Random AMV rant

[Ellderon]

You know when you run into a AMV that's almost perfect...but then you realise the maker(s) made a really stupid* decision somewhere along the way.

*(no offense to anyone involved with those AMVs. They are, as I said, great)

IMHO, when you make AMV's you do it to glorify the anime or to glorify the song. If you're using just 1 anime then that gives the best results if you just want to make a "monument" to your favorite anime.
A good example:
Cowboy Beeboop with Pulp Fiction soundtrack AMV
or Venesa Carlton Ordinary Day, Escaflowne AMV (erm..can't find the amv on you tube now). Nevermind. For this type there are a lot of good examples.


When you use a various animes then you do it for the anime in general or the song. In that respect, putting clips that don't fit with the theme is a bad decision. I understand people might love a character of a specific anime, but squeezeing in things where they don't belong, when you have a lot of better stuff that fit - that a bad move.

I can give you examples.

Let's start here:
[url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EB92K56U1Vo]

Great AMV. But, you can clearly see a lot of favorims. Every 2 seconds you're gonna see Naruto or one Piece characters. That favorism is obvious. Wouldn't bother me really, if it wasn't for the fact that the "spirit never dies" schtik is very common in anime. The hero that never gives up is everywhere, so it's not like there was a lack of material. Take for example the lines "I know what it means to burn" and "rise from the fire if you're gonna win". Did they use one of the many [url=http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... TheInferno]Out Of The Inferno clips? Or hell, fire characters like Phoenix Ikki (yes, I like the guy)who play with fire a lot would also be great. But no, they put in a checkers player with fire added as an effect. Very bad decision IMHO.

Now, while I might be tempted to try to squeeze my fav character in there, I'm smart enough to know where he doesn't fit. A dance party anime should be a compilation of dancing and singing. Characters that never dance or sing in a naime series have nothing to do there. A VERY rare exception would be when a character does something that might pass as dancing (like Spike Spiegel warming up for a fight by "dancing" around), but such things should be avoided when you have other material to draw from. Other mistakes include re-using the same clip when you clearly have a lot left (from other animes, or even animes you already used some other scenes, but it still has more)

Examples:
[ulr=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfb8HFtg ... re=related (re-using some stuff needlssy, more animes it could have drawn from)

[ulr=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmlSx7qBaRk&NR=1] (using non-dancing stuff needlesly)

It just makes me wanna combine these two (and a few more, cause there are a lot of great unused scenes that spring to my mind) and make a single, ultimate dance AMV. Crap, it's like a irritating itch, I feel like it has to be done. An penultimate, long, beautifull dance AMV!

When I look at mixed AM Vs with various anime, my mind switches into critic mode. The most important thing is that everything fits nicely. One of my favorite AMV's doesn't even have any of my favorite characters in it:
[ulr=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bl48UzWcKrI]

*

Speaking of which, anyone know a good converter from mp4 to avi or mpeg?
I use Windows Movie Maker when I play around a bit with video editing and it hates mp4 format.

**

I'll close this by listing some of my favorite AMV as further examples:

[ulr=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eN9HCg9uBTU] (One Day More - Robotech)

[ulr=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyiCOSJoEDU] (Ramstein: Angel - Evangelion)

[ulr=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1JTcqbtClQ] (In Tenebris & Knightrider of Doom - Escaflowne)

If you can find them for Escaflowne (I will do Anything for love, Glory of Love, Heaven is a Place on Earth - all are great, but they have either been removed or the sound has been removed) I can't find either a great Saint Seiya AMV - SAGA (saints And Gold Always)

[ulr=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_iuBHmO89c] (Goodbye - Avatar: The last Airbender)

[ulr=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XFh3PsOpb4] (Fairy Air Force)


for some great mixed amvs:

[ulr=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koY-ZByxy9A] (She's got the Look)

[ulr=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3m-dLd4Kd0] (Villanous Destiny)

[ulr=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhDvUq_FAUk] (Hereos never give up)

[ulr=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaFnjkdCY0k] (Holding out for a hero)

Damn everything. I can't find half of the AMV's I downloaded form You Tube in the first place!!! AAAAGH!

[Vivaldi]

I'm not sure I really understand your point terribly well. You're saying amvs can't be anything more than a tribute to a song or anime? I'd have to disagree quite severly there.


I also kinda lost you at your complaints with .

[Fall_Child42]

have you looked for these videos here?
http://www.animemusicvideos.org/search/supersearch.php

They won't have their audio removed and they will look 100 times better than the ones you downloaded from youtube.

As for the other complaint I too am not sure I understand.

If you are saying only certain things should go with other things I disagree.

If you are simply stating that you question the AMV maker's decisions, then that's your opinion and nobody can really help that. The maker is not you and thusly chose to do some things differently than you would have.

[Megamom]

I do not understand!

[Ellderon]

I'm not sure I really understand your point terribly well. You're saying amvs can't be anything more than a tribute to a song or anime? I'd have to disagree quite severly there.

No, not can't be .. but that's usually what they are. AMV's should have a purpose and focus - as everything that is good doas. Sure, nobody is preventing me from just slapping every anime I want and some random tune into a amv, but it's not gonna be good.

As I said that it's my opinion that if you're making a large. Multi-anime MAV, then it should be focused and consistent.

I can't figure what you're confused about, given that I've written clearly in my first post. Over-use of a single anime (when you have really plenty to choose from) and bad scene selection is what I don't like.
Neither of those is really hard to figure out. If you have a lot of good anime to choose from that fit the scene (text, message of the song) perfectly, yet you squeeze something that is less than optimal, then that's not the best move you ever made. That by itself is clear enough.

Ideally, a good mixed AMV should feel "right" to people who never watched animes that appear in it. It's easy for the fans of anime X to get into the music video, cause they already have the connection with the character and their personality - they know how it fits the song. To get that across to people who don't know them - that's truly a great AMV.

[Sonydjsnmix]

That first post was hard to read. So it's pretty much about scene selection that did not look very well thought out. I think we all feel that way before with certain amvs, but that how the editor edited it and most editors will stand by how they edited it.

My personal pet peeve is not lyric sync like you mentioned but color combination. There was this one amv that used three anime. Two of the shows main character is a short pink haired girl and the other anime a long blond hair girl. Very uneven and it didn't look good at all.

[Megamom]

Well, I think that multi Anime it is multi Anime, nobody to say "like" or of that way are in use many animes in a video, I think that it is something personal, there are many AMVs that use many encourage wrongly... but it is a part of this world, is a part of the learning of the editors!

[Bauzi]

As I said that it's my opinion that if you're making a large. Multi-anime MAV, then it should be focused and consistent.

I agree here and it's interessting what you think about overused fav-characters, but... I think it's more about how you stick to the concept in general. I just love to see amvs that twist the anime by 180°. Like when the amv makes the happy anime look like really wicked shit. If every amv would represent the anime itself again again it would just get boring like the tons of dbz amvs that (I really think so) presented every singel aspect in dbz.

As I said that it's my opinion that if you're making a large. Multi-anime MAV, then it should be focused and consistent.

You're right.

My personal pet peeve is not lyric sync like you mentioned but color combination. There was this one amv that used three anime. Two of the shows main character is a short pink haired girl and the other anime a long blond hair girl. Very uneven and it didn't look good at all.

Well... That wouldn't bug me that much. I dislike more those amvs that mix different drawing styles. Imagine you mix Deathnote, Excel Saga, Mindgame, Vampire Hunter D and 5cm per second. That just doesn't look right when the art styles change every second

[Ellderon]

Well, to try and explain myself better here. I can be a pretty anal person and I'm very hard on everything. Call me an eternal critic. But I'm also very objective and always try to base my reasoning on things that can be weighed in a reasonable fashion.

When I said "bad scene selection" I may have used too harsh a word.
If you have a spot in an AMV where the maker placed a clip that isn't perfect for the job (in the conveying the meaning sense), but he works to make it fit (by painstaiking editing, adding effects, timing) - that is not a bad thing. It involved hard work, it ended up looking good - so yeah, a good job.
But that's just it. A Good job, when it could have been stellar.
If on one hand you have a scene that fits the meaning and lyrics of the son perfectly as it is, but instead you pick a different scene that has almost nothing to do with it, but you edit it heavily and add effects and stuff - then logicly you're hardly doing an optimal job. It's an example of cramming something that doesn't fit in the natural form. It's crude, to put it simply.

Why does that happen? Maybe the maker simply loves one specific show too much and tries to cram it everyhwhere. Maybe he doesn't know that the far better scene exists. Maybe he does, but he doesn't have it on hand.
When multiple people are involved into making a AMV, I find the last two a bit harder to believe.


Either way, I'd really kill fora complete and all-encompasing mixed AMV.
But how would one go about making it? My buess would be to have people submit clips from various anime for the project - but with limitations. Like 1 anime per 2 people. Meaning that 2 people get assignend to search for usable clips from one show. That would ensure a lot of usable clips from different shows. Hhmmmmmm

[)v(ajin Koji]

Well, to try and explain myself better here. I can be a pretty anal person and I'm very hard on everything.

Okey Dokey...

Seriously though, I think I get what you mean and I agree that if there's going to be a meaning in an AMV it should be more focused (either on an anime or a piece of music).

I think this is still a small hobby for most people and even the most anal person will give up after staring at the same frames for a day. If you want the best AMVs I guess you'd have to look at the highest echelons of the makers (Koop etc) who have really turned AMVs into an art form, rather than the "tributes" you attribute (I think rightfuly so) to most AMVs.