#amvanalysis

[eksostrephicphilosopher]

Amv Genres and MEPs

We have categorized AMVs into 3 of their main kinds before, so people who are unfamiliar with them may have a better understanding of what kind of AMVs they can find. But the community further divides AMVs into genres. Just like cinema and other forms of art, an AMV can be called action, horror, comedy, psychedelic, psychological, dance, romance, drama, sci-fi, trailer and etc. Of course many times there are mixes between genres. In many contests, the judging is divided into each respective category and in the end an overall ranking is published. In AMVs there is a special category called “MEP” that is a short for Multiple Editor Project, in which the song is divided into parts and every person edit a certain amount of the song with a unified concept.

In this example every editor’s part last 25 seconds and everyone is showcasing the theme of “victim” in their parts. In MEPs its very important for the parts to be consistent. Since there are many different animes in it, edited by different people, it’s is very easy for a part to stand out due to the anime’s artstyle, destroying the balance of the video. As a solution, editors color correct their parts to look similar and adjust their pacing of the song to be the same in every part.  Usually, in MEPs, editors use different animes to avoid using the same scenes and to have a variety of footage, after all A MEP is a project in which people showcase the same concept in their own interpretation. On the other hand there are MEPs that attempted to have a more unified concept, by using the same anime, an example:

or using the same protagonist and creating their own universe in which their story is taking place.

In this example every editor used the same protagonist in their parts whie the secondary animes are changed every time. In essence, every part is a mini crossover. 

[eksostrephicphilosopher]

“Unchained” by Redangel and MMVs

AMV: Unchained by Redangel Name of channel:Redangel, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvQqCWrCbLmEyzSznGzITfw Date of upload:  May 16, 2015

This time we decided to present something a bit different than usual AMVs. As it is well known, most anime are an adaption to a manga (Japanese comic). It’s not unusual for manga panels to be used in AMVs with the same anime in one way or another. The most usual application of manga panels in AMVs is a still image with slight animations and coloring that last about 3 seconds, synced to the song. An example:

But just as there are AMVs representing an anime series, there are also MMVs (Manga Music Videos) that represent a manga or more. MMVs gained popularity with the rise of Youtube, but never really surpassing AMVs in terms of fandom. Many times they are put under the same category of videos and judged together, even though they are fundamentally different. Most MMVs that are available, focus on moving the camera on manga panels with slight animations such as closing and opening eyes, hair movement etc and occasionally moving background objects. Usually MMVs last some seconds and not the whole duration of the song.

The first really distinctive MMV is “Beast withing” made by “B3ast”.

Unlike the rest of MMVs, he used the manga panels as 3D environment for additional camera movement, it used VFX such as lightning and blood splatters. But the real revolution to manga music videos is “Unchained” by “Redangel”. She animated the still manga panels and characters of “Pandora Hearts” and used VFX such as particles and shattered elements etc. She is also one of the first people monetized for her fanart videos. Impressed by the results of her sheer amount of work, a manga creator asked “RedAngel” to make a trailer for his/her manga :

Multiple occasions like this one would occur ever since she published “Unchained”

[eksostrephicphilosopher]

“Ghost Audition” by lolligerjoj

AMV: Ghost Audition by lolligerjoj Name of channel: lolligerjoj , https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxEB-KjQwGecLgOFLgBatyg Date of upload:  April 20, 2016 

Lolligerjoj, is famous mainly for 2 things: The long duration of his AMVs and his ability to use slow motion and fast forward on anime scenes. Combining this ability of stretching the duration of scenes, with elements he borrows from psychedelic movement and intense color correcting/grading, he creates a unique atmosphere on his/her videos, establishing his own style. Why is the abillity to make slow motion any challenging to begin with? For starters, slow motion is the act of stretching the duration of the scene, making it longer. During the shoot of a film or a music video, cameramen adjust the settings of the camera to shoot at a higher shutter speed that is double the fps of the camera. But adding the slow motion on the post production phase instead of shooting with it, causes problems, such as the video appear to be “lagging”. In AMVs, it means adding slow motion on a pre-existing piece of film, which even has a lower frame rate than real life footage (they are usually rendered in 24fps but actually 12 or 13 frames are redrawn while the rest are a copy of the previous frame). As a result, editors have to resort to plug ins.

Because people frequently asked, lolligerjoj made a webpage explaining his technique and the program and plug-in he uses in details.

Sources:

lolligerjoj, “AE workflow with motion interpolation on anime using Twixtor,” Octomber 22 2016, https://lolligerjoj.wordpress.com/2016/10/22/twixtor-on-anime-footage-and-ae-workflow-using-twixtor/

[eksostrephicphilosopher]

“F.Y.C” by  Dn@

AMV: FYC by Dn@ Name of channel: AmvDn@, https://www.youtube.com/user/AmvDnA Date of upload:  September 15, 2015

It’s not often that people choose AMVs as a medium to directly support an opinion, they are usually centered around their story or concept. But that’s not the case for “F.Y.C. Since the rise of Youtube, stereotypes in the AMV community started to shape, such as: Action AMVs’ value was degraded, not only in theory but even in contests they received low ranks due to the genre of the video. Around then, crossovers with heavy compositing were introduced and started owing the top ranks of contests. AMV creators would soon discriminate between themselves and simple action editors would be shunned, not taken as seriously as the rest. Dn@ chose to oppose those newly formed stereotypes by making an AMV about making an AMV. In the intro of his video:

1) he recreated compositions from popular AMVs such as: Umiika’s original composition

Dn@’s version

Both of those scenes dont stay true to their original source material: K-On! In these series, an accident like this never happened, its the result of compositing and VFX by “Umiika” for “Our Tapes”. Then Dn@, decided to use this scene due to its popularity in the AMV community.

2) He would add elements (such as raining in a sunny day) that didn’t fit in his scene, like editors used to do in crossovers at the time, directly criticisinng the need to add visual effects without a reason.

After the short intro, the video adapted to comedy/parody style and the concept was introduced. Throughout the track, a girl was edited to jump out of the screen and yell at the creator that making action would bring in dislikes, bad ranking and she would remind him that his video has no style or concept. As the creator was failing to make the desired romance crossovers, he tried to run from the house and the girl’s demands . Towards the end he decided to discard the constant reminders of what is right and wrong, and made an action video.  A very distinctive interpretation of the video is that the girl symbolizes Dn@’s consciousness, his desire to do well in contests and the demands of the AMV community at the current time.  Leaving his personal opinions aside, he started a new trend of blending anime with real life footage that would be done again and again even now.

[eksostrephicphilosopher]

“Rapture” by Buggy

Amv: Rapture by Buggy, Name of channel: Buggy, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MM9oaVxEc3U& Date of upload: Sep 8, 2019.

Compositing in AMVs has been evolving from the very start. It begun as a simple collage of clips from an anime, then the clips synched to the song and eventually people starting mixing more hobbies with AMVs. Soon, original 3d blended with the anime, drawings, sound effects and compositions emerged. Simple compositions started being used along with the rise of the internet. Heavy compositing was introduced to AMVs in 2011 when “Pencilhead” was published. One of the most modern examples is “Rapture” by “Buggy”. Not following Mushishi’s storyline (original anime source), Buggy created a narrative around the meaning of Christians’ Rapture :

“The rapture is an eschatological concept of a minority of Christians, particularly within branches of American evangelicalism, consisting of an end-time event when all Christian believers who are alive, along with resurrected believers, will rise "in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air.”(Wikipedia,”Rapture”,2020)

There is a twist to Buggy’s “Rapture” as he chose an anime set in between Japan’s Edo and Meiji era, where people believed in Buddhism or Neo-Confucianism or Shinto instead of Christianism. Elements such as compositing and visual effects were used brilliantly to :

  1)  Visualize the baptism, by masking and blending the main character into a space of cosmos. 

He then proceeds to grab a tree of cosmos from a hand that we can only imagine as holy. This scene suggests that the nature itself is holy like in Shinto religion.

2)  Dozens of people were masked, tracked into the camera movement of the original scene, color corrected and blended to the scene to illustrate the rising of the people in the sky.

 3)  Vfx were used to illustrate  God “grabbing” it’s subjects and original animation was added to the person with the method of rigging (moving the character limb by limb and not redrawing every frame)

Since I first watched the video I usually interpret it as a mix of religions. There is a definite connection with Christian God, as an omnipotent being choosing the people to rise on the sky. But while rising in the sky, people turn into a luminescent spherical light, which could symbolize the spirits of Shinto. During the baptism scene, after accepting the cosmos onto himself.Next is a close up on him with a burning tree inside him.

Throughout the video there are scenes of natural destruction, trees cut down, hurricanes and etc. I like to think of those scenes as a conflict between the two religions.

For frame by frame understanding of the video, the creator made a “make of”, revealing the process of making the AMV (including only the post production and not the writting of the scenario):

 Sources:

Wikipedia. “Rapture”, Last modified on  15 June 2020.

[eksostrephicphilosopher]

Just an AMV

Besides the amazing crossovers and the aesthetically pleasing AMVs, there’re also simple AMVs that undeniably have a lot of effort. People tend to degrade them for the lack of plot/story, but it’s unlikely for an AMV to not have a concept at all, for example, “ [AKROSS Con 2018 3rd place] OUR FATE (Fate series AMV) “

In this example, the video doesn’t tell story, the creator chose a very desaturated color pallet, but he didn’t stick to a certain concrete style. However, he invested heavily in the effects. The creator , Radical Dreamer , even made a “make of” video.

As we can see from the make of, he even did his own 3d models (the cubes sun etc). As a matter of fact we can say, that AMVs tend to be a hybrid art, many people have tried to blend in real life footage, drawings, 3d CGI, typography etc.

Another notable example is “Louder than Words”,

 unlike the previous ones, this doesn’t have tons of efforts. But the creator,Kensh1n , challenged himself to not edit the scenes at all, so the AMV consists of pure cuts, the way they were on the original source. Three fades to blacks were the only edit he added. Many people don’t consider this style to be worthy because it doesn’t contain as many hours of work as other videos. Another opinion is that even though it doesn’t have that sheer effort, the end result is that the anime song combination and scene selection was on point and as a result it’s enjoyable.

 Note, “bestamvsofalltimes”, the YouTube channel that contains “Louder Than Words” and “Steel Fenders”, is not the creator, it’s a re-uploading channel which uploads some of the best AMVs this community offers.