, 2020.

You can enter in one or more of these categories:

• Beams/Atmospherics - Beams seen in mid-air. No graphics, abstracts, lumia, diffraction gratings, beam bounces or other effects or devices are allowed.
• Graphics - Graphic images front-projected onto a screen or surface. Primarily representational images such as drawn animation frames and computer graphics. No beams, abstracts, lumia, diffraction gratings, or other effects or devices are allowed.
• Abstracts - Abstract, non-representational images. No beams, graphics, or other effects or devices are allowed except for lumia and diffraction gratings. The lumia and/or diffraction gratings may be used along with scanner abstracts, or they may be alone (no scanner abstracts).

A person can only enter once in each of the three categories, for a maximum of three total entries per round.

All entries must be created with a single laser X-Y projector (e.g., one set of scanners), without any other effects — except that lumia and diffraction gratings are permitted in Abstracts.

To create your shows, you can use any software or hardware equipment you want. You are not restricted to one manufacturer or system.

You cannot use old shows that you simply tweaked to go with the new music. Of course, elements of the show such as beam effects, frames or animations can be from your pre-existing library. But the show itself needs to be composed specifically for ILDA's music.

People voting cannot know who entered which show.

For this reason, do not post your show or the entry name of your show, on any public or social media 1) until the winners of the round you entered are announced, and you did not win First Place in that round or 2) until Tuesday, May 12, 2020 if your entry won First Place in a round.

Also, as stated elsewhere, your entry videos must be anonymous. Do not add any titles, logos, etc. to the video.

For this contest, we do not anticipate any issues with entries that are unsafe or illegal. But for completeness we do need to state the following: Entries shall not depict laser light on or close to persons, or in an area where persons might be such as the seating area of an auditorium.

In case of any questions, review the section "Entry safety and legality" in the 2020 ILDA Awards Entry Guide, beginning on page 10, whose safety rules shall govern the ILDA Offline contest.

Entries must be your own material or be properly licensed.

Material you create yourself is fine. If you are using "artware" or "showware" or frame libraries from a third party, including from the laser software company, then you must have permission to use the material.

It is up to you to be sure you have permission and/or legal rights to use the third-party material. By entering, you hold ILDA harmless from claims of copyright or intellectual property violations.

ILDA does not "own your FX"; for one thing, entries are on video so we would have no access to your software's frames, effects, files or data.

You will keep the rights to your video, and by entering you assign the following limited rights to ILDA for judging, awards presentation and promotion purposes.

ILDA will be posting your unmodified video entry on Vimeo, with no restrictions on viewing (anyone on the internet may view your video). If your entry wins, ILDA may play the video at the ILDA Conference or otherwise present winning entries to ILDA Members and the public. ILDA may post winning videos at YouTube or similar online services; if so, we will add superimposed titles that are visible during the entire video (contest name and year, winning place and category, name of entry, name or person or company submitting).

Because entries will be public on Vimeo, and on YouTube or similar if the entry wins, do not enter if you have concerns about your video being seen, misused, or misappropriated.

Current ILDA Members (those who have paid 2020 dues by the entry deadline date) can enter for free. Current Members are listed here.

This includes all Member categories: Individual, Hobbyist, Student, Nonprofit and Corporate.

RULES FOR NONPROFIT AND CORPORATE MEMBERS

Nonprofit and Corporate Members can enter under the organization or company name (a group effort). If the entry wins, the ILDA Offline trophy or certificate will have only the name of the Member, such as "XYZ Lasers." There can be only one such group effort entry per category.

In addition, employees of Nonprofit and Corporate Members can submit their own entries under their own name(s), such as "Jane Krantz, XYZ Lasers." If the entry wins, the ILDA Offline trophy or certificate will have the name of the employee plus the Member's name.

The rest of this section is for employees of a Nonprofit or Corporate Member who want to enter under their own name.

DEFINITION OF "EMPLOYEE"

For purposes of this contest…

• …"employee" means a full-time or regular part-time employee (such as working 20 hours weekly). It does not mean freelancers or similar persons hired intermittently or for short periods.
• ..."employee" also includes persons who were full-time or regular part-time employees of a Nonprofit or Corporate Member earlier in 2020 but are not employed by them when they enter this contest.

NONPROFIT & CORPORATE ENTRIES

For Nonprofit and Corporate Member entries, please specify when submitting if 1) the entry is for the entire Member organization or company (group effort) or if 2) it was done by one or more employees individually (not an organization/company group effort) who are employed by the Member.

MULTIPLE ENTRIES FROM EMPLOYEES

For Nonprofit and Corporate Members, in each category you can have only one organization/company (group effort) entry such as "Entry from XYZ Lasers".

In each category you can also have multiple individual employee entries such as "Entry from Jane Krantz, XYZ Lasers" and "Entry from Herman Smith, XYZ Lasers." But there can be only one entry per employee in each category. For example, Jane Krantz of XYZ Lasers could not enter the Beam category twice.

EMPLOYEES CAN ENTER AS NON-MEMBER INDIVIDUALS

There may be employees of an ILDA Nonprofit or Corporate Member who did work on their own equipment and time, so that the Member is really not involved. In such a case, the person can enter as a non-member. As a non-member entrant, 1) they must pay the $5 non-member entry fee and 2) if they win, the ILDA Offline trophy or certificate will list only their name — not the ILDA Member company they work for.

QUESTIONS? CONTACT ILDA

If there is any question about an entrant's status for purposes of this contest, contact ILDA.

For non-members, there is a fee of $5 per entry (maximum $15 per week since you can enter up to three entries in a week). Go to the ILDA store page to pay your entry fees.

If two or more non-members collaborated on an entry, list each person when submitting your entry.

Non-members cannot enter under a company name, only under your personal name(s). If the entry wins, the ILDA Offline trophy or certificate will list your name(s).

After May 7, you can apply your entry fees towards an ILDA Membership if you wish. For example, if you entered a total of five times and thus paid $25, you can get a discount of $25 off an ILDA Membership for 2020. Contact ILDA if you wish to do this.

VIDEO SPECIFICATIONS

Submit your entries with the following digital video specifications:

• QuickTime MP4 (H.264, MPEG-4 Part 10 AVC, MPEG-4 Part 4) or MOV video files. Submit as individual files, one video file per entry. We do not accept any other formats such as AVI or WMV files – only MP4 or MOV files.
• The video pixel dimensions must be 1920 x 1080 or smaller. Do not submit any larger sizes.
• The video file size must be 500 MB or less. For a 4-minute 1920 x 1080 video at reasonable compression, this is possible. If you are over 500 MB, use more compression or resize the video to smaller pixel dimensions.

VIDEO RULES

No fake lasers or digital enhancements: You cannot use simulated laser displays such as “preview windows”. All lasers must be actual real, coherent light sources recorded with a video camera or phone, and must look approximately as the eye would see them.

Keep entries anonymous: Do not add any titles, logos, etc. This is done so that entries are anonymous during judging.

For each round, the video entries will be put online at Vimeo to be viewed and voted on.

Voting will be done online during the three voting periods (April 10-12, April 24-26, and May 8-10). Persons will vote up to three times: once for their favorite Beam/Atmospheric entry, once for their favorite Graphics entry, and once for their favorite Abstract entry.

Anyone may cast a vote, ILDA Member or non-member. Only one vote is allowed per person. Entrants may cast votes.

If there is only one entry in a category, then that entry will not be put online at Vimeo; and there will be no prize placement since there was no contest. The ILDA Offline entry will automatically be eligible for the ILDA Awards, whether or not the entrant is an ILDA Member. For any such ILDA Offline entries into the ILDA Awards, the entrant will have to fill out and submit a 2020 ILDA Award entry form by the May 31 deadline.

For non-member ILDA Offline entries into the ILDA Awards, 1) no additional fee or dues will be required, 2) if the non-member entrant wins a First, Second or Third Place ILDA Award, then 3) the entrant will be awarded membership in ILDA for the remainder of 2020 and for all of 2021 in addition to receiving an ILDA Award trophy.

This section applies only to ILDA Offline entries which were the sole entry in their category.

You cannot solicit votes. For example, you cannot contact others and ask them to vote for your entry — or any entry.

You can contact others to give them the link to the entry videos and voting page, but their choices and votes must be their own.