Anime Vids for Media Fans

Jun 18, 2006 00:57

(Note: this was going to be a contribution to an UnCon vidshow, but it got out of hand. Badly out of hand. So I figured I'd post it here and spare all the virtual con-goers a lot of scrolling ( Read more... )

vids, anime

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scintilla72 February 7 2007, 15:36:58 UTC
> You don't need to leave feedback. That's kind of a controversial statement, but - anime vidders seem to want, and get, very detailed opinions from other fans, and by "detailed" I mean "you need, at minimum, a master's degree from a reputable film school in order to give them."

NO! Please, no! Please do not think that the only written opinions we care about are the long, detailed, often boring ones!

Speaking as an AMV editor, I know I really appreciate any written review the viewers deign to leave me, no matter how constructive, and I know I'm not the only one. In fact, I much prefer them to the star scale scores.

Please, everyone, even if it's just to say "I loved it", leave more reviews. You'll make some editor's day.

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thefourthvine February 7 2007, 19:48:19 UTC
Ooo, interesting!

Vid feedback is a subject that fascinates me. And I've definitely been wrong before - see, um, that whole post I just linked for details - about what vidders want and don't want in terms of feedback; like, before I did the project that post describes, I didn't realize just how much live-action vidders didn't get comments or feedback. (Compared to fan fiction, I mean - a story in a given fandom will get way more feedback than a vid of the same quality in the same fandom.) And I also didn't realize how much they wanted those comments, even from uninformed non-vidder types. (Which is what I am.)

But anime vidders have always struck me as a different bunch, and that's not a totally uninformed opinion; I know a couple of them, and they don't seem very interested in "I liked this!" type comments. And, of course, there's the Guide to Opinions, which I've actually read several times (and once - but only once - attempted to follow), and which I tend to summarize in my own mind as, "Leave feedback, damn it. But it had ( ... )

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scintilla72 February 7 2007, 20:55:59 UTC
> So these things lead me - or have led me - to believe that most AMV makers don't want unconstructive praise from people they don't know. I've wondered if this is because of the differences between live-action vidding and AMV making; for AMVs, there are contests and there are winners, plus there are the star rankings, so there's a sort of internal system for creating a hierarchy, and to ascend in that hierarchy, you need approval from other AMVers.

What people have to remember about the AMV community is that the great majority of Org members are just doing it for fun. They don't care about the contests, they don't care about the heirarchy, they don't care about my car, they don't care about my money, and some of them don't even care about getting constructive criticism (some of them can't even handle it). My impression of the average AMVer is pretty similar to my impression of the average fanfic writer ( ... )

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thefourthvine February 8 2007, 00:19:29 UTC
I think the reason people forget this is because it's the minority, the people who DO really get into the whole competitive aspect, that tends to do most of the talking there.

This is an excellent point, and one I should have considered but hadn't: the most visible do not necessarily represent the majority.

My impression of the average AMVer is pretty similar to my impression of the average fanfic writer.

From the outside, the AMV world looks so different from the FF world. (Also from the outside, the live-action vidding world looks a lot like the fan fiction world, but that's not surprising; they have a very tightly interlinked history.) And yet, well, obviously the two groups share a common interest in breaking copyright for fun, not profit, and sincere love of their chosen canon. One thing I don't see in the AMV world is the multilayered community aspect, but then, I wouldn't, would I? I'm not in the AMV community ( ... )

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scintilla72 February 8 2007, 01:01:48 UTC
> One thing I don't see in the AMV world is the multilayered community aspect...

Not quite sure what you mean by "multilayered community", but then, I'm not in the vidding or FF communities, so.

If you mean social stratification, some people do claim that it exists, and some people don't. Some claim that there's an "elite" group of friends that you have to get famous in order to get into, which usually prompts those who are perceived as being on that level to say that there is no such "inner circle" and that they really don't mind meeting other AMVers of all skill levels.

If you mean in terms of Internet presence, there is the Org, which was always meant to be a one stop shop -- a warehouse for every AMV in existence as well as a centralized hub for the community... but plenty of AMVers and AMV production groups have their own websites with their own fora, etc., and there are always people out there who haven't heard of any of them. (And then, in recent years, there's things like YouTube.)

> Of course, that makes me wonder why ( ... )

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thefourthvine February 8 2007, 01:46:04 UTC
Not quite sure what you mean by "multilayered community", but then, I'm not in the vidding or FF communities, so.

What I meant by multilayered - okay. With fan fiction and live-action vidding, especially on LJ, fannish interaction becomes a springboard to personal interaction; we make friends, we post about our lives (well, except that I don't post about my life very much, but I am most definitely the outlier, there), we eventually interact on levels that have nothing to do with fannish activities. Eventually, we move on to other fandoms and other activities, but we tend to stay in touch with our old friends ( ... )

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scintilla72 February 8 2007, 02:51:28 UTC
Re. multilayering: Ah, okay. That also seems to happen an okay bit in the AMV world: people start interacting online, then meet each other IRL at cons, and the same sort of thing happens... at least, that seems to hold true for the people on my friends list. I mean, two of them even got an apartment together, and I think they met via the AMV community, but I could be wrong.
It probably happened more back in the days of the Off Topic forum, which Phade had originally started in order to help AMVers get to know each other better... come to think of it, I guess he was trying to promote exactly this kind of phenomenon. But in late 2003, I think it was, they closed that board due to abuse that was getting out of hand.

You should see some of the conversations that people have across their a-m-v.org journals... often bizarre, random, and having nothing to do with vidding. (And some complain that the journals were never meant to be used as a chat room...)

> Seriously? Wow. It was the second thing I read once I joined.Well, for all I ( ... )

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thefourthvine February 8 2007, 20:10:23 UTC
Well, for all I know, it may be more popular with those who don't talk on the fora.

In general, online, I've found that there are people who read to figure things out and people who post so they don't have to figure things out. This is why, in any community, you can have a giant red banner across every page reading "THE ANSWER IS RABBIT," and require people to click on a statement that reads "You know the answer is rabbit, right?" and you will still have posts reading, "Ive ben searchin 4ever WHATS THE ANSER."

Lurkers, on the other hand, can't ask questions; it would require them to come out of lurkerdom. So they read whatever is available and figure it out on their own. Or not.

So, on AMV, my guess is that the people who read the guides are the turtles like me, who avoid the forum and interaction in general. Which means that those guides are all the information those people get about the anime music video culture and community. It makes for a very different picture.

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kalium February 8 2007, 19:47:39 UTC
Seriously? You guys don't talk about feedback? That's, like, one of the main topics of discussion in these parts; you can pretty much set your watch by feedback meta, and your calendar by feedback wank.

One of the hallmark differences between the generic vidding community (such as it is) and the AMV community is the amount of meta. The former is chock full of it to an extent I sometimes find difficult to believe. The latter tends not to discuss it in a general sense, except for the rare occasions where it crops up. Or some guy writes down his thoughts on it.

Anyway, the general opinion on feedback seems to be "that which helps me improve is good". Of course, my exposure is somewhat biased, but there you have it.

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thefourthvine February 8 2007, 20:48:26 UTC
The former is chock full of it to an extent I sometimes find difficult to believe.

Oh my god, so true. This is likely because, well, the live-action vidders mostly came from (and often are still in) fan fiction based fandom, and if there's one thing fan fiction folks do more than write stories about our favorite characters, it's write about why and how we write stories about our favorite characters. And why and how everything else even tangentially related to writing, too.

Compared to fan fiction, live-action vidding is actually under meta'd, if I may coin a really horrible verb. Which means that to the average fan fiction fan who is used to reading metafandom, it's completely bewildering how little meta there is about AMVs.

Anyway, the general opinion on feedback seems to be "that which helps me improve is good". Of course, my exposure is somewhat biased, but there you have it.

*thoughtful*

Actually, the general opinion seems to break down into precisely the same categories, and in roughly the same ratios, as opinion about feedback in ( ... )

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ersatzinsomnia February 8 2007, 22:38:09 UTC
Which means that to the average fan fiction fan who is used to reading metafandom, it's completely bewildering how little meta there is about AMVs.

Well, there is meta (by which I figure you mean "amvs about amving/amvers") but it may not be immediately obvious unless you've been digging around in AMVs for a while. Hell, AWA's grand prize Expo winner this year was Brian's Song, and the whole thing is an enormous in-joke. Most of the meta stuff, though, is disguised so that most viewers will still think it funny without understanding it. Similarly, dokidoki's Hello Fairy video is actually a meta commentary about the "Hell" trend, but is pretty hilarious in all other respects too. (See also doki's Sunshine Lollipops and RRRrrrr.) The "Hell" vids themselves could be considered somewhat meta. And, of course, there's plenty of "meta" commentary about anime trends in amvs... jokes on similarities between shows, the predictability of stories, the lameness of it's fans. (Don't mean to be boosting Doki so much, he's just who came to ( ... )

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thefourthvine February 9 2007, 00:17:43 UTC
Okay, first, I just have to ask: how did you find this? I'm delighted to have you weighing in on this topic, but this is the tail-end of the comments section of an ancient post that I'm not even sure how Scintilla found, so I'm also confused.

Well, there is meta (by which I figure you mean "amvs about amving/amvers") but it may not be immediately obvious unless you've been digging around in AMVs for a while.

Oh, good point. I should've specified "written meta." Because, of course, AMVs have a fantastic amount of meta-in-the-form-of-AMVs - they just don't seem to have the same number of essays about AMV making, and the AMV world, and and and. (Live-action vidders do meta vids, too, but the difference in terms of meta essays - well, unless I'm missing a major source of AMV meta writing, we're talking about many orders of magnitude ( ... )

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scintilla72 February 9 2007, 00:32:28 UTC
> I'm delighted to have you weighing in on this topic, but this is the tail-end of the comments section of an ancient post that I'm not even sure how Scintilla found, so I'm also confused.

Oh, sorry about that... I probably should have mentioned that the LJ multifandom RP community campfuckudie's OOC community, campersfuckoff, had an AMV-pimping post, and somebody linked to both of your AMV recommendation posts, partially for the AMVs but also because they were good reading.

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ersatzinsomnia February 9 2007, 01:17:31 UTC
Okay, first, I just have to ask: how did you find this?

Heh. I followed dwchang who followed Scintilla. Dunno how dwchang found you.

they just don't seem to have the same number of essays about AMV making, and the AMV world, and and and.

Hmm... have you been through the "journal" function on the .org? Is that the sort of thing you're talking about? Or is it more a matter of circulated essays?

But, hmm. There seems to be less of a cultural directive in AMVs about appropriate feedback and comment behavior.Heh. With all the highschoolers and teenagers we get flooding in, it's hard to keep anything like a "cultural consensus." If y'all manage it, my hat's off to you. I'm feeling more and more like the cranky old guy shouting at the kids on his lawn, but my impression is that the hobby has very suddenly skewed younger as I've gotten older, and brought a lot of teen angst & HS bullshit with it. On the other hand, it's also skewed more international, so you take the good with the bad. (New perspectives are helping to revitalize ( ... )

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ersatzinsomnia February 9 2007, 01:21:33 UTC
Oh for heaven's sake...

The link I'd been given before was a "reply thread" that only showed a dozen or so replies. I've probably repeated half the stuff others have said above, trying to be helpful.

Sorry for the repetition.

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thefourthvine February 9 2007, 02:46:55 UTC
Oh, god. I'm going to have to split this comment on you. Sorry!

Hmm... have you been through the "journal" function on the .org? Is that the sort of thing you're talking about? Or is it more a matter of circulated essays?

From what I've seen (limited), the "journal" function appears to be used (by those who use it at all) kind of like we use our LJs - a combination of thinky posts, personal posts, random personal messages, and stuff relating to our various fanworks.

When I say meta, I mean - ummmm. Okay, the first example would be metafandom, which is a newsletter. (And I'm going to define that, just in case you don't know what it is - I'm trying to remember our jargon doesn't always mesh. A newsletter is a LJ comm where a small group of editors rounds up all the relevant links for a given fandom or fannish topic and posts them on a daily, semiweekly, or weekly basis; the vidding equivalent is, right now, veni_vidi_vids, where you can see all the live-action vids, meta, news, etc. gathered from around LJ and beyond.) So, metafandom rounds up all the links of ( ... )

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