New AMV analysis series - What Makes It Great

[CrackTheSky]

Hi all! This is something I've been wanting to do for a little while, and I had some time recently to actually record so I finally just decided to do it. This is a new series I'm releasing on my YouTube channel called What Makes It Great. In each episode, we'll be watching a single great AMV and then talking about what exactly the editor is doing throughout the video that makes it great. These will be longer episodes -- typically around 40 minutes or so -- but they will be very detailed in explaining how the editor is applying broad AMV editing concepts in their video.

This is not a "tutorial" series -- I won't be talking so much about the mechanics of how to do these techniques/effects/etc. in your editing program -- but rather a look at important concepts in video editing and seeing how these concepts are practically applied. I strongly believe that learning these concepts is fundamental to making great videos, but all anyone ever wants to talk about when figuring out "how" to make their videos is the details of achieving this or that effect. This series attempts to present a different approach, and I hope that editors from all skill levels will find something useful here.

Anyway, if this interests you at all, please check out the intro video here (just a short explanation of the series and what it's about):



...and the first episode where we take a look at Vamped by JazzsVids together here:



These videos will go up once a week on Fridays for the foreseeable future; please feel free to leave any feedback or thoughts here. Thanks for checking this out!

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Playlist of most recent episodes

[Zarxrax]

Really entertaining video, looking forward to more. It gave me a lot of insight and appreciation into a video that I otherwise would have just watched once.

[Mol]

I like the idea, keep goin. Stuff to try: loop the fragment of amv in backround when your talking mby once or twice w/o sound. Also ur kinda hot, no homo

[vivafruit]

Loved it! Looking forward to this Friday now.

[CrackTheSky]

Thank you for the feedback so far!

I love this idea, and your execution was good. I think it's really hard to stay coherent and insightful for what looks like about ~40minutes of uncut video. But you held it together pretty well. In the future I would recommend trying to do multiple takes - you're an AMV editor, so this shouldn't be too hard (lol). You shouldn't need to apologize for rambling - just cut out the parts where you ramble. If you can limit the total video length to 30 minutes I think the watchability of these videos will go up without diluting your insightful points.

I wanted to address this comment you left on the first episode on YouTube but I figured it might be better to do it here: I'm loathe to introduce cuts to the discussion portion of the video simply because I personally really dislike that style of YouTube video, and much prefer an uninterrupted stream of analysis. It's a stylistic thing for me, and since I find myself having so much to talk about, the videos do get a little lengthy. I personally am not too worried about this (surprisingly, you're really the only one who has commented on the length of the video, so at least for the people who provided feedback, the length doesn't seem to be an issue for the most part). I do anticipate that as the series progresses and we start to see the same kinds of things in other videos, I won't feel the need to comment on them and the video length will start to go down. In any case, for now I've recorded the first seven episodes and each is around 40 minutes or so. (I also think I ramble less in later episodes, fwiw.)

Anyway -- second video has been posted! Enjoy!

[vivafruit]

Great job again. My mind basically exploded when you pointed out the subtle zoom effect to give the illusion of movement on still frames. It's such a simple and effective trick that it's almost embarrassing to admit I didn't know about it. And yet, after reading a fair number of guides on this, it's the first time I've heard of it. I didn't even notice it when watching the video, and had to have it pointed out to me.

My next favorite part was the quick discussion about using fades to juxtapose two things that were "far away" somehow. I think I intuitively knew this in my editing, but I've never had it outlined verbally like that. Very valuable.

Generally I think this was even better than the first episode. The rambling is down. Seriously good job! it's no easy task to talk coherently for so long. And the part where you did break down a bit - during the analysis of the climax where lost the thread a bit and started gushing positive energy about how great it was - was worth watching for other reasons.

I also think the 2nd AMV worked better as a teaching tool (even though both are objectively very strong AMVs). The JazzsVids AMV had tons of crazy effects that were so well done it was hard to even know if they were part of the original anime or not. It also had extremely insane rapid timings that are hard to break down without just looking at her actual timeline. At one point I think you even said something like, "I can't really comment on this part other than that it's extremely well done." Haha. By contrast the 2nd AMV works for simple reasons that were possible for you to break down clearly and concisely.

[CrackTheSky]

Hi everybody! Season 1 of What Makes It Great is complete! I've really enjoyed putting this all together; thank you to everyone who has watched, left feedback, or simply enjoyed these videos from the shadows -- it's meant a lot to me. Thank you also to Kireblue who on behalf of AnimeMusicVideos.org has been promoting this series via Facebook and Twitter. Appreciate the love!

I'm thinking of things I could do differently as I start to put together season 2; these are all just random ideas I've had, and even were I to implement all of them at some point, it's very unlikely that I would do all of them in season 2. I'm more trying to map out the future and see where else a series like this could go. But, if anyone has feedback on these ideas, or just on the series in general, please feel free to let me know!

• Creating "mini" episodes that don't go into a detailed breakdown of a single video, but present a great video with a normal intro and short (5 minutes or less) discussion afterwards about what is good about the video. Would probably use this mostly to show off videos I really like that don't have enough dynamic editing tricks to do a full-blown discussion. These would end up being probably 10-15 minutes long at most. (If I do decide to do episodes like these, quite frankly I may transition into a cadence where these are the "normal" episodes and my longer analyses are not as frequent -- just because over time I do see myself starting to repeat the same things over and over in the longer analyses.)
• Figuring out some way to talk about "bad" videos (in a constructive way, of course). I really want to do this because I think there's a lot of valuable information that we as editors can glean from analyzing poorly-done videos, but I'm not sure of the best way to approach this without offending the editor in question, and I would definitely not want to do something like this without the editor's permission.
• Asking viewers to submit their own videos for a breakdown/review, with the caveat that I may not like some or all of it, but we'd be exploring what could be done better. Could also be done in the form of a beta review, where someone is working on a video and wants to get feedback. For example, I would record it like a normal WMIG episode, send the completed episode over to the editor, they could choose to update their video (or not!), and then once they release the video, I would release the episode (and if the editor did make changes, we could then do a before/after type comparison). Might be fun, not sure if I have the viewership to get a good (or any) response on something like that though. (This could potentially be a spinoff series, idk.)
• Having guests on to analyze a video with me. I think this could be a fun way to shake things up if the chemistry is right. Might end up lengthening an episode though.
• I'm not totally satisfied with how the most recent episode on hard cuts came out...it felt way too long-winded, even for me, so I might have to re-think how I approach episodes like this. Any suggestions are welcome.

[Zarxrax]

Enjoying the series so far. I think I like the idea of some shorter episodes, because it feels like your longer ones keep hitting the same points over and over. Sounds like you have some good ideas, so I'm looking forward to whatever comes next.

In regards to your hard cuts episode, I think something like that could work better if you perhaps didn't go through the entire videos, and just show some key moments that really demonstrate your points.

[grendizer947]

Awesome series! I am currently editing a new AMV and looking at these reviews has helped me remember certain things that sometimes can be forgotten...