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]

Wrt lipflapping, in live media vids it's called "talky-face" and is generally frowned on, but hard to avoid.

Here's one of mine with very little talky-face, by live action fanvid standards. I think part of the problem is that the people filming the show/movie/whatever tend to point the camera at whoever's talking, and also that fanvidding also often tries to convey emotion, and that often happens when people's faces are moving.

Also, wrt making lips move to the music... in my experience, you can't really do that with live human beings, because we can tell that they're not saying the same words. The motions of a human face when speaking are much more subtle than those of an animated face. I say "in my experience" because I once made this vid with muppets and found it pretty easy to get them to lip sync because, let's face it, when muppets speak their mouths just open and shut... there's no complex lip or tongue movement going on. Lots of people commenting on that muppet vid are amazed at how well the muppets appear to be singing along to the music, because it's really very rare and difficult in live action fandom. (FWIW, the muppets are *really* singing "sailing for adventure on the deep blue sea", but in the vid they are singing "frigging in the rigging 'cause there's fuck all else to do.")

I was talking to lim a while ago and she said that she made "My brilliant idea" (download here) in part as a protest against the "talkyface bad!" meme... she wanted to make a vid with heaps of talkyface in it, but that worked anyway. I think she did a good job of it.

[starlady]

I have seen your MTI vid, and I totally sat there for the first part thinking, "Wow, really good lipsync!" And then it got off a bit in the second half, and my inner AMV fan went :-( But it was a great vid, regardless.

Also, wrt making lips move to the music... in my experience, you can't really do that with live human beings, because we can tell that they're not saying the same words.

Yes, totally. Whereas with anime, due to low budgets particularly in older shows, the only thing moving in a frame will be a character's mouth, and maybe their eyes. So lip sync (or at least just cutting the lip flap) becomes technically much more feasible. (Though it still takes skill and practice to do well. If there is lip sync in my AMVs it is completely serendipitous, because in the past I haven't been arsed to try.) Also in anime, maybe, emotionality is not quite so strongly linked with characters talking, but I wouldn't want to take that too far.

[miss_prince]

Yes, and with animated clips, not only do you not have to match particular mouth shapes, but it's actually technically feasible to manipulate the frames themselves so that the lips flap where you want them to (specifically editing in open mouths or closed mouths and repeating frames so syllables are the right length, etc.).