Talking about Inspiration

[Mkid]

Smallville Season 7 Intro
The Third Intro to sabrina The Teenage Witch
I know there are others but i cant think of any.

[machina21]

Daicon 4
And title credit sequences, be it for movies, anime or just toons in general.

Arakawa Under the Bridge
Dirty Pair Project Eden
The Saint (1968)

[Castor Troy]

We're not here to bow down to your demands... we're here to FIGHT!

[hamstar138]

I actually got into making AMVs by just trying it. A friend told me about them, I remember I watched a lot of music videos and I love movies I always wanted to turn my ideas to life. So when I made my first AMV all by myself back in 2005 I was amazed what I created. It inspired me to make more. (I know it sounds odd and stupid) But what inspires me is the reaction of people's faces when I finnish a video. I want to see if my feelings and message got through to them.

[GloryQuestor]

I was more inspired by the music I would listen to at work. I'd listen to a particular track and the anime choice would just come to me.

I still have a ton of sticky notes with AMV ideas around here...

[Beowulf]

Some of the earliest memories of commercial music videos I have are watching and loving "Come to Daddy" by Aphex Twin, "All Is Full Of Love" by Bjork and "Sabotage" by the Beastie Boys. Little did I know at the time that those were crowning jewels of various brilliant directors' catalogs. I just knew what I liked. When music and imagery line up just right, I can't think of a more visceral impact except for maybe drug experiences and making love. It can be used for good or evil, but synchronizing music and pictures is one of the miracles of the modern age we live in. Whether its Leni Riefenstahl combining shots of Hitler and 100,000 cheering Germans with intoxicatingly triumphant music, or Francis Ford Coppola playing that signature romantic theme when Michael Corleone goes back to Sicily and falls in love, music+imagery is incredibly impactful. It cuts across all colors and creeds. It sends goosebumps up your spine.

My brain has always just been wired this way. When I was 5, we would bring a boombox out to the backyard and act out impromptu music video theatre to the songs we were hearing; jumping on the trampoline listening to Weird Al's "Jurrassic Park", screaming and flailing our arms.

I took great inspiration from Ryan Geiss' winamp plugin "Geiss". This thing was years ahead of its time. I would blowoff homework and social events just to sit at home with my headphones on, listening to music and watching the imagery. I did this everyday for hours, for years. It was a trancendant experience for me. I would experiment with how well certain songs synched up, fast paced, slow paced, shuffle rhythms, beat synch, the whole deal. I would just get lost looking for 'that feeling' you get when the imagery and music synch up perfectly. After revisiting these memories for this post, its clear what a HUGE impact this had on me and my forming brain. I only stopped when Wonka and I started making music videos of our own. I was thirteen.

I'm sure a lot of people here see images in their head all the time. I always have. I can listen to a song and within seconds, entire visual sequences will form in my head, complete with characters, colors, events, and camera movement. If I had to pick only one thing that inspires me however, it would be music, which I've listened to for roughly 5-8 hours every day for 15 years. There are songs that I plan on using in my movie that I've heard 409 times. Other ones, only 203 times.

Ahh, memories.

[seasons]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bg0mgdSmmGI

This special blew me away when I was a kid and I'm sure it instilled something in me that would later make me so receptive to AMVs.

[Mkid]

Seeing how this technicially isnt an amv

does the show justice by summing up 3 seasons (50 something epsiodes)

Effect whoreish + Bad Effects + WaterMarks = Amazing CMV? not really an equation that adds up from what i know but ive been watching this since 2007 so its doing something right!

[Melanchthon]

I didn't think the effects were too bad in that one. Kind of artificial-looking, but that suited the song.

I can't remember how I got into AMVs, though if I looked hard enough I could probably find a topic like this from when I did. It was through other AMVs anyway, being early enough in the internet's lifetime that music videos weren't really available except on the TV, and we didn't have Sky. There isn't much else that inspires me visually as I'm not a big watcher of film or 'official' music videos, but I can appreciate it when someone points it out. Most of my inspiration comes from listening to a song and finding that there's an anime I can use to express what I got out of the song, or just the thought "wouldn't X song and Y anime go well together? I'd like to see the result of that".

[Shinzui IT]

well, when I started a few years ago I was watching all kinds of music videos. So, before I started doing amvs I was doing regular music videos and game videos. Then about 3 years later I watched lots of action amvs, so thats how I started to do amvs.