Have Hell Videos Jumped the Shark?

Kitsuner · Post by **Kitsuner** » Wed Sep 27, 2006 2:05 am

MCWagner wrote:
dokidoki wrote: Did anyone ever complain about the Weird Al medley videos?
Oh hell yeah. That was the "only funny because the song is funny" complaint from years ago...

That's partly why I find comedy videos with funny audio to be more difficult to make than those with unfunny audio.

dokool · Post by **dokool** » Wed Sep 27, 2006 6:33 am

DriftRoot wrote:Just 2 cents here, but I know for Anime Boston there is not a large pool of comedy vids even being submitted, so the resulting finalists aren't necessarily chuckle-fests (last year's was amusing, but especially so if you understood the whole spoiler fest theme). As I understand it, the AB judges have dozens to choose from in the action and drama categories but only a tiny fraction of that amount in comedy (and romance). I don't know if there's a magic number of submissions - would the judges just not even run the category if only one or two videos (and bad ones, at that) were entered? Hmm...

Comedy was <i>damned</i> good at AB this year - honestly, the only video I had a major problem with was Channel Surfing 2, everything else (I do

Yuri, Blasphemy, my own video, that Eva/Excel penis joke vid, and the Weird Al one) was great. This is compared to a year ago when Comedy was pretty weak, and to two years ago when it was non-existent. AB has more problems with Romance, at this point.

As a whole, I think I'll post my thoughts on Hell videos (especially since my discussion with Wired_Knight probably contributed to starting this thread) once i've gotten some sleep. Damned 6pm-6am shifts...

JudgeHolden · Post by **JudgeHolden** » Wed Sep 27, 2006 7:29 am

Illia Sadri wrote:Well I will say one thing I am noticing with comedy in contests is that particularly with hell style vids being dominating, even they are not consistently funny in many cases. Heck, AMV Hell3 in all honesty has some stuff that works wonderfully and a lot of absolute crap. People like it for what they remember, which will be the extremely good segments, not the mediocre. That I think is a large part of their success in competition.

But yep, the solution is to get people to make full length comedy. Finish a full song, do it well, get it to the cons.

However I do wonder if attendees at cons are so used to every line being funny (because there is no buildup to jokes but rather lots of unrelated one liners) I wonder if the traditional comedy vid is going to be well received anymore.

I would say no, no they are not.

DriftRoot · Post by **DriftRoot** » Wed Sep 27, 2006 8:35 am

dokool wrote: Comedy was <i>damned</i> good at AB this year - honestly, the only video I had a major problem with was Channel Surfing 2, everything else (I do Yuri, Blasphemy, my own video, that Eva/Excel penis joke vid, and the Weird Al one) was great. This is compared to a year ago when Comedy was pretty weak, and to two years ago when it was non-existent. AB has more problems with Romance, at this point.

As a whole, I think I'll post my thoughts on Hell videos (especially since my discussion with Wired_Knight probably contributed to starting this thread) once i've gotten some sleep. Damned 6pm-6am shifts...

Yah, I don't really remember any of the vids from 2005... *frowns* that YMCA one with GTO may be perpetually stuck in my head for all time when "comedy" and "Anime Boston" are mentioned in the same sentence.

I wonder how many drama vids could slide into romance, if necessary? One AMV I've tossed around for a few years doesn't exactly scream"OMG i LUV U" themes, but the song itself IS a love song.

dokool · Post by **dokool** » Thu Sep 28, 2006 5:52 am

DriftRoot wrote:Yah, I don't really remember any of the vids from 2005... *frowns* that YMCA one with GTO may be perpetually stuck in my head for all time when "comedy" and "Anime Boston" are mentioned in the same sentence.

'05 was Channel Surfing 1, my vid (Body Movin'), Gunsmoke Outlaws, and the rest of it was so bad that I don't remember it. I think the problem, at the time, was that half of Comedy would have been better suited for an Upbeat/Fun/Etc category - once Adam put that into place things cleaned up nicely.

Org Profile · Post by **Otohiko** » Thu Sep 28, 2006 12:14 pm

Personally, I'm not really concerened by the 'Hell' (which, let's face it, are not really a 'Hell' genre at all, since these types of videos have been around for ages before Hell). They have their place on the AMVing food chain.

Let's face it, they have great comedic potential, and are fairly risk-free on audiences since the attention span required for them is minimal - and yet you can stick in as many segments as you want and not worry about length.

I would be concerned if Hell started suddenly taking over drama, romance or horror videos but clearly that won't ever be the case. Unless of course our attention spans deteriorate to a point where we can't watch the same thing for longer than 30 seconds. In which case I'll commit seppuku