Thoughts on substance in AMVs

[Lyrs]

^ this is how amv editors pass their time between amv editing



The more you know!

[Otohiko]

the entire English language is faulty

and this folks is why its one of the hardest languages to learn...

Oh, there's so much wrong with both these sentences I don't even know where to begin.

That's why I won't

(aka. Oto w/ BA Linguistics, Highest Honors)

[Malificus]

The more you know!

...The easier it is to blackmail people.

[Niotex]

the entire English language is faulty

and this folks is why its one of the hardest languages to learn...

uhm nope >.> not if your mother language is dutch with even more exceptions and grammar adjustments...

Ontopic... Substance is only so much, If someone wants to create a video based on a event, emotion or action undertaken in either the song,show their own mind it will have substance. now even if it dosnt look like it "random action video's" also indeed have substance to a certain degree in the creators mind. BUT when people start saying that FX breaks away from the substance and that none effect video's are based off substance then their wrong. A visual effect IS a tool to bring over that substance wich is created in the creators mind. For instance lets take a simple video with a girl looking up at the sky with some clouds. Nice and all but what if one aply's some light rays from the clouds? this will indeed enhance the scene on its own yet it is FX so to speak. Now if we have fast upbeat syncers and such the substance is most of the time lost or is forgotten by the creator itself.

=| nvm i dont feel like finishing...

[Koopiskeva]

To me if you have a purpose, a reason for trying to progress than you have a story.

Purpose does not equal story.

Again, I've yet to find anything that does not have a story of some kind because, again, a story is "a message that tells the particulars of an act or occurrence or course of events".

So.. you're shaping everything in your mind that can be purely nonsensical to have a story of some kind. Good work. |:

What I was trying to get at before, that totally flew over your head with the origin and stuff, was that one area of story is the backstory, not just in videos or media, in everything, history.

Story in an AMV does not equal backstory or history of what happened, you're basically interpreting that based on your own logic and not of what is actually shown. |:

That's what I was thinking of and was trying to bring it in but you didn't want to hear of it so I thought I'd try to go another path.

The path of avoiding everything I;m saying by giving me rubbish? Good job. |:

2) how did dictionary.com define story? ""a message that tells the particulars of an act or occurrence or course of events"" or course of events, not always inclusive, so it seems to me a story comes before OR during an event. In Jihaku, before you do anything he states he's trying to make it 'like the video' (like the video, like the song, like the anime, get the connection?? might as well watch the video, listen to the song, watch the anime, why do ppl say this? Because you still get the same message or story) therefor giving it a story. I'd call it more fun (or parody/ trailor) than drama, but in many cases there is no fun category.

if you think about it the way I explained it, it does. I think your skipping something here.

Explain how your explaination of how in jihaku 'he tries to make it like the video' and therefore you get the same message' correlates to 'Jihaku has a story' As I explained already message does not equal story.

At first I thought it was me... but you know... I think it's you. o.0 I even as linked your definition of story and tried to accept what you meant, and yes, in that context the videos you point out do not have story,

Ok, so...

but then I actually looked it up,

Looked what up? Another definition of 'story' which exists your mind as some kind of omni-word that correlates to many other words that don't necessarily have anything to do with the word 'story'?

and barring if you could find hard evidence that I am wrong I won't buy it.

You haven't given me any reason to think that I should even take you seriously, just a bunch of words re-circulating what I've been saying and avoiding the hard points I've been giving you. |:

I think I'm being fair, but I also think your just being stubborn, I mean, with all the evidence (not to mention the entire english language) stacked against you I just fail to see your point.

Are you sure you even know the english language? |: You tell me that you believe in the definition that is stated by dictionary.com of 'story' yet you completely disregard it by adding your own view upon how it is applied to amvs. Case in point, telling me that Jihaku has a coherent story, yet hardly anybody else sees it but you, and I guarantee that you would be hard pressed to find anybody that agrees with you. Why do you thnk there was such a big debate about it being just a bunch of random 'good-scenes-matching-to-changes-in-the-song' type discussions? Then you go ahead and tell me that you'looked it up'... looked what up? At the ceiling? |:

If Dictionary.com says a story is a message I tend to beleive that. If I am wrong than Dictionary.com is wrong... than the entire English language is faulty

Ha. |:

Actually a story doesn't need a narrative, a story doesn't DO the progressing

Oh really... then what's with your earlier post of stating that story = progression and vice versa. Good work. |:

, the theme does a story is only a message it can be assumed, it can be as simple as 'I want this video to be as popular and as pretty as it can be' or 'I want this video to mimic this rock video and look cool'.

Ok... ...?

I hate to state that my own 'no story' amv was made by me ignoreing the storyline... but, yes, it may have been, I ignored the storyline but not the message. Your own no story videos (the two I have on hand, a time for us and Waking Hour also intentionally 'suffer' from the same thing)

Do you have any idea why I made those videos? Especially the Saikano one? No. You just interpreted it to be some mindless 'no story' video when each of those videos had something to do with my life at the time. They didn't have to follow any 'story' that you might say, they were used as a medium to express and reflect upon the emotions I was feeling at that time. In "A Time For Us," did you even question why it was named that or why I didn't follow the chronological timeline of Saikano? No. You just assumed I didn't 'plan it out,' yet that video has probably more depth then you could ever imagine, I didn't even want to release it at first because it was so close to me, that it really was not meant for an audience such as yourself simply looking for some coherent story. Hell, that video won 'Best Portrayal of a Series" at AnimeDestiny 2005, and you dare to tell me that it has NO STORY? Obviously people saw that there was a story, though it was not intentional, enough such that it won an award for the best portrayal of that particular series. So, in that aspect, it both had a message that is only clear to me, yet for others, it had a clear story for them to dub it enough as an entire protrayal of a whole series. Tell me, where does your 'no story' logic fit in there? Nowhere, its merely an assumpption on your part and your lazyness to remove yourself from such a narrow view on viewing AMVs.

OK now your just being unreasonable... I thought I had enough time for this, but I don't... see ya in a few hours.

I'm being unreasonable in stating that a video that your found to have NO STORY won a special award for being the best portrayal of a series? An award that wasn't given out to anything before, that it was made specifically for my video because of the excellence in progression it had regardless of whether or not there was a story.. which puts your logic of something as not to having any story mean no progress or anything beyond that to being pure garbage.

Your problem sir, is that you're merely clumping together terms to the word 'story' when each element of a video can exist independently from the term 'story' and still have progression in the video. You try to relate everything together as if the video can have no meaning unless the story is present, and that idea is just plain false shown by the example of my video winning such an award. You are a fool to thnk that story is the glue that binds together everything i a video, it is merely another factor or a tool to express the intention and content that the video has.

And in conclusion, gome. Next please.

[JaddziaDax]

Oh, there's so much wrong with both these sentences I don't even know where to begin.

That's why I won't

(aka. Oto w/ BA Linguistics, Highest Honors)

ha! i know my grammar is always off... lmao, so no stress.... and yea, i wouldnt bother myself... (ovbiously)

O.o
~~~~~~~~~~~

on topic-ish:

arguing the semantics of what "story" means to you will get you nowhere... let me repost:

i think that the terms "theme" and "story" often get mixed up...

a video can have a theme, and not have a story and still be enjoyable.
theres alot of "dance videos" that are proof of that...

sometimes the "theme" is randomness, that has nothing to do with nothing... it maybe enjoyable to some, and not enjoyable to others...
~~~~~~~~~~~

where one person finds some deep meaning:

I like how the color clip of Al and Ed performing the human transmutation is laid over a black and white background at 1:20, because it helps to strengthen the idea that Al “walks beside” Ed and provides some comfort amidst an otherwise bleak situation (thus, he provides the “color” on what is otherwise a black-and-white setting)

sometimes that meaning is just precieved... and here i did it cause i thought it looked pretty. the meaning they saw was something THEY wanted to see... the effect i chose, i did so because it felt right... it didnt have any other meaning than that.

Next you have a brief clip of a nurse treating Ed for “check my vital signs” at 2:15. To be honest, my initial reaction was “meh, everyone shows something like this for these words.”
...
For the “nurse” is actually that criminal lady whom you show at 2:17, and given the theme you develop of “double identities” or “hidden realities,” this nurse clip actually is very appropriate: She poses as a nurse in her daily life, and does other things under the surface. So I forgive you for choosing the nurse clip now, lol.

i used the overlay cause i thought the nurse scene was too "bright" compared to the color scheme of the amv... and i wanted to use the darker version of her as well to make it fit the mood better... i had no theme of "double identities" or "hidden realities" going that i can recall and if i did it was just coincidence....
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

in the end sometimes a person will sometimes see meaning.. or a theme that you didnt even intend. which is kinda neat sometimes... but others O.o makes me wonder about them...

i like videos that arent a straight narrative, cause narritave often gets borring, its nice to see a video that makes me feel something, or makes me think about something once in a while... or just dazzles me with the pretty colors O.O

[Arigatomina]

So.. you're shaping everything in your mind that can be purely nonsensical to have a story of some kind. Good work. |:

You can't blame him for it. Most humans with the ability to read do that from the moment their teacher tells them those funky symbols are letters which are to be arranged into words which are then arranged into sentences to convey some message unto the reader. I'll say it again, human beings inherently try to make sense out of random jumbles. It's natural. You might not like it, you might not do it, but most humans do.

Examples: Ever heard of the people who see Jesus on a roll or Mary in a water stain on the side of a hospital building? Ever seen those pictures that look like repetitive patterns - but if you cross your eyes you see it's really a three-dimensional picture hidden by the seemingly pointless pattern? How about legos? Parents don't believe in those anymore, but in my day even the little kids tried to make something out of nothing.

You can't teach people to stop trying to make sense out of the nonsensical until you accept the fact that they *do* try to make sense out of it. Accept it as an instinct or at least a "learned behavior". I'm sure it's been documented plenty of times. I could ask anyone on the street and they'd see it as common sense. It's a fact. Once you accept that people do it, you can try to teach them to stop. Then maybe they'll interpret your videos properly. At the very least, you'll have a better chance of explaining the benefits of leaving those patterns unsorted - why sometimes it's *better* to not know what the heck you're looking at. Sometimes it's nice to not even care that you don't know what you're looking at. Too much effort trying to define and explain and understand things.

To me, that's the fun of those emotion-based vids. You don't have to think. This thread is ruining that because now we have to think about why we like them. If we find out we secretly like them becuase we're instinctively trying to see a story in there, then we're doing it wrong. If we don't think (and absolutely do not review), we'll never know if we're viewing them wrong. We'll just be enjoying them. That's all I care about, myself, enjoying them.

[Otohiko]

And again, everyone has looked over my original points in regard to structure.

When you're making AMVs, you're not expressing emotion. You're not expressing your creativity. It has little to do with that. It's only your mind telling you that you do those things, whereas in fact little of it is true.

What you are doing is creating structure. And through this structure, something might come out. Or might not. You can come up with a good structure completely at random. Or you might not. You might invent and carefully design a good structure that reflects or resonates with your or anyone else's emotions. Your brain, and everyone else's brain, meanwhile, will sit there and try to guess the structure and what it means. The better and more deliberate the structure, the more meaning it will build on it. Ultimately, the "substance" you talk about is simply the inherent semiotic aspect of audio-visual structure.

AMVs are dead. That is, they're audio-visual media. There is no emotion on digital media. There is no 'substance' there. The substance is the audience themselves, that is, the semiotic part of it works only inside the audience, on the condition that the audience can interpret it correctly.

The fact is that, you can say that "this is a sad video about love", and it's not a sad video about love because you're sad about love. It's a sad video because the music might be in a minor scale, the visuals might be sparse, and there might be some girl on screen to suggest the 'love' part or something. Congratulations, you've just taken advantage of several natural structural devices with inherent semiotic properties and turned them into something that could be interpreted into emotion. You may just be starting to probe the depths of people's brains. Practice will make better.

There's nothing magical in art. Art is structure. Originality is unusual structure. Substance (within art) is semiotics.

I would suggest that, rather than ascribing magical properties to digital media, people learn by observation. The greatest artists are not good technicians or craftsmen, but first-rate observers.

[Koopiskeva]

stuff

Yea... I don't blame him for doing things the way he does, not telling him not to do so, just saying that he should upon up that narrow-minded view of his. There are things people can do to expand their views and realize that not everything fits in a neat little container of categorizing and classification of what does and doesn't make sense. For him to say that his classification of things are 'fact of the matter' is completely untrue just because thats how he sees the world. There are plenty of videos in which his perspective would be more than enough to comprehend the video and its intentions, but to dismiss all others as simply being 'random' when his mind cannot classify it within the limits of the definitions he created and his perception of how things should be, is being just that, narrow minded to the possiblity that the editor had a different intention than showing a story. |:

[Metro]

And again, everyone has looked over my original points in regard to structure.

When you're making AMVs, you're not expressing emotion. You're not expressing your creativity. It has little to do with that. It's only your mind telling you that you do those things, whereas in fact little of it is true.

What you are doing is creating structure. And through this structure, something might come out. Or might not. You can come up with a good structure completely at random. Or you might not. You might invent and carefully design a good structure that reflects or resonates with your or anyone else's emotions. Your brain, and everyone else's brain, meanwhile, will sit there and try to guess the structure and what it means. The better and more deliberate the structure, the more meaning it will build on it. Ultimately, the "substance" you talk about is simply the inherent semiotic aspect of audio-visual structure.

AMVs are dead. That is, they're audio-visual media. There is no emotion on digital media. There is no 'substance' there. The substance is the audience themselves, that is, the semiotic part of it works only inside the audience, on the condition that the audience can interpret it correctly.

The fact is that, you can say that "this is a sad video about love", and it's not a sad video about love because you're sad about love. It's a sad video because the music might be in a minor scale, the visuals might be sparse, and there might be some girl on screen to suggest the 'love' part or something. Congratulations, you've just taken advantage of several natural structural devices with inherent semiotic properties and turned them into something that could be interpreted into emotion. You may just be starting to probe the depths of people's brains. Practice will make better.

There's nothing magical in art. Art is structure. Originality is unusual structure. Substance (within art) is semiotics.

I would suggest that, rather than ascribing magical properties to digital media, people learn by observation. The greatest artists are not good technicians or craftsmen, but first-rate observers.

Creating structure is "how" I make a video it is not neccesarily "why" I make a video.