10+ years ago?

[Kionon]

I was totally there.

[dokidoki]

This site opened to the public in December 2000.
The AMV ML (registration required) opened on Jun 8, 1998.

Before that (but not that long before), I read about AMVs on Usenet, in rec.arts.anime[.misc]. Recently I was wondering how far back the discussion of AMVs went on Usenet (which is now archived by Google in "Google Groups"), and I found these posts from 1992:

Some AMV ideas
Complaining about crappy AMVs
Discussing starting a contest at Anime Expo

The first one is the first instance of "anime music videos" I could find, and you can see Vlad posting in the last two threads.

Back in the mid-late 90s you could sometimes find downloadable AMVs on various peoples' sites, like Armitage's Dimension, and they were usually low-res (of course) QuickTime, RealVideo, or MPEG-1. This was before the existence of Waldo's FTP (aka Hawaii aka mdenny), a large (at the time) repository of AMVs. Information on this can be found on the AMV ML.

[Mr Pilkington]

Huzzah for nostalgia.
10 years ago this October some morons on DC++ and my room mate were encouraging a young college freshmen to spend hours at his computer toiling tirelessly to make them a music video to DZB that would come to rule the world. Too bad I found out only later that there was a community who could provide constructive criticism and basic tutorials throughwhich these abominations would to never see the light of day.


Jurassic Park - 1
common decency - 0

[Zero Link]

Bill Barnes Aug 18 1992, 11:22 am

Actually, it's rather amazing how many of us bother making music videos
considering how much work it is, how frustrating it can be (especially
when the video doesn't meet your expectations), how some people whine about
how our videos suck (not mentioning names of course), and how we don't
earn any money for our efforts. The things we do in the name of promoting
anime and/or our favorite musical groups...

Lol, some things never change.

[Pas]

Bill Barnes Aug 18 1992, 11:22 am

Actually, it's rather amazing how many of us bother making music videos
considering how much work it is, how frustrating it can be (especially
when the video doesn't meet your expectations), how some people whine about
how our videos suck (not mentioning names of course), and how we don't
earn any money for our efforts. The things we do in the name of promoting
anime and/or our favorite musical groups...

Lol, some things never change.

Only now days we see more and more people creating videos not to tribute the anime but to try and claim large amounts of "internet fame"

That being said, it's interesting reading through those archives and seeing how different the attitude was back then, as well as some similarities.

[TerraRose]

This is taking me back in Nostalgia to the first AMV I ever watched. I'm sure the file I downloaded was warped or maybe I needed a codec, it was like all the way back in 1994-1995 and I was a little bit of an Utena fangirl having downloaded from offline episodes in 2 piece files and the movie in like 3-4 pieces and I loved Miki, found a fansite for him and his sister and there was this little AMV to Deep as You Go by the October Project. The video looked so trippy because it flickered insuper funky colors, but after a while (since it was "normal" briefly at times) I think it wasn't supposed to be that funky-looking... but I've never been able to find the site again since I had a hd wipe way back when...

I was never part of any sort of mailing list I was just a fangirl that ran around fansites and went "ooo shiny!"

[outlawed]

You should subscribe to the AMV ML and check the usenet posts that Doki linked. Go back and read the early archives of the AMV ML. That will give you one of the best measure of the way things were at the time.

As for myself I'll give my own personal view and take on things. I started making some AMV type stuff in 1998. Acen 1999 was the first contest I submitted to and I won not without 'controversy' as it was back in those days. My ego knows no bounds =p. I won like 4 times in a row at Acen with varying entries. I submitted predominantly to Acen with a few exceptions. I was not well known like a lot of the more popular people at the time who sent to a lot of cons or were starting to get noticed online through files floating around. Some people promoted themselves more than others. I was definitely in the 0 promotion side since I did not maintain a website about my AMVS and I was very slow to upload them to the AMV ML FTP. We refer to it as the AMV ML FTP because that is where the FTP server spawned from and that is the only place it's login credentials were publically given. Despite my lackluster efforts to circulate my own AMVs they did still make the rounds. Since the online anime community as whole was more close knit at the time.

Case in point. I had heard from some online fansubbers who I knew in real life that they had seen this one AMV and it turned out it was one of mine that circulated outside of the FTP on its own. Things will make the rounds on the internet for AMV creators back then even if they were someone who was as lazy as me to upload. The AMV ML FTP was the only true repository at the time. The FTP was run off of university bandwidth by a member of the AMV ML. Mdenny/Hawaii started the FTP and upon graduation Waldo took over.

Most of the stuff we did back then a lot of people will laugh at from a technical standpoint these days. The biggest differences in the community today vs back then are:

1) Access to material & the promotion aspect of AMVs
2) Name recognition

Access to material was limited. One of the biggest factors that would hold someone back from making a video was not equipment but was simply access to footage. This is often why a lot of the videos from this era made use of the same popular series (those were the few that were already released in the USA). My time was right before the DVD boom so I saw the massive change that took place. Let's say you are a young college student well off financially so you have the equipment and you are ready to make your AMV you always wanted using the anime Nadesico. To just get the series you have to go through some hoops even if you are willing to pay all the money for the expensive Laserdiscs. There is no amazon.co.jp and a lot of the early internet website e-tailors which will eventually spring up to offer fans multiple ways to import stuff don't exist. Pretty much 1998 the #1 place you are going to hit up will be Mike Kiley at the UCI bookstore whose anime shop was called 'alt.ant'. Sometime around May of 1999 Kiley went on to work with Tokyopop and they launched their own website. Starting from this point more and more e-tailors would come around to try and grab a piece of the growing import scene. The same happened for import videogames.

Name recognition was probably the other big difference between then and now. Today there are so many ways to get a video out to people besides cons with youtube and what not. A creator is now a drop in a bucket. It's impossible for anyone to achieve the notoriety/fame of any of the early creators simply because you cannot guarantee that 75% or more of the AMV creator scene knows them because there are so many people making these things now.

I never considered myself an AMV creator foremost when I was actively making them in 1999-2004. I was more of a quiet fansubber during the last glory days of the VHS subbbing. Did some projects with friends that were definitely not well publicized with the exception of our Rurouni Kenshin OVA 1-2 release probably. I do know our Macross TV 1-4 (started right before Animeigo announced they would eventually release) scripts got used decently since I got several e-mails inquiring if I had more to release lol. I know our scripts for some of the Slayers stuff was used frequently and if I recall Nekon con R (1999) showed one of the Slayers OVAs because I remember taking it there with me to give to some fansubbers who were staff running a video room. To this day the only known version of Cowboy Bebop Session XX floating around can be traced back to us. I should probably post-process it again and release a H264 version. I have a lot of fond memories from this era. I made some important friends and a lot of our discussions from that era are shaped quite a bit of my appreciation and understanding of manga/anime.

I'm rambling. Maybe i'll post some more later. Does this give any more of an example of the flavor of the time?

[Knowname]

lol Doki's post (through Corran's link) led me to some imposter with the username Vlad G. Pohnert. Obviously a master cloning conspiracy is in progress. What generation of Vlad G. Pohnerts is our member here and when will they put their evil plan in order to take over the world?? no, the GALAXY??? One of them was a CHICK!! FROM 92!! THERE WERE GIRL NERDS IN 1992!!! lol

I have a history of the org document in here somewhere... yeah and old phorums (yes they were the PHorums... probably named by PHade) >>>> phpbb crap. I have pics of a thread with BBT complaining about the ops system way back than .

[Knowname]

good times

http://web.archive.org/web/200106171133 ... st.php?f=1

[Kionon]

I suppose I ought to actually reply seriously to this... later.