Video Clips: Fishies in an Immense Sea?!

Mistypearl · Post by **Mistypearl** » Sun Jul 06, 2008 10:47 pm

Ok, now that I've lured you into this thread with the extremely odd title... I have two questions for you seasoned, and also new amv makers!

When finding clips for your video, do you find it hard to find what your looking for? It seems to me that the better quality amv has more well chosen clips... I'm just wondering if my memory alone you can remember where the clips are, especially if you haven't watched it in a while, or if you have vast memories of animes that you can't remember where so and so fought/kissed/danced with so and so...

Second question, does anyone have any way of 'mapping' out a series so they can find clips they are looking for faster? I.e.- because of me thinking it would be troublesome to find clips I was thinking of making an 'episode guide' of certain animes I knew I would use for this purpose, does anyone use this? I was wondering if I should make one or not, and obviously I would post it somewhere (in the appropriate forum section of course! ^^) for others to use...

Ex.- Title
Characters that Appear:
Theme/Mood:
1-10 Minutes: this happened... blah blah summary, summary
Important things to note: so and so confessed their love for cheese, blah, first transformation scene.... blah...

etc, etc...

Thank you :]

JaddziaDax · Post by **JaddziaDax** » Sun Jul 06, 2008 11:29 pm

Sometimes I look up episode guides (cause yes they are on the internets) if I don't know the scene off hand...

but in general I don't find scene selection so hard...

CorpseGoddess · Post by **CorpseGoddess** » Mon Jul 07, 2008 12:58 am

If I'm looking for a very specific image, I definitely use episode guides. Wikipedia usually has them for whatever anime I'm currently using.

If I'm just "clip harvesting", I do it listening to the song I'm going to use, over and over again. Sometimes things pop out at me when I do that.

Jasta85 · Post by **Jasta85** » Mon Jul 07, 2008 4:06 am

i have a pretty good memory so i can remember most of the best scenes in the anime i like. i usually get ideas for an amv when i hear a particular song and while it is playing i mentally start placing certain scenes to parts of the song. if i decide i like the idea well enough i'll rewatch parts of the anime to get more scenes until i have enough to make the amv.
my amvs almost always start with me picking the song first and then matching a series to it from scenes i already know so that makes it easy.

Nessephanie · Post by **Nessephanie** » Mon Jul 07, 2008 4:12 am

I get my idea in my head, then I always rewatch my source/sources with the song I'm using in mind. (sometimes I watch it at 8x the normal speed, but I still go through it) Sometimes I'll make notes as to what scenes could work for certain parts of the song. Most of time I do the rewatching in Premiere with my project open, so I can just pull out scenes into my bins for use when I'm actually editing.

JaddziaDax · Post by **JaddziaDax** » Mon Jul 07, 2008 9:01 am

I think the only series I ever made notes for was Star Trek: Deep Space Nine but them's 1 hour episodes and 7 seasons to go through @_@ i wanted to avoid ripping as many dvds as I could...

Zarxrax · Post by **Zarxrax** » Mon Jul 07, 2008 11:24 am

It really helps if you are intimately familiar with the series you are using. About 6 or so years ago, I could easily make an Evangelion video if I wanted, because I knew pretty much all of the scenes like the back of my hand. I probably even knew the episode numbers for most of them. These days though, I'm not really familiar enough with anything except to maybe know if a clip I want falls towards the beginning, middle, or end of a series. Often I cant even remember most of the stuff that's in an anime. I like to just throw entire episodes down on my timeline, scroll through them, and clip out anything that I think might be useful, set those clips at the end of my timeline, then throw down another episode and go through it. When I'm through, I have a lot of "amv worthy" clips sitting at the end of my timeline that I can quickly seek through to choose from.

NS · Post by NS » Mon Jul 07, 2008 11:30 am

I use memory.. like general memory, Like I usually know "In the episode where whatever was the main focus I know that this scene occured" but if I don't know what episode it is I look up episode guides for a short summary and then I know what took place. Every anime that i've watched all the way through, I have a general idea of what scenes are in each episode and whatnot.

DriftRoot · Post by **DriftRoot** » Mon Jul 07, 2008 11:34 am

I've always had a bad time harvesting clips, mostly because I tend to allow my projects to evolve on their own and I'm always paranoid that I'm going to fail to rip a scene that might come in handy later. I wind up ripping way too much. I've tried to storyboard before, but it never works. I'm too haphazard with my editing. Sort of like fingerpainting: I usually just get right in there and start making a mess and occasionally create something that looks like I knew what I was doing right from the start. I'm this way with everything, though, not just AMVs...I call it accident-prone creativity.

This also makes for a hideously slow editing pace...

My only method for staying organized is to label every one of my clips so that they are easily searchable. For instance, if I have a closeup of a character with a happy expression, I'll label the file with the character's name (or abbreviation), plus "hap" or something and then stick it in a folder which only contains closeup shots.a Makes it much easier to see all my options vs. trying to remember where the heck I put one clip out of the 100+ I ripped.

As Zarxrax said, it makes a big difference if you're REALLY familiar with your source. This is why long series scare the heck out of me.

Castor Troy · Post by **Castor Troy** » Mon Jul 07, 2008 2:21 pm

With DBZ, Bebop, and Naruto, I already know where to find the footage I need.

When I did my Ippo/Rocky video, I had to open up notepad and note down really important scenes I wanted because even though the footage was different, it was very similar as well (Since the majority of the series takes place either in the boxing gym or the ring, it gets really similar..).

My memory of anime is pretty bad nowadays so I think I have to start taking notes whenever I watch a new show for footage...