Saw your link in vidding and popped over - interesting conversation!
(when did vidding become a thing? same time? earlier? later?);
The first proto-vids (slideshows set to music, played at conventions with the vidder/editor doing "live cuts" by changing slides as the music played) were made in 1975 by Kandy Fong; slideshows were the best that could be done until the earliest VCRs came out. By the late '70s, VCR vids were also being made, and by the early/mid '80s they'd taken over. Basically, live-action vidding pre-dates AMVs by roughly a decade. (There's brief history of vidding on Fanlore, if you're interested.)
There are definitely live-action dance vids, as someone else said; both vids just set to dance music, and vids with people dancing to the dance music. You've already been linked to three of my favorites of the latter (Puttin' on the Ritz, Starlight, Boogie Wonderland). For non-dancing dance vids, multi-fandom is a fairly popular way to go, either as "kitchen sink" vids that use as many fandoms as possible (for instance, A Fannish Taxonomy of Hotness (aka Hot, Hot, Hot) by the Clucking Belles (under "First seen Vividcon '05"), or as more structured 3-4-fandom vids.
I think it's totally possible to make any kind of fan video using any kind of footage, it's just that the communities have evolved in different ways, which is fascinating to me.
I had a hard time watching AMVs for a long time, until Absolute Destiny explained one year at Vividcon about how the focus is the visual spectacle - it makes a huge difference! Part of his explanation included showing two bits of footage with the audio stripped out: one from an anime, where two characters were having an intensely emotional moment, and one from a live action show where two characters were having a similarly intense moment.
The anime footage was almost completely static for the entire length of the clip (IIRC, one character was lying on a bed, the other was standing nearby, with neither of them moving at all); there was absolutely no way for people who didn't know the source to know that this was a meaningful moment. The live action footage (one person sitting in a chair, the other standing nearby) had internal motion, changing facial expressions, shifting gazes, etc.; even without knowing the source, you could pick up on the emotion involved.
So it makes tons of sense that AMV editors focus on adding visual spectacle to give viewers a hook into the vid, because so many of the clips give them a nearly blank slate. Whereas with live-action vidding, you work with and around everything that's already on the screen; adding spectacle can be a distraction rather than an enhancement.
That's changing a little as the editing tools get better and better, and as live-action vidders get more exposed to AMVs and to the work of AMV editors who use the same skillsets when they approach live-action vidding (like Absolute Destiny and Jescaflowne). It's all so cool.
no subject
(when did vidding become a thing? same time? earlier? later?);
The first proto-vids (slideshows set to music, played at conventions with the vidder/editor doing "live cuts" by changing slides as the music played) were made in 1975 by Kandy Fong; slideshows were the best that could be done until the earliest VCRs came out. By the late '70s, VCR vids were also being made, and by the early/mid '80s they'd taken over. Basically, live-action vidding pre-dates AMVs by roughly a decade. (There's brief history of vidding on Fanlore, if you're interested.)
There are definitely live-action dance vids, as someone else said; both vids just set to dance music, and vids with people dancing to the dance music. You've already been linked to three of my favorites of the latter (Puttin' on the Ritz, Starlight, Boogie Wonderland). For non-dancing dance vids, multi-fandom is a fairly popular way to go, either as "kitchen sink" vids that use as many fandoms as possible (for instance, A Fannish Taxonomy of Hotness (aka Hot, Hot, Hot) by the Clucking Belles (under "First seen Vividcon '05"), or as more structured 3-4-fandom vids.
I think it's totally possible to make any kind of fan video using any kind of footage, it's just that the communities have evolved in different ways, which is fascinating to me.
I had a hard time watching AMVs for a long time, until Absolute Destiny explained one year at Vividcon about how the focus is the visual spectacle - it makes a huge difference! Part of his explanation included showing two bits of footage with the audio stripped out: one from an anime, where two characters were having an intensely emotional moment, and one from a live action show where two characters were having a similarly intense moment.
The anime footage was almost completely static for the entire length of the clip (IIRC, one character was lying on a bed, the other was standing nearby, with neither of them moving at all); there was absolutely no way for people who didn't know the source to know that this was a meaningful moment. The live action footage (one person sitting in a chair, the other standing nearby) had internal motion, changing facial expressions, shifting gazes, etc.; even without knowing the source, you could pick up on the emotion involved.
So it makes tons of sense that AMV editors focus on adding visual spectacle to give viewers a hook into the vid, because so many of the clips give them a nearly blank slate. Whereas with live-action vidding, you work with and around everything that's already on the screen; adding spectacle can be a distraction rather than an enhancement.
That's changing a little as the editing tools get better and better, and as live-action vidders get more exposed to AMVs and to the work of AMV editors who use the same skillsets when they approach live-action vidding (like Absolute Destiny and Jescaflowne). It's all so cool.