Kill your idols

[CrackTheSky]

So over the years, there are certain videos that get really popular and everyone seems to love them...but we all know that's not true. No video can please everyone. So, what I want to know is, what popular videos do you think are overrated, and why? In the interest of keeping this constructive, is there anything this video does right? What could have been done better?

I think this could spark some interesting discussion, but I realize this has the potential to get really flamey, so let's keep this civil and respectful. Try not to say anything about the editor who made the video, just focus on the video itself.

Mods, lock this topic at any point if it gets out of hand, or you think that no good can come of it to begin with.

[Animated]

I can only think of one recent example:



To begin with, I love what Gorz does in his videos. Awesome stuff.

This video... this video won Akross, right. It was the last one to be premiered there, if I remember correctly. I kept hearing from editors that had seen betas of it that this particular video was awesome, that it's gonna win the contest easily etc... So much hype And some days later, I had the chance to watch it too... I didn't know what to expect. All I saw was hours and hours and aeons of rendering being spend on floating chairs and desks, as well as some warm filters, with a way too happy song. Nothing more, nothing less. How could this video be better than tan(x) (who was technically awesome too, and had a GREAT plot twist/hidden message in the end) or even Pandora, which has to be one of the most passionate AMVs of the recent times? So yeah... from the start to the end all I saw were some (perfectly animated) chairs, clocks and stuff, cool lights, plain editing and no real plot/scenario on the background. And in the end, this video won Best of Akross award... I really don't get it.

[Bollocks]

Here's where my deepest, darkest secret is revealed...



I. DON'T. GET. THIS. VIDEO.

I've watched this video a lot of times, and every time I come away totally cold, and it takes genuine effort for me to sit through the entire thing. For me, the biggest problem is that I find it really, really boring. I will happily sit through 25 minutes of Dead to the World, but I cannot sit through 5 minutes of this video, because there's nothing going on that is of any interest to me. All I see is a lot of very pretty clips put together extremely competently, but that's it. I mean, I can see a cocnept and such, but the video is totally devoid of any sort of real narrative or character that engages me. It just feels kind of soulless to me, and thus I find it extremely dull and can barely sit through it. Also, I'm not a fan of the colour scheme for the most part. There are some very pretty bits, put for the most part it seems extremely garish. Finally, the 60fps doesn't really add anything to the video, and just makes everything look kind of weird and unnatural.

I respect this video for being very well made (for the most part), and for the role it has played in the development of AMVs as a fan activity. I just can't personally find anything to love about it.

[CrackTheSky]

Here's where my deepest, darkest secret is revealed...



I. DON'T. GET. THIS. VIDEO.

etc.

I understand that. It took me a long time to enjoy this video. To me it actually seems like one of Nostromo's more grounded videos -- it's a bunch of pretty scenes, yes, but the progression of the scenes makes sense and it ends up being a lot less random than Magic Pad, for example. It seems to me to be about the end of the world, and not much else. There's not much of an actual, specific narrative, but I think the concept is well conveyed.

And I personally love the color schemes. I love the way it transitions from red to blue gradually...it's not supposed to be an inviting video -- it's not vibrant or warm at all, it definitely maintains a feeling of cold discomfort throughout. I really like it for that reason. It chooses a very uncomfortable mood and communicates it through the use of color.

But hey, to each his own

[Bollocks]

Here's where my deepest, darkest secret is revealed...



I. DON'T. GET. THIS. VIDEO.

etc.

I understand that. It took me a long time to enjoy this video. To me it actually seems like one of Nostromo's more grounded videos -- it's a bunch of pretty scenes, yes, but the progression of the scenes makes sense and it ends up being a lot less random than Magic Pad, for example. It seems to me to be about the end of the world, and not much else. There's not much of an actual, specific narrative, but I think the concept is well conveyed.

And I personally love the color schemes. I love the way it transitions from red to blue gradually...it's not supposed to be an inviting video -- it's not vibrant or warm at all, it definitely maintains a feeling of cold discomfort throughout. I really like it for that reason. It chooses a very uncomfortable mood and communicates it through the use of color.

But hey, to each his own

I can agree that there is a sense of logical, linear progression to the video, but I still find it lacking in anything really engaging. In regard to the colour, I can appreciate it's purpose, but I still find it generally upleasant. In my opinion, there are better, more subtle ways to intentionally make a viewer feel uncomfortable (tan(x) and Eidolon are my favourite examples), but they probably wouldn't work at all with this kind of video, so I can ultimately respect the choice to use the colour scheme, even if I personally don't like it.

[seasons]

The other day I realized that there were a few all-time top AMVs that I still had never watched. I noticed that this was #3 on our all-time list. I'm a long-time Naruto fan so I figured that this would be a no-brainer. I was not able to finish watching this entire AMV. Initially, anyway. I watched the rest of it just now. My initial impressions remain the same and the second half of the video did little to change my feelings about the whole thing.

First of all, this was very, very well-made, technically flawless and I can tell why every choice that the editor made, in terms of clip selection and the placement of edits and transitions, was done for specific emotional effect. It's extremely well-made. But the effects were so over-the-top and, in my opinion, overused, that it made the experience very exhausting to sit through and literally hurt my eyes. I love me some angsty videos but I'd never seen anyone pile it on so high like this before. It's not exactly Naruto-AMV-fatigue that's clouding my judgment, since I still enjoy Naruto videos and get a special feeling out of watching ones that were made when the series was at the height of its white-hot popularity. Something about the spirit that so many of these videos were made in just oozes enthusiasm and excitement about their subject in a way that few videos seem to do today. But the dreadful tone of this one just sucked the joy out of the experience and it felt like reading contrived "emo" fanfiction. I hated, hated, hated this AMV. All in all, after I left an OP for it (which I'm sure the editor will never read), my overall score for it was still relatively high, since the video and sound quality were rather good, and the overall effort on the part of the editor was undeniable as well. But this just feels like one of the many jumping-off points that lead so many editors astray and encouraged a certain kind of approach to AMVs that I hate and that I feel has been pervasive and infectious in all the wrong ways in the hobby over the last 10 years. I know, one AMV doesn't have the power to do that, but I imagine that this video cast a HUGE shadow on the AMV community in the year or two before the arrival of Youtube and probably looked like a standard to aspire to for so many editors who otherwise would have continued doing their own thing, of which we unfortunately never got to see.

I can guess about what influence this AMV had or didn't have all day long, but when it comes down to it, this was a very difficult video to sit through and even when the fast-paced, effect-packed section ends, it just kind of drags on for another 2 minutes with a coda that doesn't really make me feel anything. I get the feeling that Naruto fans and fans of AMVs in general were amazed by how the editor was able to seamlessly replace Sakura with Haku. This never stuck me as particularly clever or meaningful, just a technical exercise in layer masking that somehow struck a huge chord with a lot of viewers. Was this AMV simply bigger and more "epic" than anything that had come out at the time?

I don't mean to hate on this, there's just so many amazing AMVs out there and I feel like the overwhelming love for this one -- as reflected in opinion scores -- has been misplaced over the years.

[Shui]

But the effects were so over-the-top and, in my opinion, overused, that it made the experience very exhausting to sit through and literally hurt my eyes.

Funny thing is, this video was the trend-setter for these overused effects.



When this Video came out I was a really big Fan of the song and I'd always wished for a cute AMV with it. I was really excited when I read the announcement, but when I watched it somehow I realized that I do not like this video. The first thing which immediately stuck my eye was that the Composing is just horrible, if there's an overlay you can be guaranteed that all the scenes are washed out. It all looks dull &/or dark. Next thing is the Scene-Selection, it felt as if the editor just tried to ripp-off Magic Pad. Now I don't think it's bad to use the best bits of various shows for an amv, but this is straight up random. There aren't enough cute scenes as this song would deserve. Magic Pad alteast had an Atmosphere and delivered, but this just can't convey the song
According to the Video Description the Editor didn't even see most shows. It's no wonder the video seems to lack passion for the song or the animes.

(I don't care if it's an early work or not, just the fact that it's very popular makes this video a spit in the face of the song)

[YusukeAMV]

It's not famous as the videos posted above, but it had a good response at Akross and I think it can be defined "popular".

MDL - Not just a dream
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0DqsjJw_hQ

The major defect of this video is the music: it doesn't fit with the anime (the lyrics does, but not the rhythm) and consequently the editor had to edit a fast-paced song with a static anime. Most of the scenes are static ones with zooms from every directions; sometimes it works, most of times it doesn't. To compensate to all these gaps, the editor thought it was a good idea adding overlays of every kind, blurs, effects, masks with black edges: everything he was able to do, but the result was just a mess. Moreover, there's Ryuk coming from nowhere.
It seems that he realized that he couldn't make a romance video with the song and he tried to go with the action, but unfortunately this song doesn't fit both properly.

[CrackTheSky]

It's not famous as the videos posted above, but it had a good response at Akross and I think it can be defined "popular".

MDL - Not just a dream
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0DqsjJw_hQ

The major defect of this video is the music: it doesn't fit with the anime (the lyrics does, but not the rhythm) and consequently the editor had to edit a fast-paced song with a static anime. Most of the scenes are static ones with zooms from every directions; sometimes it works, most of times it doesn't. To compensate to all these gaps, the editor thought it was a good idea adding overlays of every kind, blurs, effects, masks with black edges: everything he was able to do, but the result was just a mess. Moreover, there's Ryuk coming from nowhere.
It seems that he realized that he couldn't make a romance video with the song and he tried to go with the action, but unfortunately this song doesn't fit both properly.

Yeesh. That video was not good, for exactly the reasons you mentioned. Such an awkward and contrived combination.

I guess I should contribute my own opinion to this thread since I'm the one who started it...


Much like seasons above, I was going through the Top 10% recently, downloading some of the videos that I never got around to, and this was one of them. Actually, watching this video is what got me thinking about this topic in the first place...

Now, full disclosure: I don't know if I've ever seen a Naruto video that I actually like (with the exception of Whisper of the Beast -- sorry seasons), and I've watched a lot of them. So I went into watching this video with a feeling of trepidation already, but I was not prepared. This video is BAD. It uses multiple scenes with the DivX logo in the corner. It has those bad boxy effects. It uses B&W/color switching as a primary sync style (maybe it's just me that doesn't like that). It has stock flame transitions, stock lightning and cloud textures, stock film effects. Plenty of lip flap. My biggest problem with it though is that it's just so generic; nothing about it is memorable or creative in any way. I don't get it. I DON'T GET IT.

I'm forced to conclude that the popularity of this video was a product of the era in which it was released, given the popularity of Naruto around that time and the fact that the .org was booming back in 2004. The effects work screams "MID-2000s!" -- this is a video where I really think that if a new editor were to watch it today, they'd laugh at how horribly outdated it looks. And then they'd stop laughing and look at you in confusion when you tell them this is the 17th highest rated video on the .org. It's perplexing, really. Most videos in the Top 10% stand up today; some are outdated but not in a bad way, you can just tell that they're from a different era. This video is an anomaly; it's a video that is so singularly a reflection of it's time that it just doesn't work in any other time period.

I have more, but I'll save it for later in the thread, if other people keep contributing.

[BasharOfTheAges]

Regarding how that happens - A while back I ran into a bunch of terrible comedy vids that were just stand up acts that had thousands of star scale ratings but nobody has ever really heard of them... I was left scratching my head. The only conclusion I can draw is that some people have heavily botted the site for some strange reason. It's bizarre.

Haven't really looked at the top 10% list in years, but I don't think it's been relevant since maybe 2008 or 2009. Everyone stopped giving ops, so the minimums aren't met.