Adam's Song: Interpretation / Musical help?

[dragontamer5788]

I may be about a decade or so late on this song, but I recently reheard it and felt like making an AMV to it. Overall, I think it is doable, but I'm having trouble with a phrase at the very beginning of the song of all places. (And considering how many AMVs already exist of this song... I'd rather not have a major mistake so early on).

First: Here are the lyrics and some of my musical notes for some context.

[Beginning]

[main guitar riff x 8]
[main guitar riff x 8 + Snare Drum + Cymbol]

[Guitar strum through this verse]

I never thought | I'd die alone |
I laughed the loud | est who'd have known |
I traced the cord | back to the wall |
No wonder it was never | plugged in at all |
I took my time, | I hurried up |
The choice was mine, | I didn't think enough |
I'm too depressed, | to go on |
You'll be sorry | when I'm gone

[main guitar riff x 8]
[main guitar riff x 8 + Snare Drum + Cymbol]

Chorus (I never conquered rarely came, etc. etc.)

[Rest of song snipped]

The bars | mark the edges of measures. The guitar strums appear to be 2 beats out of sync compared to the vocals. The signature is clearly common time (4/4). (ie: I can either say that "I never though" starts on beat 3, or I can say the guitar strum changes on beat 3). But anyway, assuming that "I" is on beat 1, thats how the measures are set up.

----------

I've got a general interpretation of the whole song in my head, with exception of the phrase

"I traced the cord back to the wall, no wonder it was never plugged in at all."

Clearly, it is a metaphor. But of what?

My theories:

• Going off the "toaster in a bathtub" theory I've seen online... "I never thought I'd die alone" is the narrator expecting a successful suicide. However, when he doesn't die, he traces the cord back to the wall and realizes that he couldn't have committed suicide due to a simple mistake. While this makes "sense" to me, I somehow doubt the majority of listeners would even consider this as a correct interpretation.
• A spin on the above idea would be that the narrator did not attempt to commit suicide, but instead was in a dangerous position but was saved b/c the cord wasn't plugged in. This is consistent with this quote

  The lyrics, "I traced the cord back to the wall, no wonder it was never plugged in at all" were inspired when guitarist Tom Delonge was playing in his garage and he and his amp were in a puddle. Luckily, the amp was not plugged in or he could have been electrocuted.

• A more malicious perspective would be that the cord is a phone line. In this interpretation, the line "No wonder it was never plugged in at all" implies that the narrator attempted suicide, but didn't follow through all the way. So he tries to call for help but the first phone line he tries isn't plugged in. The narrator either dies or (on a happier spin) is severely injured anyway. This was my first theory that came to mind

Here are the issues I have:

• Yes, I know the risks associated with making an AMV with such an old and popular song. There are 35 videos of this song on this site, and of the ones I've reviewed for ideas, only one has scored above a 2. So the last thing I want is to trip up so early on and have the viewer assume I have no poetic competence. (I don't even want to know how some can make an "action" AMV to this song's lyrics). This phrase is literally the 2nd sentence of the song, so I can't screw up here, lest I lose the viewer's trust before the meat of the song even begins.
• The "true" interpretation, whatever it may be, is clearly something that I personally would not have figured out... yet anyway. Therefore, even a "correct" interpretation may fall flat on its face. In which case, a half-assed approach might work better. IE: I just _literally_ show a cord that isn't plugged in and screw the correct interpretation. It is safe from the earlier issue, but I wanna be better than that. This probably wouldn't hurt the viewer's trust, but it wouldn't help it.
• Finally the issue of actually finding the scenes after figuring out an interpretation. Most likely, I'm going to be forced to use a metaphor on this metaphor, further complicating the AMV.

As a side issue: I mentioned earlier the strange lyrical sync compared to the guitar and the drums... well, strange in a classic sense. It seems like pop / rock music does this often. Most AMVs I see sync up to the vocals as opposed to the drums. Any opinions on this in particular? If I instead sync the AMV up to the drums, it does give the listener a chance to think about the lyrics, but I'm worried that the sync would feel awkward. The official music video is completely inconsistent on this aspect... (see boochsack). It probably doesn't matter too much which way I go, but I'd like to understand what happens before making this minor decision. (early tests look fine both ways to me) Does anyone know of any AMV that syncs up to the instruments over the vocals (as well as a song where the vocals are 2 beats late in common time?) ?

Thanks for reading my wall of text btw.

[Pwolf]

General rule of thumb when I come across something like this:

What do you think it means? And can you make something with that interpretation? if the answer to the second question is "yes" then there's nothing else to think about. It really doesn't matter what other people's interpretations are. You'll be far more happy with the results when you follow your own instincts in that regard.

As far as sync goes, I generally don't follow the "rule" that you have to sync on a specific tone/beat/riff/lyric every time... I find videos that do that are way too mechanical in there sync and they become predictable (which is funny cause when I started, i felt that if you didn't do it that way, you weren't editing correctly i'm getting wise in my old age). Not saying there aren't good videos that do that, a mechanical sync where every drum beat is a cut is perfectly fine (and i think is the most common form of editing that 90% of the editors out there are doing).... i just don't believe one should <i>have</i> to do that.

Where am I going with this, lol... Basically, go with your gut. If you feel like you want to cut to the lyrics on one part, then start cutting to the drum beats, it's all good. As long as you like it of course. Don't force yourself into one way of editing throughout the video, change it up if it feel better that way.


Pwolf

[qyll]

My initial reaction to that line:

The cord is a phone line, and while he thought he was talking and laughing with another person on the phone all this time, it turns out there was no one on the other end. He was talking to himself the whole time.

That's my interpretation. Make what you want of it.

[dragontamer5788]

General rule of thumb when I come across something like this:

What do you think it means? And can you make something with that interpretation? if the answer to the second question is "yes" then there's nothing else to think about. It really doesn't matter what other people's interpretations are. You'll be far more happy with the results when you follow your own instincts in that regard.

Yeah, true I guess. Part of me sees making AMVs as a communication medium however... so I'm still interested in what others think of the song as well. If enough people think of the same thing, I probably can pull a (more) abstract metaphor for example and still connect with the audience.

As far as sync goes, I generally don't follow the "rule" that you have to sync on a specific tone/beat/riff/lyric every time... I find videos that do that are way too mechanical in there sync and they become predictable (which is funny cause when I started, i felt that if you didn't do it that way, you weren't editing correctly i'm getting wise in my old age). Not saying there aren't good videos that do that, a mechanical sync where every drum beat is a cut is perfectly fine (and i think is the most common form of editing that 90% of the editors out there are doing).... i just don't believe one should <i>have</i> to do that.

That is a good point. I somehow forgot that I have ~4 minutes to work with and make interesting. Although, when I made the question I guess I was more worried about "must not" as opposed to "must dos". IE: never repeat a scene... although even this rule has exceptions (double-takes look fine if done right)

Do you have an example of a "too predictable" video though? Or is it one of those things that just separates the great from the amazing? Going through my amv collection, I can see a couple of good videos that aren't 100% synced by the middle of the amv. Most good amvs seem to sync near perfectly in the beginning however.

------

That's my interpretation. Make what you want of it.

I'll keep your interpretation in mind as well. Thanks for your contribution

[Pwolf]

Do you have an example of a "too predictable" video though? Or is it one of those things that just separates the great from the amazing? Going through my amv collection, I can see a couple of good videos that aren't 100% synced by the middle of the amv. Most good amvs seem to sync near perfectly in the beginning however.

I don't watch a lot of videos anymore so I can't give you an example. When I say predictable, I don't mean in the story ot anything of that matter. I'm talking about the editing it self. while watching a video, can I predict how the rest of the video will progress based on how it's been edited. it doesn't mean its bad, as mentioned before. A great video compared to just a good one is going to have many different factors playing a role and even then, it's all in the eye of viewer/judge. My idea of a great video differs from someone else. And a great video can be very predictable editing wise.

Actually I do have an example for you:




My own Every key/strum is an edit. It's predictable. You pretty much get the feeling that the first few edits that it's going to use the same structure throughout the video. In this case, I use that to an advantage more so then anything else. It's easier to follow this way and lends well for a neat looking "effect" as the still images flash by quickly to give you a semi-animated feel.



This video is relatively similar, it uses all still frames but I break the mechanical-ness of it slightly, only for a short time before it goes back. In a similar fashion as mentioned above where I had this semi-animated feel, instead of cutting on those notes, I just overlapped then fade from the first note onto a note in the middle of "group" which gives a similar feel but breaks the "mold" perse. Then as I go back to being mechanical again, I change my style slightly to do more overlapping instead of fading out the frame before the next key. In this example I'm breaking the mechanical-ness of the first by changing the structure of the edits slightly (but not completely) by not editing on every note and I'm also changing the style of the edits slightly (again, not completely) by doing an overlapped fade instead of just a fade to black.

It's a little difficult to explain my train of though using those two videos because the song's composition is relatively simple with very few instruments and no vocals... I'm gona give another example with another one of my videos simply because it's a lot easier to explain when I'm the one who edited it:



So basically with this video, I could've edited the entire thing based on the rhythm of any given set of sounds... if I had only edited to the lyrics, as in not make any edits using other aspects of the song, it would be boring. For this video, a lot of my edits are in rhythm with the vocals but in between lines I also take note of the other elements. One of my favorite, all time "edits" is the entire set from 1:25 to 1:51. It really expresses the point that you have many different paths to edit from and mix together, but also keeping the rhythm will make for a pleasing set of edits.

On another subject, but still on topic, if you listen, you'll hear a piano, it's relatively dominant but i chose not to edit anything to those notes because it would be to obvious and if I did it once, I'd have to follow through. The more dominant a sound is, the more noticeable it will be to the viewer... so if I had started with a set of edits that landed on each of those notes when they first appeared in the song at 1:14 then I would have to follow through with that until the end simply because the viewer will notice it if I didnt (of course, there are a lot of things I could've done to it but in my mind, doing anything to them would be very repetitive and predictable). On the same subject, I did make an edit on the very dominate strums (where i used most of the sepia effects) but I also didn't do it on every single strum. If you notice, I leave out the first one in each set. I also don't reserve that effect for only the guitar strums but I used it in other parts. But, i made it consistent non-the-less. Being consistent doesn't mean you have to be mechanical about it and hit every note, you can skip one or two if you have to. If I was mechanical about it, I would do the effect on every one of those strums, and only on those strums.

I hope that helps get my thought process on editing across. It's rare that I actually explain my process since I don't expect anyone to really understand it. But i hope that makes sense cause I've been typing for a long time and it's late and I have work in the morning, lol.


Pwolf

[Vivaldi]

i think Pwolf's already made any point better then I could, but I'll throw in my two cents anyway.

Backing up one thing Pwolf said, you often shouldn't exclusivly sync the dominant melody, it will still feel like a natural fit to the song, but it's not obvious what you're going for at first. Also, if you come up on a particulerly important part of the song, switching to the dominant melody will "accent" it in a way.

One of the most important things that separates simple sync from advanced is the fact that flow is more then hitting every beat, it's largely scene choice. Flow and mood are what create depth in an amv, it's not hitting every beat, it's hitting the right beats.


Now you said that most good amvs you've seen seem to hit every beat in the beginning, have a lull in the middle, and then ramp back up at the end. That brings up and interesting point. Generally, the shorter the amv, the faster the pace will need to be to have the same effect, for instance. A relatively short amv like attack of the otaku, can have an exhausting effect even though it's so short, because it's so frenetic. However, something like whisper of the beast, or for an even more dramatic example,

which takes 7 minutes, feels about the same length because it has by all standards fairly slow cuts, it doesn't drag on because the pace fits the length of the song and the flow fits the mood.

I have a feeling that made no sense, but I'm typing in a rush.

[Knowname]

trigun.

like pwolf said just interpret it yourself... maybe it's just me, but you shouldn't take into account the artist's situation, where it comes in in some movie or whatever. Songs can mean different things to different ppl. If you make YOUR (accent on YOUR) expression clear enough it will come out loud and clear to the viewer(s) and perhaps it will define the song for them. Or perhaps it won't... it really depends on what's in their coffee.

Personally I like to watch all AMVs to that song and 'get my ideas' from there. That doesn't mean to copy them, sometimes I want to do just the opposite it really depends on how much I like that amv...

[dragontamer5788]

I don't watch a lot of videos anymore so I can't give you an example. When I say predictable, I don't mean in the story ot anything of that matter. I'm talking about the editing it self. while watching a video, can I predict how the rest of the video will progress based on how it's been edited. it doesn't mean its bad, as mentioned before. A great video compared to just a good one is going to have many different factors playing a role and even then, it's all in the eye of viewer/judge. My idea of a great video differs from someone else. And a great video can be very predictable editing wise.

I think I know what you mean. Predictability means that the viewer probably won't even notice your edits... Which can be a good or bad thing depending on the situation. Good would be like proper lighting in movies, or the camera angle in games... something the viewer never really focuses on. Bad if you want to distract the viewer with something. So it is just one more tool in the AMVer's toolshack.

My own

Lol. Well, those are the ones we know best right? The ones we made ourselves

Thank you everyone for your help. I'm out of this first rut and I'm feeling confident enough to continue . Also, thanks for all the links to the other amvs. I haven't been able to download because Kero isn't up yet... but I'll be sure to check it out when the server is back up.

[JaddziaDax]

it all depends on the audience you are playing to... i usually like to play to myself that way i like my videos

[TerraRose]

I think interpretation has a lot to do what anime you use and what you WANT it to mean. So many really popular songs get bad reviews in AMVs because people go "Oh I like this song, I like this anime, I'll throw them together and make gold" but it's just fools gold and it falls flat. Even if it's well timed if it's not well thought out it fails. But you HAVE to keep the scenes changing, or you'll lose interest and you also have to express something based on the anime your using. Fast songs it's easier to do multi-anime montages, but with a slow song, you should keep your focus and keep to the story. An "official" interpretation means nothing if it does not go along with your source material and the story you're trying to tell.