I thought of letting you all have a sneak view to the jury process which usually takes place on the previous night before each competition. It was the 4th time I was taking part of the music juries at Assembly, and like always, it ment long exhausting nights for the jury members. The number of entries for music competitions have significantly been dropping every year, but it's still a long procedure to hear them all out. The vocal and instrumental music juries now had a new organizer as Veli-Pekka "Howler" Kivimäki had given up the crown to Mikko "Yolk & Crankshaft" Karvonen. This year's vocal and instrumental music juries consisted out of 7 and 8 members, each given a blank form with numbers which represented the songs that were soon to be heard. Every song entered to the competition is rated by each of the jury members individually with a number ranging from one to five. Each song is played for an undefined time, usually rewinded at some point due the large amount of songs. This procedure allows the jury members to get an idea of the whole song and it's quality.

After the jury has listened and given points to all the songs, it's time for the organizers to count down the points and name the fifteen (or less) finalists. The amount of finalists for each competition usually gets a "recommendation" from the jury members, there's a space in each of the jury forms for this. In case the overall quality of the entries is regarded as low, the competition might only have ten (or less) finalists. This year it happened for both vocal music competition aswell for the fast music compo. If a jury member has a work of his own entered to the competition he's jurying, he will leave a blank space to the paragraph where that spesific work of his own is rated. This procedure won't lessen nor raise the points for such an entry, as the final results of the jury are based on average values counted for each entry.

I bet many people wonder what kind of audio playback equiptment is used in the music jury process. This year it was a JVC "boom box" hooked up to a PC. It provided enough of decent quality for the review process. The situation with audio playback gear hasn't been even this good in earlier years. The quality issue is obviously the same for every contestant, and on the other hand it doesn't really matter that much since all audio at the Hartwall arena is mono (!) and quite poor quality to say the least. So as a little hint to all of you planning on entering music in any competition, test that your music sounds good in mono and avoid the use of very low frequencies!

The former flash competition, now known as the browser demo compo, presented a supply of versatile productions. Flash was still the most popular format seen with'in the entries. "Super fantastic gaydisco all night long" by Damones & RNO won the well-matched competition. RNO had won the competition last year aswell. Unfortunately this year's Assembly followed the "tradition" of disqualifies seen at Assembly'2002. Browser demo compo also had one in the form of "Superpowergirl" by Kone Creations which originally landed on the 2nd second place, but was disqualified a month after the party due to copyright issues and violating of the compo rules. This ment that "Linear Motion 2" by kellari received the official 2nd place, and my friend Esko Ahonen with his new fancy alias name "natural born chillaZ" landed on the 3rd place with his entry "w0rd!". By luckily achieving the 3rd place he also renewed our last year's position in the same competition. We came 3rd at Assembly'2003 with "Evolve" that featured a special version of my song called "Serenity of Silence". The competition had 11 finalists this year, which is exatcly the same as the year before. I wonder if it's a signal of widely ranging quality in the competition entries.

The animation competition had only eight submitted entries in total, and five of them were presented in the final. The amount of animations was smaller than in years, but the quality of those presented was still very good. Dice Production's "Kalja on loppu" took the righteous victory in the competition, followed by "Sword of 'Nur" by Toni Hollming as a very good runner-up. The animation work in "Sword of 'Nur" was very good, but suffered from a very dark overall tone of the colours.

The Wild demo competition had 14 finalists with a reasonable amount of different ideas and approaches. "Grand Theft" by Otherside won the competition with almost a 4000 point margin. The amount of work that productions such as "Grand Theft" were put in is admirable. Many details are clearly thought out well before shooting and editing them together, and this applies to many entries besides just the winner. From other entries I'd mention "Newborn" by Fragile, which followed the music video format the group had presented at Asm'02 with a production which imitated the Prodigy's music video styles. Their this year's video was more on the soft side, closer to something what Enya's music would look like. However it didn't reach any higher position than 6th in the competition. The music in Fragile's video was a bit tame, and perhaps with a bit more aggressive and aspiring approach the production could've landed in the competition's top 3.