Kionon wrote:Honestly, the issue is simply glut. As the hobby becomes more and more and more accessible (which it does, with each passing day), there will be more and more videos of crap to middling quality. Many of these will appear, superficially, to be old school, but you will quickly see that they are just poorly executed, and the simplicity is not intentional (As opposed to those of us like myself or Daniel, who choose simplicity in execution for stylistic purposes, because that's what we like to make), but rather the reality of the lack of skill by these new editors. This serves to suppress simple videos with, I think Savia said it best, class, both because it serves as prohibition against established editors trying simplicity as a style, and also helps hide even those simplistic videos with class. Following that, heavy effects videos just stand out more and more each day, because it is harder to wade through romances and dramas and sentimental and find those that really are edited well.
What's next? Same old, same old.
x2 on a lot of this.
I don't believe that AMVs are getting worse and worse as kev pointed out, rather, the gap between good and bad is increasing due to a boost in the AMV community.
Just for comparisons sake, take a look at anime. In the early days of anime, even getting a show made was extremely difficult, required a huge budget and a large production staff. However, the animation quality, regardless of technology at the time was smooth and well drawn. Nowdays, there are a lot of new shows that don't quite reach that standard. Why are they worse, even after so much time and such a large gap in the technology? It's because they are easier to produce now, so more people are doing it, and because more people are doing it, there's bound to be both more good and bad releases. That's not to say that everything has declined, there are still good, well animated anime shows out there, such as 5cm per second and Kara no Kyoukai.
Back to the topic, I personally think things will stay as they are for quite some time. Even if making effects becomes easier (and it already has) a good AMV is nothing without good flow, pace, scene selection etc. In that sense, there will always be a flood of poorly edited AMVs, which is fine, more people might be getting into the hobby. And that's just it, it's a hobby. For most people, they won't really mind how good/bad their AMV is, because to them it's their creation, thus making it special for them and in that sense, good. There will always be some other people who will continue to push the boundaries of what can be achieved (such as ZephyrStay etc) and can still enjoy what it is they're doing.