Cowboy Bebop
© Sunrise
Anime Music Videos: Doing it Right
By: Nadia OxfordDate: Thursday, March 13, 2008
If there's any internet-shared hobby that deserves the scorn it so frequently receives, it's anime music videos (AMVs). Combining anime and popular music should yield nothing but cool results every time, and yet the venture goes hideously wrong all too often.
AMV construction actually pre-dates the internet, but the hobby unsurprisingly took a slide into Suckville with the advent of YouTube, downloadable free music and easy to use video editing software. Gone was the need to operate boat-sized VHS editing suites. In was the era of teenage expression through fuzzy Naruto footage completely mismatched with some overplayed song by Limp Bizkit.
Take heart: Good AMVs still exist in a surprising quantity. An AMV contest hosted by any moderately sized anime convention is always well worth attending. Fans still have great ideas. There just needs to be more effort to let the good stuff rise to the top instead of the—well, you doubtlessly know how the expression goes.
A little variety never hurts, either. Here are five excellent videos that try new concepts:
Failed Experiments in Video Editing – Cowboy Bebop
More of a minimalist animation than an actual AMV, Failed Experiments in Video Editing is a fantastic parody about AMV creation. The author struggles to put together an epic Cowboy Bebop AMV, but in her haze of enthusiasm she forgets certain essentials...such as plotting a concept. There are some valuable lessons to be learned here. Entertaining and educational!
This Is Your Life – Dragon Ball Z
One problem that stinks up modern AMVs is that they're often cobbled together by people who lack the basic rhythm and storytelling abilities needed to match video with music. The result is a thoughtless stream of video that's irrelevant to the video at hand—or, on the opposite end of the spectrum, it's far too literal and every single lyric matches some action in the video. This Is Your Life strikes a perfect balance between the two extremes, delivering a beautifully-timed AMV that matches sound and motion. Then again, the Fight Club soundtrack pairs up nicely with Dragon Ball Z any day of the week, though you wouldn't believe it until you watched this video.
Right Now – Various Animes
This video parodies Van Halen's famous music video for “Right Now.” It's a really cute idea and it's very nicely done, but admittedly it's also a little dated from a fandom point of view. In fact, parts of it are outright obnoxious (Right Now, making fun of “clueless” American fans is 150% less relevant than it was in 1999), but take this as a lesson on how to make a make a parody that's different, fun...and ages well.
Naruto's Technique Beat – Naruto
If you're going to flip out and go nuts with Adobe Aftereffects, here's a shining example on how to do it right. Through impressive editing, a “drone” investigates the power levels of Naruto's team and relays them to an interested party. It's an original idea done very well.
Tainted Doughnuts (Trigun / Cowboy Bebop)
Now here's a tricky little venture: Splicing two anime series into one. Definitely for advanced publishers who've at least learned that AMV footage with subtitles is a bad idea.
Tainted Doughnuts tells a charming story: Space cowboy Spike from Cowboy Bebop receives word of the giant bounty on Vash the Stampede from Trigun. He's off like a shot, and by the end the two outlaws are struggling against each other in an epic fight—despite never appearing in the same anime. Worth a watch, absolutely.
Next week's column will offer further tips on how not to screw up your AMV. Also appearing: Bonus examples of videos that don't demonstrate any particular skill except how to make something that just plain rocks.
It should be noted that not just Anime gets this treatment. You can find TONS of Buffy music videos, Supernatural ones, movies and comic images - pretty much anything you can think of!
will.i.am did one to Senator Obama's "Yes We Can" speech in South Carolina, after all.
Good article!