AMVs versus vids (Can o' worms? Check! Can opener? Check! Let's rock and roll!)

[starlady]

So I gave were_duck a list of AMV recs for the Vid Party she and damned_colonial are organizing at WisCon (I'm so excited, seriously). And as part of that I watched a lot of AMVs in a very short time span, which I haven't done in forever, and which caused me to say this in reply to lian's post on original versus fan works. And then both of them asked me, more or less, for my thoughts on AMVs versus vids.

Here's were_duck 's question:

I'm getting the sense from the few amvs that I've seen that there are significant differences between vids and amvs, but I don't really have the language to express what that is other than just saying that they come from different subcultures/traditions. Care to share your thoughts on the subject?

So let me repost my reply:

Hmm. Well, I can say a few things, certainly. I guess the first thing is that AMVs have come a long way from their VCR to VHS origins in the late 80s/early 90s, as I imagine vids have (when did vidding become a thing? same time? earlier? later?); the VHS AMVs that were made with access to professional-grade equipment still stand up, but they fit on the low end of the...hmm...technicality spectrum now.

The thing I notice over and over again is that AMVs abhor lipflap. Seriously, if there's one thing that'll get you flamed as an utter noob in AMV circles it's lipflap. Conversely, lip syncing done well is a real ideal of the genre. Whereas, in most vids I've seen the attitude seems to be that lipflap happens and you've just got to deal with it.

The other thing I notice is that, particularly in the last three-four years, AMVs have become feats of video editing and digital clip creation achievement. That one I linked above, "The Running Man", epitomizes this trend--there isn't a single frame of that video that hasn't been digitally retouched in some way, and a good chunk of it is original animation (actually, remind me to dig up the link to this one Death Note AMV I saw last year that has even more original animation). So the end result is this amalgamation of transformed and original content in a transformative practice that ends up somewhere in between the two, in terms of impact, I think. Whereas most vids I've seen are almost wholly using transformed content, and in terms of aim they are usually engaging directly with the source fandom, whether as critique or meta discussion or story-telling. The AMVs that are most popular these days, by contrast, tend to be multi-anime, and tend to have sheer spectacle as their purpose. Even when an AMV uses a single anime and an obviously relevant song (I'm thinking of this Soul Eater AMV here), it tends not to tell a story so much as harp on a trope. Actually, if you take a look at the 2010 Viewers' Choice Awards on animemusicvideos.org, you can see this made clear in the categories: Storytelling and No Effects get their own particular categories because they're the exception, not the rule.

A lot of this is just, I think, fairly deterministic in that it can be chalked up to the nature of the footage that vidders have available to them, respectively. I don't really think it's possible to make a multi-TV fandom dance vid, for example, but damn straight you can make some awesome multi-anime dance AMVs.

Apparently Francesca Coppa wrote an article about AMVs versus vids at one point, but I haven't read it, or so lian says here.

You'll note that my reply doesn't actually say much about the nature of vids, because I am still very much a noob when it comes to vids. I have probably seen two dozen total in my lifetime (sad, I know!)--whereas I personally have made 15 AMVs, and have inchoate plans for a lot more (and I should note, I am very much an old school AMV person, one who thinks primarily in terms of single-anime AMVs and has neither the plans nor the desire to become one of the technical wizards). So what do you think of my thoughts, vidders? Am I terribly wrong and just don't know it? And if I am, then where?   

ETA: Thanks to wistfuljane, have two hilarious posts by thefourthvine addressing this question from a vidder's perspective: Anime Vids for Media Fans, and The AMV Feedback Project: Reaching New Heights of Obsession!.

I should probably actually write up a bit of description for each of those recs I posted, shouldn't I? *sigh* 

ETA 2: Here are my AMV recs, with explanations!

ETA 3: One final related post!

Comments

[damned_colonial]

"distraction rather than enhancement" is a great way of putting it. From what I've seen of most (not all) live action vids, when we're doing effects in live action vidding, generally (not always) the sorts of things 90%+ of us are doing are:

1. slowing things down or speeding them up to fit the music (this may involve reversing the clip, too)
2. cross-dissolving to make a smooth transition between clips
3. zooming, panning, or otherwise moving the view to better focus on something happening.
4. chopping up a clip to make it appear, um, stuttery (sorry, don't have words here)

Good vidders who know their software way better than me also do things like:

Cutting out a frame from clip A and inserting clip B into it, or overlaying clip B onto clip A in some way. Examples: The Test by heresluck, which overlays Star Trek TOS onto footage from the Reboot movie to show us stuff about the Kirk/Spock relationship, and I'm your man by charmax which does it with mirrors.

Sometimes people cut the screen into sections and show different things in each section, sort of like the opening credits sequence to every 70s TV show ever ;) I'm not thinking any really good examples though. Oh! Yes! Vogue by luminosity has a lot of this, though there's a lot of other stuff going on there too.

Something else I've seen is people using effects to texturise (for want of a better word) footage, to make it look old or something. You quite often see sepia tones, old film effects, and similar. Examples: Closer by T. Jonesy and Killa, go back to sleep, by TikiTyler9 (also does other stuff with colour and black and white), I am/Lamb by lim.

lim has a number of vids that have a sketchy, hand-drawn sort of a texture; "Us" is the best known of them, but "This is how it works" also does this. Some of her vids have a different, scrapbooky sort of effect, see eg. "Wallpaper" and "People are People".

(Wow, I wish some of these vidders would write (or point me at) tutorials on how to do this stuff in Final Cut.)

The thing about all these is that, IMHO, they're usually done to tell a story or evoke a mood, not just to make it shinier. I could link a handful of fanvids that *do* use effects to make it shinier, but generally I think it misfires, and I don't think the vids are better for it, so I won't link as it would constitute a negative review, you know? Oh oh oh! No wait, here's an exception: Moulin Renown by drbillbongo. It's obviously a crackvid, though, so that kind of helps it work. (Many people might mention is Another Sunday by jescaflowne but she's coming from an AMV background so I'm not counting it.)

[starlady]

The thing about all these is that, IMHO, they're usually done to tell a story or evoke a mood, not just to make it shinier.

I think that the 90% of effects you mention are all pretty standard in AMVs, too, though they're the sort of thing that if done well they don't really stand out so much--I know in a lot of my AMVs it's pretty obvious that I've messed with clip rates, for example, because I am not technically skilled (though I like to think I'm getting better). And even some of the more obvious effects, like sepia-toning or texturizing, are also used in the service of story and/or concept.

Where AMVs and vids part company in this respect is that it's possible in AMVs to create footage that is purely effects, like original animation or the live action footage in the AMV by Koopiskeva I linked in my third post. Yes/no?