Thoughts on substance in AMVs

[Koopiskeva]

stuff

AMVs can be taken in this approach.. but so can everything else (everything is dead unless someone has an attachment to it). Even when somebody cries, that can be taken simply as a tool for trying to get what they want, and not necessarily expressing an emotion that has a substance other than desire.

I like your points about 'substance' and interpretation. They make much more sense than my ramblings. In regards to emotion as either being expressed or merely being reflection of the editor's intention, I guess I've been using expression and reflection to have the same meaning, when expression means that the video itself has life, which can be true depending on your view on relationships and communication, but that would also have much to do with your perception of what has life and what doesn't. |:

I never had a definition of art... except for creative expression.. which is very very vague |:

[Otohiko]

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

I'm not arguing with that. I'd be fooling myself if I did. Ultimately, though, it's the "how" that other people will see, and one needs to keep it in mind.

Virtually all my inspirations come from external sources. In weird ways sometimes, like that "mama" thing I did... after climbing mountains all day.


I think you have to be careful in associating emotions and semiotics. Emotions are something that an individual person experiences; if you want to relate yours, you have to work in a context. And that is the essence of semiotics, I think - it's not just symbols that naturally make sense, it's symbols that make sense in (or out of) context too. You can make a video because of an emotional drive, but noone will understand it because there's no context for the emotions, even if it works for you. There's other factors, too - I dare say if I make a serious drama video in Russian, it might not make the same sense in terms of emotion as it would in English, because even the concepts of 'emotionality' as such are relatively different in the two cultures.

I don't think it's possible to understate the role of structure as such. In art and elsewhere, I think there's really big universal principles at play, namely principles of patterns and structures. Rather than standing up and waving emotions at them, I'd suggest looking at them very carefully.

I used to hate poetry, for example. I'd stand up and say "poetry sucks, like, why the hell do I have to rhyme everything? It's restrictive - bah, prose all the way! To hell with the superficial boundaries!" But through both music and studying linguistics/psychology/science, I've come back around to realize how important patterning and structure actually are to making poetry effective. I stopped learning how to play music and refused to learn how to read it - again, because "it's too restrictive - why do I want to repeat some patterns someone else made up, and follow these stupid chords. Bah, to hell! Overthrow the diatonic system." Again, through careful active listening, I realized how very wrong I was.

It might seem like it has absolutely nothing to do with the meaning or emotion, but I think there is something very natural and even universal in the fact that structure does add a lot on the meaning level. Which is not just the product of our brain, but even more what our brain is the product of, and it's the product of the environment, and it's the product of responding to much larger and more universal forces out there. And I think this is the level which art is actually closest to, rather than the personal and the emotional.

Again, maybe I've been slightly spoiled by being a linguist, of course. Spent years studying how some surprisingly complex patterning is completely built into our brain unconsciously, and I'm more than convinced that this applies not only to language. Frankly, it's easy to make the connections there for me.

[Knowname]

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.

lol, don't feel left out, Oto, I keep track of every post and every post that agrees with Koop here, he ignores. The only reason hie's argueing with me is that I'm argueing with him. If I w as to agree with him he wouldn't be argueing, he's not looking for an discussion, he's looking for an inquisition... lol

[Knowname]

sometimes the "theme" is randomness

I wrote out a link to Pocket Change like 5 times but ended up eraseing it, you know that???? Seriously the best example I could think of.

[Koopiskeva]

lol, don't feel left out, Oto, I keep track of every post and every post that agrees with Koop here, he ignores. The only reason hie's argueing with me is that I'm argueing with him. If I w as to agree with him he wouldn't be argueing, he's not looking for an discussion, he's looking for an inquisition... lol

Maybe its cause I agree with them that I don't have anything to add.

[Metro]

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

I'm not arguing with that. I'd be fooling myself if I did. Ultimately, though, it's the "how" that other people will see, and one needs to keep it in mind.

I am more concerned with the result of the audience seeing my video then how they saw my video.

I don't see any faults with your comments about structure and its importance to creating amvs. Your arguments are concise and persuasive but I just see it as repetitive. If you create anything you use structure. If I make a House I'm going to build a framework into it.

I see art as a form of communication between the creator and her audience. You can build as much meaning and structure in a video as you like but without someone to view the work, whats the point?


Is art art if no one sees it?

I don't think it's possible to understate the role of structure as such. In art and elsewhere, I think there's really big universal principles at play, namely principles of patterns and structures. Rather than standing up and waving emotions at them, I'd suggest looking at them very carefully...

It might seem like it has absolutely nothing to do with the meaning or emotion, but I think there is something very natural and even universal in the fact that structure does add a lot on the meaning level...

Again, maybe I've been slightly spoiled by being a linguist, of course. Spent years studying how some surprisingly complex patterning is completely built into our brain unconsciously, and I'm more than convinced that this applies not only to language. Frankly, it's easy to make the connections there for me.

Not only is the ability to recognize complex patterns hardwired into our brains but also the ability to Empathize with others is hardwired as well. Without the ability to recognize the patterns as pertinent to our own situation we won't react to them. Its the ability to empathize with the characters portrayed within my video that allow me to induce an emotion within my audience and as a result empathize with my own emotions.

[JaddziaDax]

sometimes the "theme" is randomness

I wrote out a link to Pocket Change like 5 times but ended up eraseing it, you know that???? Seriously the best example I could think of.

or my abenobashi vid, its pretty random more random than pocket change

[Knowname]

Purpose does not equal story.

As I explained already message does not equal story.

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'?

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. |:

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.

here's the full thing, I'll let you decide what is relevant and what is not since, apparently, I cannot.

n 1: a message that tells the particulars of an act or occurrence or course of events; presented in writing or drama or cinema or as a radio or television program; "his narrative was interesting"; "Disney's stories entertain adults as well as children" [syn: narrative, narration, tale] 2: a piece of fiction that narrates a chain of related events; "he writes stories for the magazines" 3: structure consisting of a room or set of rooms comprising a single level of a multilevel building; "what level is the office on?" [syn: floor, level, storey] 4: a record or narrative description of past events; "a history of France"; "he gave an inaccurate account of the plot to kill the president"; "the story of exposure to lead" [syn: history, account, chronicle] 5: a short account of the news; "the report of his speech"; "the story was on the 11 o'clock news"; "the account of his speech that was given on the evening news made the governor furious" [syn: report, news report, account, write up] 6: a trivial lie; "he told a fib about eating his spinach"; "how can I stop my child from telling stories?" [syn: fib, tale, tarradiddle, taradiddle]

the parts I think are relevant are in bold, I just don't think 5 or 6 are relavent... but they might be... be interesting to see if someone could conjur up an amv from a lie, guess you could say 'the world crashes down' was conjured up from a news report... wth would an amv lie look like anyway?? (also I suppose a narrative is a story, I don't think I said a narrative is NOT a story, I think I said a story does not have to be narrated.. but if I did I appologize)

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

who's to decide what is important and what's not. For instance in your milk store scenerio I found a few other points you could have used but didn't say anything cuz regardless the outcome would have been the same.

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'

in order to mimic the video he must also mimiced it's ... wait a sec, the very rock video is just a giant narration, you can even say Jihaku itself is just a narration for it's subject.

and because I know this will come up next,

adj : consisting of or characterized by the telling of a story; "narrative poetry" n : a message that tells the particulars of an act or occurrence or course of events; presented in writing or drama or cinema or as a radio or television program

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. |:

oh? you mean, like this?

Ok, so...

or this?

Are you sure you even know the english language? |:

Ok... ...?

And in conclusion, gome. Next please.

I regret putting that already

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. |:

they are mutually exclusive in that without a story you have no progression, but that's not what directly leads too the progression. A story is just a message, an ends to a means. you CAN have a story without progression, take the last transmition or most amvs that ppl complain about not haveing a story. Also, there was no "vica versa", in fact what I said was most ppl think vica versa but it's not true. As Dax pointed out we should not mix up story and theme... but we often do.

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.[/quote]
you are, and you think WAY to highly of yourself. I have not scene Saikano so I wouldn't know, you make WAY too many assumptions and your too stubborn to see anything but red when annoyed.

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.

Possibly, prove me wrong and I'll gladly change my views.

[Knowname]

sometimes the "theme" is randomness

I wrote out a link to Pocket Change like 5 times but ended up eraseing it, you know that???? Seriously the best example I could think of.

or my abenobashi vid, its pretty random more random than pocket change

I'm almost too scared to watch it than lol.

[Willen]

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'

in order to mimic the video he must also mimiced it's ... wait a sec, the very rock video is just a giant narration, you can even say Jihaku itself is just a narration for it's subject.

and because I know this will come up next,

adj : consisting of or characterized by the telling of a story; "narrative poetry" n : a message that tells the particulars of an act or occurrence or course of events; presented in writing or drama or cinema or as a radio or television program

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Ok, if you think Jihaku has a story, please write the story you percieve it has here. Or, describe "the particulars of an act or occurrence or course of events" that happens in Jihaku.