You're Enough - an AMV about coping with depression

[vivafruit]

Life is tough these days, and I really gravitated towards the simple message of the song. Hope people here enjoy.

[lloyd9988]

Flow feels off, I know AoT was supposed to be where Eren was depressed but his scenes felt out of place.

I did like the text "You're Enough" but I think there was an opportunity to flow between the different anime at that chorus instead.

Your AMV has an expectation that the viewer has watched "A Silent Voice", "Your Lie in April", and "March Comes in Like a Lion", which I think explaining why these characters are depressed instead of expecting that the viewer to know why they're depressed would be a better idea.

Lastly, I think what you were trying to do was something similar to what Taite did but you had a bit more focus. I'd encourage you to watch her vid, think of some ideas that you can add to your current AMV and see if you can re-edit your AMV with those new ideas.

Spoiler :

Best of luck,
Brad

[vivafruit]

Thanks for the feedback! I didn't intend to have the source anime be required viewing, and tried to include scenes that matched the lyrics and were self explanatory. That said, I have gotten the same feedback from another person so it probably holds some weight. I agree the AoT clips are thematically dissonant - I thought it was worth it for the "payoff" of the guy saying "You're Enough". But again I have had similar feedback from elsewhere, so I probably should have just cut the clips.

I didn't enjoy the linked AMV, sadly. It had too much of the singer and the constant cutting between anime clips and the singer was jarring visually.

Thanks again for taking the time to watch and reply - making these things is challenging and it's good to get honest critiques.

[lloyd9988]

Thanks for the feedback! I didn't intend to have the source anime be required viewing, and tried to include scenes that matched the lyrics and were self explanatory. That said, I have gotten the same feedback from another person so it probably holds some weight. I agree the AoT clips are thematically dissonant - I thought it was worth it for the "payoff" of the guy saying "You're Enough". But again I have had similar feedback from elsewhere, so I probably should have just cut the clips.

I didn't enjoy the linked AMV, sadly. It had too much of the singer and the constant cutting between anime clips and the singer was jarring visually.

It is your AMV so you're free to keep it as you'd like, just giving anything that can help out, y'know.

Also, sometimes, you don't need to match the lyrics, sometimes just maintaining the overall flow of the AMV is better than attempting to match the lyrics or matching like someone playing drums or attempting to lip sync the anime with the song, y'know. As long as you're maintaining the overall flow of the AMV, I think you're good.

Yeah, I can understand how the singer is jarring.

Hmmmm.... I was trying to choose a multi-anime AMV and I thought that one fit the best because it has the same theme/feeling but how about this one then (It doesn't have multiple AMVs but has a good way to build up the AMV with character progression):

Spoiler :

Just trying to give ideas that can help.

But the good points I did like is that you did pick the right anime shows and your scene selection is good. And I did like the first chorus (You're enough).

Aight, gotta work. Later,
Brad

[CrackTheSky]

Someone else who edits with Sleeping At Last, sweeeet.

Overall I liked the theme of the video, and there were several sections that I feel were done really well, but the AoT scenes did feel really out of place, mainly because the animation style and overall color palette of those scenes really doesn't fit with the others (which all flow together rather nicely from a visual standpoint). I also didn't care for the text, although I tend to dislike text in AMVs anyway...but you could have made it look a little nicer by maybe choosing a better font and adding some stylization to it (outlines, drop shadow, etc.). I may not be the best person to ask about how specifically that could have been made better assuming you really wanted to keep it in, all I know is that it feels really jarring and out of place, and robs from the video's emotional impact for me. I like lloyd's idea of switching between different anime for those "You're enough" lyrics instead of having text onscreen.

I disagree with lloyd about needing to see the sources beforehand -- I haven't seen all of these but I think you did a fine job in communicating the message and emotions you were going for. Most of the scenes chosen carry inherent drama and given the AMV's title, the lyrics of the song, etc. I felt like interpreting them in a general sense was pretty easy.

Overall -- not bad!

[vivafruit]

Someone else who edits with Sleeping At Last, sweeeet.

After reading this I instantly searched youtube to track down your Sleeping At Last vid, haha. I'm a Nine and that song has an absurd amount of emotional resonance with me, so it was really special to see an AMV to it. Bravo.

Doubly noted on the AoT stuff being out of place. If I ever re-edit this, I will cut those clips for sure (even though I am partial to the part that's lipsynched). You're the first person to complain about the text. I actually agree with you in general that text is kind of jarring, but felt like this was maybe a spot I could break the rule since the words "You Are Enough" are so pivotal to both the AMV's theme and the lyrics of the song. Overall maybe it still wasn't worth it, hard to say. I'm not sure making the letters fancier with font/shadows etc. probably would have helped - they are supposed to be "simple words", after all.

Thanks for the feedback!

[seasons]

The only issue I have with the AoT scenes is the lip flap at 1:58. And I'm always fine with there being some lip flap in a video, but when it's a close up shot and it's timed with lyrics, it doesn't really work so well for me. I've done this sort of thing both on purpose and accidentally, it happens.

Looking over the sources and reading your concept right there in the title, I was kind of skeptical about this going into it but I think you pulled off making a pretty effective Healing AMV. If that title was a little more vague and I went into this with fewer expectations, I still think I would have come away with the impression that this was a Healing AMV and I still think it would have clicked with me as well as it did here.

I'm on the fence about the text, I do feel like there could have been other ways to handle the chorus but the simple approach you used here is so easy on the eyes that I don't feel offended by it or anything.

I feel like I owe you a more thoughtful review than this. It's obvious that this song really resonated with you and you wanted both share it with other people and also express your own feelings about it in a visual form. That totally comes through!

You made AMVs 20 years ago? Do you still have them? I'm always super curious when people come back to editing after a long hiatus, what motivated you to edit way back then, what caused you to quit and what eventually brought you back so many years later.

[vivafruit]

Thanks for the amazingly kind and thoughtful comment. Fact checking myself - it looks like I finished my last AMV a little over 18 years ago. The most recent two got uploaded here, actually. Obviously these are super old and probably quite terrible, haha. I would have been only 16.

https://www.animemusicvideos.org/member ... php?v=6507
https://www.animemusicvideos.org/member ... php?v=7444

I'm not sure why I started making them other than the somewhat banal answers of loving both music and anime. I think I quit because my computer skills just weren't good enough to do them efficiently; they were a massive time sink. I think that first Kenshin AMV took me several months! Nowadays, I think it's much, much easier to make them, both because my general skills have improved but also there are a lot more resources than there were back in 2002. One of the best things on the internet for an AMV-maker right now is sakugabooru - it's amazing when you can find a clip there instead of going through the laborious and tedious process of downloading an episode and manually finding the clip yourself. The editing software is also insanely better than whatever pirated version of Premiere I was using back then. I've been using Lightworks - it's damn good for free software.

I came back because of COVID. With so much free time on my hands, I wanted a hobby that wasn't just pure consumption. A creative outlet has helped me stay sane during these crazy times.