Heaven or (AMV) Hell
Written by Ben Levy
Published on 06/09/2007
Originally from Binary Culture / [the-lowdown.net]
http://www.binaryculture.net

Mark: Since my realm of knowledge has been comic books for nearly a decade now, I have an intimate knowledge and interest in bastard mediums, the comic book itself being an awkward and misuderstood shotgun wedding between prose and illustration.

AMVs, the shorthand for Anime Music Videos, are an entirely different story if you subscribe to the popular perception of them (if you even really know what they are). The idea is that you splice together footage from the anime of your choosing with the song of your choosing to create a homebrew music video.

Interestingly enough, it’s been a quiet but self sustaining offshoot of anime fandom for well over a decade, and one that I was intimately connected with between 2002 and 2004, having completed four of them during that time. So when I got to talking with Ben about doing this column we decided to tackle the first one from two perspectives: mine as a creator and his as a critic.

Ben: So, here’s my debut post at Binary Culture. I’m Ben Levy, the AMV guy. I want to put one thing forward first of all. I have never made an AMV. I have ideas, but I’ve never made any of my own. My articles will not tell how to make AMVs, except in pointing out common problems and things to think about. Much of the technical know-how, I don’t have. What I’ll be doing is discussing things to consider, as well as other elements of AMV creation. As such, all of the examples I will draw on are not done by me. I’ll cite who they are done by, and I’ll seriously suggest going over to animemusicvideos.org to sign up and download the higher quality videos instead of the Youtube versions.

Anyways, I’ll begin with what is most often the first element that comes about in creating an AMV; song choice. There are many ways to chose songs. Perhaps the series comes first: it can be an old favourite or something new. Whatever it is, though, you know the series and you’ve decided to make it into an AMV. Now, what song to use is the question. Or maybe you hear a song and realize in a sudden epiphany that you must make an AMV for it. It is like a calling. Inevitable. You are going to make an AMV. In this article, we’ll take a look at what to consider when you’re deciding to build the foundation of your AMV.

First of all, let’s all take a minute to look at this
image.


See that? Good. Then let’s get one thing straight. Don’t make a Linkinball Z video. While there’s no real rule against using a very common song, it does get a little tiring to constantly see videos to the same song, often with little innovation to them. Before settling on a choice, it might be a good idea to take a look through Animemusicvideos.org and see whether or not the idea has been done. It’s not that you can’t do it if someone else has, but if there are 30+ videos for the same anime and song, you might want to reconsider.

So, how do you find that perfect song for your AMV? It depends greatly on whether or not you have some idea of what kind of music video you want to make. Let’s try looking at an example here and seeing their choice of song.

Mark: The first thing I do whenever I make an AMV is take a look at the stats page at AMV.org to see just how many other people have used the same song or combination because there’s little sense in doing the thousandth Linkinball Z video. Besides, just because a lot of people do a certain video, it doesn’t mean that it’s a good idea, thus the concept of suitability. The phenomenon of Linkinball Z videos has nothing to do with shared themes or mood, but mutually exclusive popularity among the most populous demographic making AMVs.

For almost every popular anime there’s a ridiculously overdone song that has very little to no commonality with the anime itself. Probably the most notorious one is System of a Down’s “Chop Suey” set to Neon Genesis Evangelion, ostensibly because of the single line “I cry when angels deserve to die,” which is in itself a gross misinterpretation of just what the “angels” in Evangelion actually are. As Ben’s examples show, suitability is an incredibly important aspect of making an AMV. It’s the easiest way to either engage or disgust the viewer. That, and given the nature of the internet, the vast majority of the viewings of your video will be unconsciously be done following the post modern doctrine of “the author is dead.” Let the video justify your creative choices for you.



“Material Girl”
AMV Creator: Phade

Now, assuming that the link worked properly, you should be able to see the video above this. As a brief summary for those who might not know, the video centers around Nabiki Tendo, a character from Ranma ½ obsessed with making as much money as possible and extorts money from all of the other characters fairly routinely. So, you take a character like that and set them to a song like “Material Girl,” with lyrics well suited to the character and their actions through the series. For this article, I’m not going to discuss lip sync or editing or how those play to the video specifically as much as I am the fundamental choice itself. Those discussions will come in another article. In this video, we have a clear link between song and series. The link is based upon the explicit lyrics of the song and their relation to at least one factor of the series. In this case, it is a specific character. It can relate to more broad things than single characters, like to the show as a whole, to a certain arc, or to just some other specific item in the series. Characters tend to be the ones most often used. This is a good, focused method of choosing a song. Now, this doesn’t always lend itself to some subjects. With the focus that many lyric based song choices give you, it makes it harder to do certain areas of focus, such as action, where the general spirit of the song and series are tied together.

On that note, let’s take a look at what exactly I mean by that.



“Eternal Damnation
AMV Creator: NHMK

Here we have a virtually lyric-less song. Naturally, without lyrics, it’s somewhat hard to match the lyrics to an object within a series. Even in music with lyrics, sometimes they are ignored in favor of focusing on the music itself. With videos like this, the focus is on the music and how it feels. The music must tie itself to the series in such a way that fits them both (or doesn’t, if you’re going for parody or something else to that effect). Here is a prime example of that. It’s somewhat harder to point to something clear-cut tying the two together, as was simple with Nabiki and her materialism. The must just feels right when you listen to the two of them together. It seems, with this one, as though the music and video, despite no clear link, were made to go together. Part of that naturally is the editing, but I’ll be going on to how editing makes the video some other time. For now, even just taking Hellsing and the atmosphere of the series and putting it alongside Pompeii, the two mesh. It feels right in the viewer’s mind, without any clear link between lyrics and source.

However, rarely do things break down this neatly. Most of the time, good AMVs are a mesh of these things. They not only tie to lyrics, but the feeling of the video fits as well. Let’s look at a few more and see how this is.



“CHIHUAHUA!”
AMV Creator: K-Type

Hmm…so here, there is both the feel of the video as well as some connection between lyrics and series. Many times, when a series ties the lyrics in, the feel of the song works as well. Naturally, this isn’t always the case, but it is quite common. So, why do I file this one here in the “elements of both” category? Because the AMV is not wholly tied to the song and the lyrics of the song. Oh, certainly, the video plays with it and makes much use of the lyrics, but the entire video doesn’t just revolve around them. The instrumental segments and the feel the music produces work wonders in the construction of the appeal of this AMV. Thus, since it doesn’t rely as heavily upon lyrics to make its case (as Nabiki did), I have placed it here. It depends on the lyrics enough to add to the video substantially (especially once how they designed the video is factored in)



“Engel”
AMV Creator: Kevin Caldwell

Here’s a conundrum. What do we do with this music video? It has lyrics, but they’re in another language with no translation. Videos in a language you do not understand makes in infinitely harder to look at how the lyrics themselves tie into a video. At least here, the connection, if not the meaning, is quite obvious, though their putting the words into the mouth of Asuka. Thus, we have the object of the lyrics. So, now what? Normally, we would then look at how the lyrics are used to construct the video, but I at least can’t do that, since I don’t speak German. Some of the meaning comes across quite well, but for much of it, we fall back upon the feeling of the video. The lyrics themselves almost fall into the feeling of the video, as the song can’t be understood. Part of what was meant through the lyrics comes across through how they are applied, but deeper meaning and ties are denied, which means that the song can’t be put into the lyric-based AMV category.



“Stargazing”
AMV Creator: JaddziaDax

Figure I ought to have at least one Shoujo series in here for an example. Now, from some of the previous arguments and discussion, it might seem that feeling and lyrics are opposites of each other and can’t be found as much or as effectively together. This isn’t true. The two aren’t true and rely on each other quite often to create a final work. The lyrics in this example tie back to a great feeling that can be found all through Cardcaptor Sakura. They don’t tie as explicitly to one thing (except for Sakura, somewhat), but the mood fits excellently between the song, the lyrics, and the series. This is exactly the sort of synergy that makes some of the best music videos. The lyrics have their purpose, both relating to specifically how the video is edited as well as why it was put together, but they alone to not establish the entire basis for the video. It is supplemented with the feel of the music and the series. When taken all together, the two merge perfectly, relying wholly on neither, but working very well together to make a whole video.

In the end, all it comes down to is a sense of rightness between song and video. This categorization and analysis is all well and good, but sometimes, you’ve just got to find something that just works and a match. Tying lyrics is good, feel of the song is good, but sometimes, you just get a combination of video and song that just works. Whatever the cause, if you have that, you have your foundation. Furthermore, it’s very hard to separate the video from the music sometimes, especially when viewing it as one. The editing of the video is just as important for the construction of how an AMV comes across as the song choice, if not more so. The best combination of song and series means nothing if the video is unwatchable. If you spend forever working on and editing your video to perfection, but the song choice makes no sense, it won’t be nearly as effective as otherwise. Thus, next time, we’ll be looking at how specific editing can work with the feeling and mood of an AMV, and how it may be similarly abused therein.