Anime Vids for Media Fans

[thefourthvine]

(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.)

Anime vids are wonderful. And they are totally worth watching even if you don't watch anime.

For one thing, they're very, very pretty. I tend to think of them as the way live-action vids will look in a few years. (Anime is easier to work with, and especially to do effects on, than live-action source. I think. I mean, Jesus, don't take my word for it, since all forms of vidding look equally - i.e., infinitely - difficult to me. If you want actual facts, though, I'm guessing you'll be reading another LJ, or at any rate another post. This post will not be fact-intensive.)

For another, they are surprisingly accessible to the non-anime watcher. When we started watching anime vids, Best Beloved (my unindicted co-conspirator in all vid watching; I need a co-conspirator because I am, basically, very very slow on the uptake) and I had not seen any anime at all. And, sure, we had some conversations like:

Me: Um. How many characters are there in this vid?

BB: Four? There's, let's see. Purple hair guy, blue hair guy, green hair guy, and blond hair guy. Four.

Me: Those are guys?

BB: Only their doctors know for sure.

[There is a pause.]

BB: Well, and the character that's feeling the other character up right now probably knows, too. Or maybe he just isn't very picky.

[There is another pause as we watch two people with fabulous hair make out while flying through air filled with cherry blossoms.]

Me: My god, this is like watching a documentary about salt water fish. They're very pretty and very colorful and completely mystifying.

But we also watched a lot of vids in stunned, awed silence. In many cases, we understood what was going on perfectly - making out while flying through air filled with cherry blossoms is pretty much a universal experience, after all. Sometimes, we were just hypnotized by the pretty. And eventually we acquired a basic understand of anime themes and tropes:

[We watch Girl A shoot Girl B.]

Me: So now they're gonna kiss, right?

[We watch Girl A kiss Girl B.]

BB: I guess some things really are universal.

And:

Me: Hey, look! It's a Gunfighter Who Walks Alone!

BB, nodding appreciatively: He walks a lonely road. It's only him and he walks alone.

Me: ...Except for that girl right there in the sailor outfit.

BB: And the three talking yellow circles with beaks and triangle feet.

In short, we began to trust anime vidders and love anime vids. (Not to mention the actual anime itself, which turns out to be a) good and b) fun. Or so Best Beloved tells me; since the last disc of Trigun, I've stuck to just the vids.)

And if I can understand anime vids, anyone can. Even the salt water fish would have decent odds. So. Give me a chance to persuade you, okay?

First - and LJ-cut for those of you who already know it - I present two guides for any beginners out there.

Things It Would've Been Really Useful to Know Before I Started Watching Anime Vids

1. Boobs are key. If a character has boobs, she's female. If a character doesn't have boobs, no matter how pretty or androgynous he is, he's probably male. If two people are kissing and you'd like to know what sex they are, count boobs. Four boobs? It's a lesbian kiss. No boobs? It's a gay kiss. Eleven boobs? Send me the link.
   
   
2. It's just a frame. It doesn't mean what you think. Because, see, in live-action vids, if it's on the screen, it happened. Maybe in the canon, maybe in the Super Extended Ultra Slashy Edition, maybe in the outtakes, but it happened somewhere.
   
   In anime, well, not so much. Anime vidders can use effects to make characters from different canons talk to each other. They can remove key elements from scenes, like other characters. They can add key elements to scenes, like someone doing something very obscene with her tongue. They can - and will - make the characters lip sync to the music. (Yes, it looks weird to someone who is used to watching live-action vids. At the beginning, it threw me right out of the vid, because, really - what are the odds that the Giant Robot Spaceship Fighter from the 23rd Century just happens to be a big fan of Nickelback? But you'll get used to it. After a while, it will even begin to seem natural for an extremely pretty boy to work through his issues by kicking the shit out of his enemies while singing "Feelings." When you reach this state, it is time to go back to live-action vids.)
   
   
3. If you are on dial-up, anime vids are not for you. Anime vidders think nothing of uploading an 80 MB three minute vid. So much so that I've reached a point where I'm vaguely suspicious of any anime vids smaller than 30 MB. (I find myself squinting narrowly at the download box and thinking, "What did you cut, exactly, to get it down that small?" But this is very wrong and size queeny of me and I'm well aware of it.)
   
   
4. Anime vidders are like magpies: very drawn to the shiny. They like bright colors and flashing frames and scenes where 18 characters from different fandoms do the funky chicken. After a while, you'll like it, too. Or you'll have an epileptic seizure. One or the other.

A Nearly Useless Guide to AMV.org

1. AnimeMusicVideos.org: it's where the vids are. This is the best vid site ever. All the links below, and almost all of the anime vid links I'll ever provide, will go there. You can download vids from AMV until your bandwidth sobs openly and holds an intervention. But you need to register for an account first. Registration is free, and they don't molest your email address or anything. (As far as I know.)
   
   Plus, once you have an account, it will track the vids you download - you'll never download something twice. And when you've rated some vids - which you have to do every ten downloads - you can get suggestions of other ones you might like. Seriously, it's very neat. Also, there are forums. I don't visit them, mind you, on account of my tragic allergy to other people, but I'm sure they're wonderful.
   
   
2. 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." If you have such a degree, I encourage you to go check out ZeWrestler and Iserlohn's Guide to Opinions. Everyone else, well. My advice is to just use the star ratings on AMV, and concentrate your actual written feedback on live-action vidders. You don't need an eight chapter guide to do that.
   
   
3. There is a part of each vid page where the creator can talk about the vid. Skip it. Okay, no. Don't skip it. Read it. Because this is my issue, totally; it's just - when I started watching anime vids, there was nothing like the creator-talks section to make me feel like I needed to go somewhere more suitable for a person such as myself. Like, for example, a Gymboree. But I'm sure these things are actually very informative and useful, and I'm also sure I'm an idiot for posting vid recs without reading the creator's discussion of each one. And I am surprisingly comfortable with that.
   
   My real message about this is: don't read those sections until after you watch the vid. Reading what the vidder has to say will bias you; I found I could never quite come to my own terms with vids when I already knew what the creator was intending to do. Admittedly, my terms were generally a lot more like, "Oooo. Vid pretty" rather than "And then, in the section that starts at about 1.14 (with the marimba), it transitions to an overall theme of the despair of the human condition," but, well. They were still my terms.

So. Great vids. Accessible to all. Do you need another reason? Then try this: anime has a huge preponderance of ninjas, pirates, cowboys, gunslingers, assassins, robots, gay boys, lesbian girls, purple hair, and floating chicken-computer librarians. It has genderfuck, pandafication, angst, hurt/comfort, and more feathers than you could find in an entire archive of wingfic. Basically, anime is like all the glorious parts of fan fiction made canon. And anime vids pack these same things into four minutes. Anime vids: the primary reason you will never be bored again.

Bachelorette, by Kusoyaro. Revolutionary Girl Utena: the Adolescence of Utena. (More information about this movie. Thanks, strangerian!)

The source for this has canon genderfuck femslash (I told you it was like fan fiction in motion!) and, well, who doesn't love canon genderfuck femslash? Not me, people; when I'm in meetings where I have to introduce myself and list three things I love, "canon genderfuck femslash" always makes the list, generally preceded by "canon genderfuck boyslash" and "copyright infringement for fun, not profit." I am so professional it hurts.

But I want you to see this one because of the movement. It's - this is one of the first anime vids I ever watched that completely hypnotized me; I had to watch it three times just to get to the point where I start with most vids. (Which is, basically, asking who and what and where and why and also what is up with all the rose petals?) It's just...it's really, really gorgeous, without having that kind of "I'm going to use another effect here because it's anime so I can nyah nyah nyah" feel that anime vids sometimes get. Am I allowed to say a vid is lyrical? Probably not. So, okay - this is, in effect, an instrumental type vid; yes, there are lyrics, but the vid's focus is matching music and images, not words and images or plot and images. I'm not sure exactly why the creator went that direction, but oh how it works, and it requires absolutely no background knowledge at all.

Urban Ragnarok, by jbone. Metropolis.

I'm not sure why it is, but Metropolis (the anime) has produced so many excellent vids it should have been a struggle to pick one. But it wasn't, because this vid wins at everything: effects, music, cutting, tone, beat, depth, everything. I mean, the mood switches alone are just...and also, OMG, the content, and...see? I'm incoherent. This vid will do that to you. You need to see this, and I don't care if you've never heard of either Metropolis.

(Although if you have, and it's the live-action Metropolis - okay. Everyone who has a degree in film, please move on to the next vid summary right now. The rest of you - if you stared in total bewilderment at Fritz Lang's Metropolis and finally agreed that it was a brilliant classic just to get the person who showed it to you to shut up before your brains ran out your nose, this vid will hold a special extra pleasure for you. There are no very fuzzy scenes of random jerky people doing something that, yes, might be an allegory for the human condition in a technological society, but also might very well be an early version of the Frug. And the amazing visuals? Are actually there. If you watched Metropolis like I watched Metropolis - at the behest of a person with an unexpected sadistic streak, basically - then this vid will heal your soul.)

Here Comes the Sun, by Daniel Chang. Multifandom.

This is a gorgeous tribute to Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli (makers of Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Howl's Moving Castle, Kiki's Delivery Service, etc.). There's no special reason you need to have seen any of the sources to see this vid, although if you ever tell a real anime fan you've never seen a Ghibli movie you will bring pain into the universe. Possibly your own pain. (And also, roughly three times out of five, you'll get an extensive lecture about the evils of Disney. Sometimes with PowerPoint presentations. And it's not that the anime fan will be wrong, it's just that after the first hour you will be searching desperately for the emergency eject button. Myself, I'd just lie.)

But. My point is, if you have seen some Ghibli - and I'd recommend at least Spirited Away - you'll know that they aren't all sunshine and roses (more of a flying and fantasy kind of thing, really), but this vid is pretty much pure sunshine. (Plus a lot of flying. It is Ghibli, after all.) It's sweet, sentimental, and gentle, and I defy anyone to get all the way through it without experiencing a certain warming of the heart. (Warning: this may be an unsettling experience for my fellow I'm-not-a-cynic-I'm-a-realists.) What I find most fascinating about this vid, though, is how using the works of a single studio with a consistent style provides visual and thematic continuity that you just don't get in most multifandom vids; these sources just go together in a way that becomes very, very clear when you see them next to each other.

Right Now Someone Is Reading This Title, by Doki Doki Productions. Multifandom.

This is a perfect bridge between media fandom and anime fandom. Because, okay, it's a series of in-jokes set against clips from about 50 sources, and it should be the least accessible thing in the world. But you don't need to know the sources, because 75% of the jokes are actually about fandom and fans. I get most of them even though I know nothing about anime or the anime fan world. Plus, it's one of the talkiest vids I've ever seen - in terms of words on the screen, I mean - that worked, and it works so well. That alone is downright amazing, because generally if there's more than a few words on the screen I find myself wondering why the vidder didn't just go ahead and write fan fiction. There are some stunningly brilliant exceptions to that, though, and this is one of them.

(Side note the first: watch for the appearance of the Disney/Ghibli - and I know what you're thinking, but trust me: no one should write that pairing - thing. You will feel cool! At least, you will if you are a dork like me.) (Side note the second: Best Beloved swears this song had an actual music video very much like this one. Can anyone point me to a download of it? Or something? Because there are wistful remarks every time I play this, and, seriously, there's only so much wistfulness a girl can stand.)

Die Another Day, by VicBond007. Noir.

I wanted to be sure to include at least one special effects intensive vid, and - well, wait. All of these are special effects intensive, most of them actually much more than this one, but this one has what I believe will be the most noticeable effects to a new watcher. It's fast, it's action-packed, and it's easy to follow even if you have no idea what Noir is about. (Assassins! Amnesiacs! I'm telling you, anime fans don't have to smoke crack, because the canon creators do it for them.) And you can really appreciate the sheer shininess of the tools that anime vidders have at their disposal.

Plus, okay. See - I have a weakness for pairings in which one person tries to kill the other but they love each other anyway. I'm sorry. I have no idea what twisted part of my psyche believes that true love means having to wear Kevlar. But I do know that this vid hits that kink in spades; sure, mostly they're fighting on the same side, but that opening scene where they're pointing guns at each other? My reaction to this is: OMG SQUEEEEEEEE THEY ARE SO IN LOVE! In other words, my inner fangirl totally emerges and starts drawing little hearts on the screen. (Those of you who have seen Trigun will now understand why I liked that series so much. Up until the last disc. Damn you, last disc!)

Failed Experiments in Video Editing, by Elizabeth Kirkindall/Big Big Truck Productions. Cowboy Bebop and original drawings.

You really don't need to know the source to get this vid, since it is in fact not about Cowboy Bebop, but I am providing a link so that those of you with any soul at all can add it to your Netflix queues. This series has Ein in it. Ein, possibly my favorite character in all the world. (And, oh my god, I just realized: there totally needs to be a Cowboy Bebop x due South story in which Ein and Diefenbaker, another of my favorite characters in all the world, meet. This is Meant to Be, people.)

So. This is what meta looks like in an anime vid; it's a vid about vidding. I'm sure this is even more funny if you have ever actually made a vid of any kind, but really you only have to have seen a couple, live action or anime, to appreciate, for example, the "Down in the River to Pray" sequence. This vid makes me happy when skies are gray. Or, more specifically, when I have watched too many vids in which the works of Evanescence are used to explore the theme that John really, really loves Rodney. (Or that Buffy really loves Angel, or that Diefenbaker really loves doughnuts. Whatever. Because that's the beauty of the Classic Evanescence Rite of Passage Vid: no matter what source you choose, you get a vid consistent in quality and theme with all other CERPVs.) And I'm actually trying to avoid saying anything more about the vid, for fear of spoiling it, so I think I'll go with the time-tested method of doing that and shut up. (Yes. You are allowed one relieved sigh. But only one.)

Comments

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

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 the fan fiction community. So you have:

1. Feedback is good. Any feedback; it's nice to know people are watching and liking my work. And if people want to throw in some extra reactions or thoughts or helpful criticism, that is also good. Yay feedback!
   
   
2. Feedback that helps me improve is good. Any feedback that says what did and didn't work is welcome, especially if said feedback is relatively rational and sane.
   
   
3. Only concrit is good. I only want detailed feedback from someone who really knows his stuff, that will greatly improve my work - basically, a beta after the fact.
   
   
4. Only praise is good. I don't want to hear any negative things about my thing that I work hard on, don't get paid for, and love very much. (Note: no one seems to be copping to having this opinion, but people are reporting unhappy encounters with many others who do have this opinion. This attitude, and its prevalence in all fanworks communities, is what has driven fan fiction from the now-legendary Letter of Comment - basically, an ex post facto beta - to the LJ comment: "Ooo, yay, loved it, especially [quote line] and [quote line]. Awesome!" With the corollary that if you can't say something nice, you don't say anything, except in certain defined circumstances.)
   
   
5. Whatever. I don't care. I have no interest in comments, feedback, or opinions.

The problem endlessly discussed in general feedback meta is the conflict between numbers 3 and 4. If you send concrit to someone who only wants praise, you have a) just wasted an hour of your time and b) pissed someone off. This isn't what you were hoping to do at all. (If you praise someone who just wants concrit, you've wasted only a few minutes of your time and his, which is a lot better. Plus, people have other ways of getting concrit (betas!), which is why LJ has become a mostly praise-only feedback community. It's the route of least wank, basically.)

And the problem endlessly discussed in vid feedback meta is the Viewer Problem. Most viewers don't have the tools and/or confidence to provide 3, and some won't even be able to provide 2, but everyone can provide 1 and 4. So the question becomes: what is better than nothing? Is any feedback (aside from trollishness and asshole comments) better than none? Or is there a minimum standard below which the feedback is worthless, or worse than worthless, and thus a waste of everyone's time?

My original thesis, based on some stuff I outlined to Scintilla above, was that there was indeed a minimum standard, and that in the AMV world that minimum standard was quite high - so high that a casual non-vidding viewer could never meet it. Scintilla's argument was, in effect, that that was untrue, that the minimum standard for AMV feedback was the same as for feedback anywhere (comprehensible and not trollish, basically).

For my next trick, I'm going to try leaving some feedback and see what happens.

(And now you see how come there is all this meta about live-action vidding and fan fiction: the people involved in it, even peripherally, cannot shut up. (Guilty!))

[ersatzinsomnia.livejournal.com]

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 (http://www.animemusicvideos.org/members/members_videoinfo.php?v=97676), 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 (http://www.animemusicvideos.org/members/members_videoinfo.php?v=130950) 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 (http://www.animemusicvideos.org/members/members_videoinfo.php?v=24001).) 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 (http://www.animemusicvideos.org/members/members_videoinfo.php?v=127902). (Don't mean to be boosting Doki so much, he's just who came to mind in the "meta" category.)

(And one more meta vid I just have to plug, 'cause I'm in it...this one (http://www.animemusicvideos.org/members/members_videoinfo.php?v=24533).)

On the other topics... I dunno what to tell you about the comments. As a contest director I figured out a while ago that it would be a conflict for me to do extensive commenting on vids I might eventually have to judge, so I bowed out of that aspect. I think your impression about the complexity of the comments desired might be true to a larger extent in AMVs than for vidders, largely because the AMV community expanded so rapidly to enormous dimensions, and yet remained largely centralized. That means when a really popular vid does the rounds the editor can just get mobbed with people gushing over the vid, with very little interesting to say. Then, since everyone's looking in their direction, everyone sees when they pay much more attention to someone with a detailed review instead of a simple "good work" comment.

However, back when I was doing feedback, I found that AMVers who hadn't made it into the spotlight were very appreciative of my reviews, would go back and forth a couple of times in discussion, and beam in their journals about getting a review. Our version of your "big names" may be doing vids with a more specific audience in mind (specific amvers & friends) while newcomers are more apt to throw their vid out into the world, hoping to attract any attention they could get.

As for elitists... yeah that seems pretty universal. In AMVs it's mostly that the "old schoolers" were a pretty tightly-knit group for three or four years when stuff like the contests started coming out. Time allowed for drama & personality conflicts to fragment it, but more importantly the flood of new blood all wanting to be best buds with the "old schoolers" became difficult to deal with on an individual basis. Regional cliques formed, pseudo-factions broke out on the message boards, and we oldest and most bitter of amvers started retiring. It's not really elitism, it's just who we're good friends with.

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

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.)

This is one of those fannish language disconnects, I think; in this neck of fandom, when we say "meta," we definitely mean essays unless we tag another noun on there, like "meta vid" or whatever. (And, although we have vids that are commenting on vidding, the most famed meta vid is actually a vid commenting on being a fan.) I keep forgetting that there's a fannish jargon barrier.

I think your impression about the complexity of the comments desired might be true to a larger extent in AMVs than for vidders, largely because the AMV community expanded so rapidly to enormous dimensions, and yet remained largely centralized.

So, basically, comments on AMVs are, at least in that respect, a lot more like comments on fan fiction - the pattern you're describing is precisely what's happened as fan fiction fandom has exploded over the past six years. (Only the last three of which I was around for; I'm relatively new here.)

But, hmm. There seems to be less of a cultural directive in AMVs about appropriate feedback and comment behavior. Even though we argue it endlessly, there are definite unspoken rules about how you deal with feedback and comments (not to mention about a dozen massive, ongoing, never-to-be-resolved debates, and by "debates," I of course mean "vicious fights, often with severe casualities"). AMV makers don't seem to have a more-or-less shared general consensus about when and how you should leave opinions/comments/whatever or how you should respond to them.

Interesting.

It's not really elitism, it's just who we're good friends with.

Uh, yeah. We've got that, too. People go through stages in any hobby, and there's a time, usually when you're newer, when you're expanding your circle of acquaintances and making good friends, and then you come to a point where you don't have the time to do that anymore, so you pretty much just stick with the friends you have, adding one here and there when you can. And then, if you're one of the popular writers or vidders or whatever, people point and shout "clique" and "BNF."

Oh, fandom. We're so consistent in our wankiness. (But at least in AMVs you're probably spared the "mean girls from high school" discussions.)

[scintilla72.livejournal.com]

> 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.

[ersatzinsomnia.livejournal.com]

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 the creativity.) There's also a much higher turnover rate in the hobby lately... AMVing has become more like cosplay in that it's something fans consider they have to do qualify as real fans... rather than something a fan will do if they enjoy it.

People go through stages in any hobby...

Well, the difference is that there really was "a" group to start. The first "AMVer group." The very first AMVers (mid 80's on) all vaugely knew one another through the daisy-chain tape-trading circles that had cropped up in the 70's. But they really didn't know one another on a one-on-one basis. The advent of the AMV contests in the mid-to-late 90's, however, meant a place to go and show your work and actually MEET other AMVers. (Plus one of the contest heads made a massive effort to get 'em all down to Atlanta eventually.) And they, the ones that didn't burn out in a year, were a managable number... twenty or thirty people at most. Everyone really did get to know one another one-on-one, and formed a single all-inclusive group of friends who stayed together & hit all the cons for about four years. It was no exaggeration to say that you knew all the AMVers on the East or West coast. That's the group most AMVers refer to as the "old schoolers." The gradually increasing flood that the mailing list, ftp, then the website brought overwhelmed that ability. And then the trolls showed up & any pretense of our hobby being an "all for one" utopia blew up. (Hell, I could put a date to when that happened.) Anyrate, I kinda go into this here (http://ersatzinsomnia.livejournal.com/37517.html#cutid1) if you're at all interested.

But at least in AMVs you're probably spared the "mean girls from high school" discussions.

Well... I'm not familiar with the term. What does it mean?

[ersatzinsomnia.livejournal.com]

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.

[ersatzinsomnia.livejournal.com]

Sorry, sorry, I know this is necroposting, but I can't resist...

Memories. This is - okay, this is a fucking fabulous vid, and it would be no matter what the circumstances behind it. But then you learn that the vid was made in 1998, with VCRs and no digital editing, and your head explodes. BOOM!

There is a legendary figure, who shall only be referred to as "MM." MM did a video to the anime "Giant Robo." To the song "Turn on the Light" by Bad Religon.

This was a very fast song.

This song sped up at the end.

The penultimate scene used in the video had a man pulling back and slamming an energy cell into a generator with a grand dramatic motion. OVER this motion, in every third frame, was flashed a frame of other scenes of characters panicing from elsewhere in the series, climaxing as the power cell slammed home. Let me repeat. ONE FRAME edits.

1995.

TWO VCRs.

Hence the watchword of the oldest of oldschool AMVers. "WWMMD?" "He'd finish the fucking video, that's what!"

(Regrettably, video not available online (http://www.animemusicvideos.org/members/members_videoinfo.php?v=3997), as MM disappeared from the hobby years ago.)

(Sorry, trying to fix.)

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

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 people writing about fandom: essays, rants, whatever. Essentially, whenever fans are talking about some aspect of fannishness (in public, on LJ), metafandom is there.

Another example would be a post I linked Scintilla to, up above: this one (http://thefourthvine.livejournal.com/45633.html). This is a pretty typical fannish meta post, aside from the fact that I was a non-vidder talking about vidding. (Well, and also I can't shut up. Some meta is that long. But some people - people other than me - manage to come to a conclusion before their audience experiences verbiage-related brain damage, and so their meta is shorter.)

So I guess the short answer is "circulated essays," but it's important to know that most fans write them, and most fans read them, and there is a lot of discussion of them. And we write these essays on every topic possible. In extreme cases, we go the acafan route and publish anthologies (http://www.amazon.com/Fan-Fiction-Communities-Age-Internet/dp/0786426403/sr=1-1/qid=1170986538/ref=sr_1_1/002-9751280-1690410?ie=UTF8&s=books) of academic analysis. Which is just so much meta, except published under real names. (And, you know, with all the trimmings of academic writing - APA style, citations, etc.)

As a community, we really really like writing about ourselves. And what we do.

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.

We manage it mostly by having a bifurcated community - if you go to fanfiction.net, you will find a group of very different people. If I was going to describe the typical ff.net denizen, she'd be about 14 years old. She'd write stories in which every Gundam Wing or Harry Potter character falls in love with an original character, who is a girl, and who is better at everything than all the characters. (Smarter! A better fighter! Nicer! Prettier! Etc.!) She has a tragic past. And she has cerulean orbs instead of eyes.

These stories are typically not spellchecked or proofread.

They make those of us, even the teenagers (and there are many, but most of ours know how to write), on LJ either laugh or cry.

The equivalent to an ff.netter in the AMV world would be - okay. He'd be 14. He'd make a Naruto vid set to Linkin Park. He would use downloaded fansubs as his source, so the video quality was incredibly crappy. And he'd leave the subtitles in, all over the place. He wouldn't compress the audio. He'd have stray frames everywhere, so watching it would be kind of like having an eye tic. He'd leave in random lip movements. And his information section would read like this (in toto): "this took liek 2 FUCKIN HOURS to do!!!!11 and naruto ownz so you better leave a good opinion!!!!"

We call ff.net the Pit of Voles for a very good reason. AMV.org kind of contains its own Pit of Voles, which has to suck.

Continued in part 2.

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

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.

*nods*

That's happened here, too. Fortunately, the bifurcation I mentioned means that the kids get a few of their roughest edges knocked off before they come onto my lawn. Still. I know the feeling.

The very first AMVers (mid 80's on) all vaugely knew one another through the daisy-chain tape-trading circles that had cropped up in the 70's

Live-action vidding had this, too, but I have only the vaguest clue about it. Names like "the Media Cannibals" are still spoken in these parts (and their VCR vids have been digitally remastered, so you can see what they did), but I got into vids way after I got into fandom, and I got to fandom after it had already been transformed by the LJ revolution.

The advent of the AMV contests in the mid-to-late 90's, however, meant a place to go and show your work and actually MEET other AMVers.

Live-action vidding probably has the analogy of Vividcon, which is a vids-only con that takes place in August. It's got a capped membership of (I think) 200. When it first started, that was, like, just about all the live-action vidders who could afford to be in one place in the US at one time. Now, membership sells out in the first few minutes of posting and most vidders, especially the, um - can I call them more informal? Because that's probably the nicest way to put it - the more informal ones can't go or don't want to.

And then the trolls showed up & any pretense of our hobby being an "all for one" utopia blew up.

I don't think live-action vidders ever had this pretense. But then, live-action vidding arose from slash fandom, which has been kerfluffling and trolling and wanking for about as long as I've been alive. (You don't know true fannish joy, I don't think, until you're caught up in an argument that started when you were learning to walk.)

(Hell, I could put a date to when that happened.)

Seriously? Oh, please do. I'm curious!

Anyrate, I kinda go into this here if you're at all interested.

Of course I'm interested; that was a fascinating post. It's also meta. Which means there is AMV meta being posted out there, and I'm just not finding it. Please please please tell me how to?

Well... I'm not familiar with the term. What does it mean?

I'm not exactly sure. No, really, I'm not. I picked it because of all the reoccurring discussions we have, that one makes me the most crazy, because I have never entirely understood it.

The best I can do is - okay. Fans, at least in my neck of the woods, virtually all share a common history of having been outcasts - having been the weird kid, the smart kid, the dorky kid, the kid who had interests no one else shared. Usually this happened in middle school or in high school. So, we all have this common experience of having been losers in the popularity war. And we were mostly afraid of the popular kids.

So, the "mean girls" thing is in some way connected to being "popular." As defined in fannish terms (mostly friend of list size and feedback numbers, as far as I can tell).

The second part is - well, some people are nice all the time, right? And some people are not. Some people mock. Some people make unkind remarks. Some people call other people on their bullshit. These people are mean.

So, the mean girls are - mean. And popular. And they are oppressing the nice girls, and attempting to keep them down.

I think. Don't quote me on it. I'm as lost as you are. But, believe me, someone uses the term "mean girls from high school" at least once a week in LJ fandom.

[ersatzinsomnia.livejournal.com]

Re: Meta

Ah. Film school essays. Gotcha. (Kidding, a little.) It's kinda odd to me for such stuff to be organized enough to circulate. AMVers used to conduct something sorta similar, expounding and explaining on their favs, trends, ideas, etc. on the Journal system on the .org. (There's a device that showed you when your "friends" last updated their journal so you could check on 'em. Weird, stilted, but fairly elaborate discussions happend simultaneously in multi-part across journals in the absence of a "comment" function.) Prior to that, there was some "meta" discussion throughout the amv mailing list when there was a controllable number of people. Upon the appearance of livejournal, though, the more interesting stuff collapsed as the more determined writers jumped ship for the better functionality. I tried to maintain my stuff across both for a few years, but it got tiring.

Now? Hmm. I suppose there might be some meta stuff on the boards. Wouldn't know. You couldn't pay me to go back in there and look. I'll do my fandom/flick/comic reviews out here, thank you very much.

She'd write stories in which every Gundam Wing or Harry Potter character falls in love with an original character, who is a girl, and who is better at everything than all the characters.

Oh, I know what a "Mary Sue" is. Or, more recently, a "Rose Tyler (http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/46247500/?qo=4&q=by%3Amimi-na&qh=sort%3Atime+-in%3Ascraps)."

[ersatzinsomnia.livejournal.com]

Live-action vidding had this, too, but I have only the vaguest clue about it.

My bad, I should have been clearer. The difficulties involved in getting Japanese Animation in the US before about 1985 necessitated writing letters across the country to people who had friends in Japan. The Japanese friend would tape something off the TV & send it to their American friends. They would then make copies and trade to other people, shipping VHS tapes across the US. If you were very lucky, the more industrious fans would make up scripts and hard-sub the videos. (I should note that this was all long before my time.) Thus you would try and follow 42-episode series piecemeal at varying levels of translation (or not). The very first AMVers were usually subbers or distributors with access to the right equipment (flying erase heads FTW) who put 'em together for their friend's amusement. Somewhere down the line, they'd just stick the vids on the end of the tapes they were distributing as a free extra for whoever had asked for a copy. They weren't actually distributing the vids on purpose, it just kinda ended up that way, filling up whatever extra space was on the tape.

Re: Contests (I noted your question of doki above)
I think AMV contests pre-dated my own personal experience by about a year, but I've never been very clear on that. (Can't get out to many cons.) However I can point you to the true Alpha of AMV contests: Daric Jackson (aka jingoro). He started his first AMV contest at AWA 1 (it's on 13 now) with the sole intention of "getting everyone to send me their videos." Since it was never an actually "distroed" hobby before, a lot of AMVers simply weren't interested in the hassle of copying their tapes and sending 'em out. He'd been collecting those he could get his hands on for years, but the more reticent could only be lured out with the idea of a mass showing. The contests (as thoroughly promoted as he could) got him a bumper crop for two or three years. (Contests that pre-date his are largely forgotten, I think, as his were clearer, more courteous, and better organized.) Unfortunately, God disapproved, a tornado came down, tore the top of his house off, and destroyed the entire collection. (No, I'm not kidding.) A lot of those turned out to be irreplaceable (the makers unreachable), but Daric rebuilt and carried on for several more years.

As for how the contests affect the hobby? Well... I could go into that for pages and pages. I'll just say 1) ENORMOUSLY increased volume 2) increase in creative quality (though not nearly in proportion, making it appear diluted) 3) visible appearance of trends and imitations 4) general raising the bar as to technical quality (all vids playable) 5) some newbies found it intimidating 6) some wankery 7) some ego-related web horrors 8) breakneck pace. Some good, some bad.

I don't think live-action vidders ever had this pretense.

Too bad. The idealism and togetherness was a sight to behold.

Seriously? Oh, please do. I'm curious!

It's really more my opinion, but I've asked around and everyone who was there (a member of the org at the time) pretty much agrees. Unfortunately, it's not my story to tell. Essentially, a f***ing troll showed up, harrassed a well-liked, exceedingly creative AMVer, & the AMVer left. For good. The thing to understand was that had never happened before.

Which means there is AMV meta being posted out there, and I'm just not finding it.

Uh... not really. I just write a hell of a lot. (I regularly used to break the lj wordlimit before I got it under control.) What little meta there is on lj is just a matter of having a lot of AMVers as friends & seeing when they talk about their hobby. I couldn't even point you at someone who's done it more than a couple times.

Re: Mean girls

Huh. Never heard the term, but I think I get the idea. Not entirely sure of the connotation though, but I bet that shifts.