That's Anime Music Videos for those who live under rocks.
ANYWAY!
I've loved AMVs since I first stumbled upon them back when the internet was still new to me and I was still watching Sailor Moon on Cartoon Network (oh god... so long ago). I had stumbled upon some really good ones that I have since lost in the number of hard drive changes and wipes and failures that I have suffered throughout the years.
That's what started this strange obsession with one and me trying to figure out how I could possibly make one. I had to give up, though, since I had a 28.8K modem and downloading the tools I needed was out of the question at the time.
Fast forward to me in college. I was casually watching anime, got obsessed with J-rock, and got a faster connection. I went on a downloading binge and stumbled over some fan-made music videos - and since I now had some footage and the perfect song had popped up on the radio a few weeks ago, all I had to do was get my hands on a video editor and I was set. One thing led to another, and I had made my first fan-made music video. This led to making a few more.
And once all the pieces fell into place I realized how much of a task video-editing was. My respect for people who make AMVs increased ten-fold.
Of course, I'm not talking about tossing some anime clips with a random song without any thought process. I'm talking about serious, sit down, making the song and clips work and flow together.
Example
About 3 seconds of a song takes about 3 hours of editing. That's not a joke. That's me being serious. Unless there's some kind of trick I have yet to discover - combing through your source files, finding just the right clip for the exact couple of seconds of music, then editing it to fit (slow down, speed up, lip syncing, etc), all of that takes a heck of a lot of time. I don't even do any of the fancy stuff like masking or effects. That kind of thing just makes my head hurt just by thinking about it.
My mind. It's blown.
So. Long story short, I'm a bit obsessed. The fact that people are willing to sit down for hours at a time and finish one of these things is amazing to me. I've nearly had breakdowns trying to finish an AMV. I've even dragged other people down into the craziness to help me finish. The conversation essentially went like this:
"Oh! Oh! Use that clip!"
"Perfect! I'll just mess with the speed to get it to fit."
"Awesome. Now how much time was that?"
"Not even a second."
This was followed with my help curling up into the fetal position and praying to whatever God that may exist that the next 360 seconds would pass quickly. And they never do.
If I can find a decent one, I'm happy. If I can find a good one, I'm ecstatic.
If I can find a genuinely awesome one that has the perfect song with the perfect anime with perfect timing, I have found the holy grail of my geekery.
With the invention of AnimeMusicVideos.org, it's a lot easier to find these. If you're feeling brave, YouTube.com can yield some promising pieces.
So show me some of your favorites. I've been using AMVs as a form of anime trailers. That's how I got obsessed with Soul Eater.
But that's a story for a different day.
Coming Soon:
This is the first of October, which means I'm in countdown mode for the Miyavi concert that's coming up in Chicago at the end of the month. So I'm going to dub the rest of this month Miyavi month. Coming to another blog post after this one.
