Are AMVs better than real music videos?

[EarthCurrent]

Why not throw in the Japanese MADs as well??

It's just the way the crystal ball bounces... [wtf?!]

In terms of separate topics, in the amv world, there's more crappy ones than good ones. Just find them... [in this realm/area, you can ask for help to fix that though ^_^]

In the Music Vid world, it seems again, there's more crappy ones than good ones. Find them...

In the MAD world [the few who know about them] same thing applies, there's ALWAYS more bad than good... Finding them again, is the problem...

Just accept the fact that the gems are hard to find in any of these media entertainment areas. However, some are easier to change than others...

*Ponders at what any of this has to do with Matthew Sweet*

[OmniStrata]

*Ponders at what any of this has to do with Matthew Sweet*

Who da heck is he?

:p

[EarthCurrent]

Who da heck is he?

:p

*exasperation* What am I ever going to do with you youngin's!?

Matthew Sweet made the seminal classic videos "Girlfriend" and "I've Been Waiting" back in the early ninties.

Some of use "old folk" probably remember them...

Animerica Vol.1, Issue 2. By Trish Ledoux

Sometimes, it takes...well, divine intervention to get played on MTV these days.
Singer/songwriter Matthew Sweet released his first solo album Inside in 1986, but it wasn't until his album Girlfriend came along five years later that he'd become one of MTV's most requested artists. Featuring lengthy animation sequences from artist/creator Buichi Terasawa's Space Adventure Cobra TV series, the title-cut video caught the fancy of both mainstream viewers and anime fans alike.
They weren't the only ones to sit up and pay attention. Sweet's been written up everywhere from Pulse! magazine to New York's acclaimed (and occasionally controversial)Village Voice. A recent Voice article refers to Sweet as "the highest-profile otaku in the world," despite Sweet's insistence that he does not consider himself to be a member of America's otaku.
"I'm kind of newcomer to Japanese animation, so when fans come up to me thinking I'm like this guru fan or something, it's difficult for me," Sweet says. "I don't really know that much about it, I just like it, and there are certain things that I'm attracted to and collect. Especially in the case of Lum."
Sweet says he first became interested in Japanese animation by watching Speed Racer as a child. Like many fans, it would be a long time before he realized that the animation was Japanese and not American. He finds it amusing that so many people think it's Speed Racer he's using in his "Girlfriend" video. "I guess to some people in America, all Japanese animation looks exactly the same."
Sweet readily agrees that Japanese animation was instrumental in getting air time on MTV, although he doesn't plan to keep using it. "I don't want to be known as 'the guy with the cartoons in his videos,'" he jokes. "The animation served its purpose by drawing the attention of people switching channels, who'd see this weird animation from Mars or something. And then, maybe they'd realize there was a song going along with it."
The idea to use Japanese animation to promote his music first occurred to Sweet when he saw a page of Terasawa's Cobra, first published in English by Viz. "There's something I like about the Cobra stuff. I mean, in a way, it's sleazier than a lot of other Japanese animation. The art is really cool-looking, and the people are very beautiful to me.
"The particular drawing I wanted to use was this kind of coffin flying through space with the Jane Royal character lying inside of it. It was like a cross-shaped coffin; it had this kind of religious vibe to it. It was sort of weird and fatalistic...kind of a sex-death vibe."
Difficulties with securing rights prevented the artwork from being used as Sweet had hoped for his 45 rpm single "Holy War." It wasn't until his first promotional single, "Divine Intervention," that the Sweet-Tarasawa connection could at last be made.
Although it certainly wasn't the first animated video to be shown on MTV, Sweet's "Girlfriend" video was the only one to use Japanese animation so extensively. His next video, "I've Been Waiting," starred the green-haired, bikini-clad Lum ffrom Rumiko Takahashi's Urusei Yatsura series and became a causes celebre among anime fans around the world. Sweet says he chose Cobra for "Girlfriend" because he wanted something "a little more hard-edged, sexier, more rock 'n' roll than Lum," who to him is softer and more suited to pop music.
Sweet is so...well, sweet on Lum that during October of 1991 he tattooed her image on his left arm. According to a recent interview in Animage magazine, the tattoo has "completely become his trademark" in Japan. Everywhere he went, he tells us, he was greeted with cries of "Show me Lum!" from hordes of excited schoolgirls.
"Getting the tattoo was kind of a spur-of-the-moment thing." Sweet laughs. "I mean, it's not like I was drunk or anything. I'd happened to have these Urusei Yatsura cassette covers with me. One of my guitar players and I walked into this tatto place on Sunset and I just started talking to the people. They were very nice and very normal, not at all what I'd thought they'd be like. A few days later I broke down and just did it-I got the Lum tattoo, much to the shock of everyone, the dismay of some, and the delight of others.
"I've never regretted it," Sweet says. "I just love the Lum character. She just...makes me happy. I thought of the tattoo as something that was different and neat and uniquely me. I didn't get it to show off to other people. It was something I did for my own personal enjoyment."
Does his mother know?
"It's a good thing there's laser surgery," she says.

[LightningCountX]

Real music videos suck, because they have absolutely nothing to do with the song. Its just the band, or rappers, in an alleyway bustin ryhmes and stuff. AMV's own, cause if its a good editor, its in sync with the song....

[Lyrs]

bad mv's
/end

[OmniStrata]

Real music videos suck, because they have absolutely nothing to do with the song. Its just the band, or rappers, in an alleyway bustin ryhmes and stuff. AMV's own, cause if its a good editor, its in sync with the song....

[Nightowl]

Counterbalancing Nightowl's argument: do you have any concept as to how hard it is to create a music video when you have to use footage that already exists and was shot for a completely different purpose; where if there's a scene you need you have to either find it in your archive or not use that scene, period (no, you don't get to shoot the scenes of your choice); with no staff other than the director; on the run from the RIAA; for an audience that considers you to be "a fanboy who sits at home playing on the computer when they don't even know how to batch capture"; on consumer equipment; and without getting paid for your efforts? The fact that we can do this at all, let alone get as good results as some of us do, amazes me.

I guess I have no idea what it's like to make a music video or a film, let alone an AMV. You're all right. I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about. I'm not the only goddamned person on this forum trained and working professionally. I've never worked on a music video. As for AMVs? Fuck em, I would make one of those.

Who on this site is "on the run from the RIAA?" We aren't rebels, don't even begin to think we are. And it's a hell of a lot easier to cut found footage than to create your own. That's why it's usually the first project they have editors do in training. Anime was created to entertain - considering that AMVs have the same purpose, it shouldn't be all that difficult to make it look like Shinji is taking a shit as a joke.

The reason music videos cost so goddamned much to make, whether they suck or not, is that you have to pay for equipment, crew, stock, locations, insurance, rights, among about ten thousand other little things AMV creators don't give two shits about. You want to impress me? You want to be on par with an actual music video? Create your own cel-frame animation and cut it to music. Hell, create your own music. Actually make it look good.

And you know why most music videos are simply shots of the musician not cut to the beat? Because the song doesn't matter. This is a business, and they're selling the "artist," not the music. Don't even try to disagree with me, because you learn that's the way it is pretty quick when a music producer says it to your face.

I stand by my argument. No one here could direct a music video. You don't have the knowledge or experience. It's doubtful many of you will get it anytime soon, either.

-N

[Machine]

I stand by my argument. No one here could direct a music video. You don't have the knowledge or experience. It's doubtful many of you will get it anytime soon, either.-N

Indeed, I myself have shot my own short films over at the UT campus. They aren't easy at all since one has to deal with different types of angles and postions....not to mention if your director is going to try and experiment with some stuff. Not only that but sometimes things don't come out the way you want and sometimes you either have to re-shoot or jsut toss what you dont need.

Not to mention that developing film (which most Music Videos are shot with) costs alot of money. And if not the film, but an actual good DV camera (if they are going digital) must also be rented/bought for its use and that costs a fair amoutn of money.

Through my own expereince, even I myself won't be abl to make a great music video. sure expereince in the field will give you collateral and all....but in the end finding a producer who is willing to put the time and MONEY into you screwing up or him/her not being satisfied with what you have done still amounts to lack of expereince.....

[Otohiko]

There is a simple truth however:

-if a video sucks, it sucks.
-if it doesn't suck, it doesn't suck.

What you see on screen is pictures. And what you hear out of the speakers is music.

You don't see cameras. You don't see equipment. You don't see money or effort. Noone gives a fuck about those things.

All you have is picture/sound.

[Otohiko]

Here's another postulate for you:

AMV's are in fact better because

a) they cost less money - money that could be spent on things more important than music videos.

b) almost anyone can make them, making them a far more accessible and diverse (since more creators=more different ideas/approaches)