The Good Stuff

I'm Jason. This is A3. Let's do this.

The time is finally here. After almost a full week, we will finally see our first actual AMV, and I will finally get to criticize to my heart's content. Without further ado, I give you...

The Good

I picked this as the first AMV to review because of its simplicity. It has no overarching meaning, no overwhelming emotion, but relies on pure wholesome fun to get the point across. It takes a mixup of the most popular songs from 2009 and puts it to a compilation of popular anime, using great timing and clip choice to keep the viewer viewing. You may consider this AMV to be sort of a "baseline" of things to come. Some will be better, some will be worse, and this one sits firmly in the middle.

1.) Quality

Nothing about this AMV is amateur. The timing is superb, the clips match the music, and the quality stays constant all the way through to the end. The video quality is above average, and no clip is longer than 5 seconds. Generally in an AMV, you can find at least one weak point the editor fell behind in, but this one is an exception.

2.) Feel

The focus of this AMV is not on emotion, but that does not mean it doesn't leave something behind with the viewer. In this case, the quick succession of collaborated clips leaves a feeling of "epicness" with the viewer. Since no anime is featured for more than a few seconds at a time, and so many different anime are used, the viewer is left with not just one single story or emotion to focus on, but several.

This isn't simply an effect of using more than one anime. No other AMV I've seen, even collabs, pulls this off in quite the same way. Every clip gives a small window into a story being told, but before we can see what that story is, we are tossed into the next clip, and then the next, which are equally tantalizing because of how they fit the music with their own story. This has the effect of making you want to know more, perhaps later looking up names of certain featured anime after the video has finished. In the land of AMVs, this is almost always a good thing, and here it is a very good thing indeed.

The Bad

1.) Continuity

The biggest thing this AMV has going for it also gives it its biggest weakness. Because it uses a rapid succession of clips that are almost always completely unrelated in both the anime and emotion, the viewer is left without anything to hold onto. There is no story or meaning, simply randomness that, while fun, can get tedious partway into the song. I found that after a while, I glazed over most of the clips and focused on the few that really caught my attention. It is unavoidable in an AMV to keep the viewer's full engagement the entire way through, but you can do a lot better than this one did.

Also, another consequence of the lack of overarching story or emotion is that the viewer is not likely to think about the AMV once the video has stopped. It's fun while it lasts, but forgettable afterward.

2.) Literal Clip Choice

Though not really as much of a problem in this AMV as is would be in one of a more continuous nature, the editor often used clips that showed simply a visual translation of the words of the song, what I call a "literal clip". For instance, a clip of Pikachu using Thunderbolt being shown when the song uses the word "electronic". In general, this is something to be avoided, because it can make an AMV predictable and in doing so make it boring. This is a pitfall usually pretty easily avoided by experienced AMV editors, but this AMV does it purposefully as part of the fun.

In a less well-done AMV, this would have made the entire experience uninteresting, but because this is part of what makes this AMV praiseworthy, it gets away with it most of the time. Still, there were times when the editor could have used a less literal clip choice for a much greater effect. In my opinion, clips with an ambiguous meaning loosely tied to the song lyrics almost always hold a viewer's attention better than a literal clip choice.

The End

That's all for now guys. I'd like everyone to keep in mind that while it may seem like I was bashing on this AMV, I do consider it an excellent AMV, and it's one of the ones that really got me into AMVs in the first place.

For now, this is Jason, this is A3, and I wish you all happy editing.

AMVs vs Anime

I'm Jason. This is A3. Let's do this.

On the road to independence

Independence

  Last time we (I) talked (rambled) about what AMVs actually are, and what fundamentally separates them from music videos or the music itself. This time, I'd like to tackle something a little harder and try to explain why they are separate from anime in the same way.

"But Jason you devilishly handsome and charming rascal," you may object, "Without anime, AMVs wouldn't even exist. They're made by anime fans, for anime fans, and to separate the two is just insane."

Undoubtedly, there can be no argument there. I am indeed both devilishly handsome AND insane. Unfortunately for you, however, I'm insane enough to write a blog on AMVs, so let's give this a try.

On My Terms
Remember that when I say AMVs are "separate" from the music, video, and other media used to create them, I do not mean that they could simply go on without them. AMVs need music, they need video, and they definitely need anime. What I mean is simply that you do not have to enjoy any of those medium to enjoy the AMV itself.

Here's an example. A few people reading this may have heard of Fullmetal Alchemist. A few people may even have seen it. Now if you go to Youtube and search "Fullmetal Alchemist AMV", you'll get a whole slew of titles ranging from comedic to depressing to simply amateurish.

If you haven't seen the show before, and you were to watch any one of these AMVs, you would probably leave with an impression of what you believe the show is about. For instance if you watched Everyone VS Father - Not Ready to Die you might think the show was some sort of steampunk-fairy tale mixup. Now if you had watched a different AMV before that one, such as Traumerei, you might think the show was about one boy's struggle to save his family in a cruel world full of sadness and dead kittens.

Whether or not either of these views is correct is beside the point. The important thing to notice is that the anime does not make the AMV, rather the AMV was able to give you an impression of the anime through the feeling it portrayed. Most importantly, having never seen the show before did not stop you from enjoying those AMVs*. Though anime is critical in defining the AMV community, it is still only one tool AMVs use to present the main idea or emotion.

That leads me to my next point. The AMV community. 

Don't underestimate the community

The Community
AMVs have a large, and rapidly expanding, community of fans. There are Youtube channels, websites, forums, contests, and even blogs (I know right) all dedicated to publishing, viewing, and talking about AMVs. Though many of the people who partake in these communities may be fans of anime, I can guarantee you that animemusicvideos.org is not an anime fan site that does AMVs on the side. It is a site dedicated entirely to AMVs.

This is where AMVs stop being a subcategory of anime, and start being an independent interest. AMVs already have their own thriving, growing community, and an impressive amount of people who partake in them. This alone distinguishes them from anime, which have a cult following all their own.

I believe I've made my point, so I'll go ahead and wrap this up. Before I go, I'd like to give any curious AMV hatchlings an idea of where to find this majestic "AMV community" I speak of. This is by no means a comprehensive list, but it's a place to start.

animemusicvideos.org is a site where editors can post their AMVs and have them viewed and rated by like-minded individuals. As far as I'm concerned, the forums there are the best place to start learning about AMVs.

If you don't want to produce or even talk about AMVs, but just really like watching them, them Youtube is your best bet. While there scores of AMVs on Youtube that are easy to find, people new to AMVs may find it difficult to find good AMVs. Fret not, for I have just the thing. If you're looking for a good place to find good AMVs, you need not look any farther than TheBestAMVsOfAllTime Youtube Channel. He pulls a large collection of the best AMVs you'll find anywhere all to one place, and when it comes to AMVs, there is no better place to look.

Lastly, After you've gotten yourself introduced to AMVs and find yourself wanting more, follow the yearly contests put on by the anime community. This is where you'll find the best AMVs anywhere before they get a lot of views. The biggest ones are AkrossCon and Big Contest, but there are many more that probably have just what you're looking for.

Well this post is too long already, so I won't bore you with a long conclusion. This is Jason, this is A3, and I wish you all happy editing.

*That was a terrible example. Doing a random Youtube search will almost never pull up good AMVs, so if you didn't enjoy those AMVs don't give up -- those are by no means the best ones out there.

All About AMVs

Hi.

My name is Jason, and I'm here to talk about AMVs. Every week, I'll post an AMV that I think is praiseworthy, and tell you what it does right, what it does wrong, and what makes it stand out. Note that most of the AMVs I talk about will not be my own work, and when possible I will give credit to the creator in the footnotes. So with that out of the way, let's get started.

In The Beginning...

In this first post, I would like to establish, for those new to AMVs, what I believe AMVs actually are, and why they deserve their own blog. If you already have a basic familiarity with AMVs and/or the AMV community, then feel free to skip this post and jump to the second one, which will have the first video.

As for those of you who do not know much about AMVs, no more than the fact that AMV stands for Anime Music Video (and if you didn't even know that, please email me because you need an immediate crash course), you probably think that AMVs are just interesting little clips made by anime fans set to cool music to try and emulate real music videos. In that regard, as you may have already predicted while reading this, you are dead wrong.

What It Takes

Firstly, AMVs have nothing to do with real music videos. They are called AMVs because they meet 3 criteria:

1.) They are a compilation of anime clips

2.) They are set to music

3.) They are videos

Those criteria may seem pretty obvious just from the name AMV, and they should be. AMVs are extremely diverse and encompassing; it should not be difficult to pin down an AMV when you see one. The difference between a "music video" and an "anime music video", however, is in more than the fact that one contains anime and one does not.

Where music videos focus on the music, anime music videos focus on the project as a whole. Music videos are made to accentuate the music they carry, without real regard towards making the video itself a piece of art. Often times, you'll hear a song well before you watch the music video, and the experience is not often dramatically changed when you see the video anyway. If you liked the music before, then you might watch the video, but you'll no doubt continue listening to the music afterward, and the experience will be mostly unaffected by what you've seen.

This is where anime music videos shine -- the music, clips, and effects used in an AMV all come together to create one single, beautiful experience. The experience you get from listening to Ellie Goulding's "Starry Eyed" can be vastly changed, for better or worse, by watching Shades Of by Leberate. You may not have liked the AMV, but you can't get the same feeling you got from the AMV by listening to the music alone. That is, to me, what makes an AMV an AMV.

Happy Editing

By now I hopefully have you interested. This is my first post however, and I don't want to scare anyone away with a lengthy article, so I'm going to cut this off here and talk about the AMV community in my next post. If you are already interested and don't want to wait on my silly blog posts, then animemusicvideos.org can teach you all you need to know and more. It's a great place to start for aspiring editors, and an excellent hub for AMV fans to strike it up with some like-minded individuals. For now, this is Jason wishing you happy editing.