What about metaphors? Take 'Born to be Wild,' for instance. The literal lyrics speak about reving engines and racing down highways looking for adventure because that's what they were born for. Does this mean a video has to literally show highways, or can you take that to be a metaphor in which the 'highway' they're getting 'out on' is actually life - and the adventure isn't necessarily war (as the song was intended to mean if you listen to the commentaries about it) but instead any challenge that stands in your way as you're racing down that metaphorical highway?Undertow wrote:But making a Hellsing or Vampire Hunter D AMV on a song about a racecar is not my idea of a good video.
You'll find that literal lyric sync is 'old-school' these days. I've seen people complain repeatedly that amvs with songs that mention the sky always show a pan of the sky - and they dislike that literal translation. But taking lyrics as metaphors and using them to form your own meaning would be going out of context. Is there a middleground?
I've heard songs that are about racing which never once mention cars or even contests. Unless you saw the original music videos (or anime in some cases), you'd never know from the lyrics that they were even talking about racing. In that case, why should the video have to be about racing instead of about the story told in the lyrics? Once you steal someone's song and make it your own through a video, you have no obligation to the original creator. It's the same with anime - authorial intention is all good and well, but once you steal that footage (or song), what you do with it is not dependent on the creator's original design.
But I do agree to a point - choosing a song just because it sounds good is the cheap way out. And ignoring lyrics when they are in a language you understand - just so you can do random action sync - is the cheap and easy way out. But no one, not even the creator of the anime or the song, can dictate how a person interprets that footage and music. Once an editor takes that song and footage, they have poetic license to do with it whatever they like. And all the rest of us can do is either enjoy the creative use of the match, or watch nothing but our own videos (which are guaranteed to be exactly the interpretation each of us thinks is appropriate). Tolerance or apathy - take it or leave it.
All this talk makes me want to make a video about macho men set to AC/DC's 'Big Balls' song (even though I *know* it's about 'parties' - the argument makes me want to purposely take it out of context just because I can). ^_^;;
