Beowulf wrote:I mean we need a video that is so head an shoulders above everything else that it breaks a barrier everyone thought was there. Even if its imitated (and it will be), it will make everyone say "oh shit, we had better kick it up a notch". Thats all I want to happen. We haven't "kicked it up a notch" in quite some time and when we have its been very short lived and in the wrong direction.
At the risk of sounding like a 19th century patent inspector, I'm not sure that there's barriers left to break through -- or at least not within the scope of the site. If there are, what are they? What has not been done yet, and is worth doing? And, generally, if you can answer these questions, where is your video breaking these barriers? At this point, the technology is there to do basically anything you want to; technical barriers, given enough time and creativity, no longer exist.
I'll be glad if people laugh at me over this in five years, but I believe that the real reason that AMVs have not gone up another level lately is that we are running into the inherent limitations of "remix art". Our power to add stuff beyond what is in the original sources is very limited, as at a certain point it stops being an AMV and starts being original video-art. At that point, wherever it is, it falls outside the scope of this site and over onto newgrounds or deviantart or wherever the fuck those things go.
There will be videos that push the limitations of using other people's mostly-moving images and mostly other people's music in the future, but I do feel that the wall is very close, and the people who have the most incentive to push it will be working with exclusively their own materials, especially video, outside the current defines of this form.
If anyone out there disagrees, go ahead, make the video Beo wants, break that worthwhile barrier, and make me look dumb.
--K
