How long did it take to define and master your style?

downwithpants · Post by **downwithpants** » Mon Oct 23, 2006 11:40 pm

Minion wrote:nobody ever completely establishes their style. no style is ever static, no matter what art form you refer to.
styles are always progressing or regressing.
every one of us here is still "mastering" our own style.

this would have described me. i never did reach a point where i was completely satisfied with my "style". my last few videos (a friend in me, summery pop video, @;'~,~~) were trying to move away from my early tendencies of lyric and beat synch toward an emphasis on mood synch and flow.

Beowulf · Post by **Beowulf** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 12:44 am

Oh man this thread is going to take me a year to complete my post in. I make it a PAINSTAKING point to try to reinvent myself as much as possible, so I've never really developed a single style, but Ive been developing a lot of different stuff over the years and of course my interests have changed and (I'de like to think) matured. I don't really have a "frame" that I run my ideas through like jbone. He puts little bits and touches of the same effects in pretty much all his videos. Thats not to belittle him at all, as he is brilliant. Its just that you can instantly tell "jbone made this video". You can't really do that with my videos.

I'll post a big timeline tommarow. If anyone knows my style, PLEASE tell me!

BasharOfTheAges · Post by **BasharOfTheAges** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 12:45 am

I don't produce nearly enough to claim i have anything remotely resembling a style (nor enough to warrent my presence here... but that's another story entirely). I'm attempting to be one of those people that spend far too much time on a project as my initial attempts were far from lengthy endevours. Right now, that seems to be putting a 250 hour minimum on my projects (though I can't rightly say when i'll have enough free time to stop playing WoW and get some damned editing done).

As for inspiration... I've told a few people that i've ripped off style ideas from. Who though???

Org Profile · Post by **Otohiko** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 12:52 am

BasharOfTheAges wrote: I'm attempting to be one of those people that spend far too much time on a project as my initial attempts were far from lengthy endevours. Right now, that seems to be putting a 250 hour minimum on my projects

Interesting.

What I think I should've noted then is my tendency to be the opposite: I try to spend as little time as reasonably neccesary on AMVs, and will probably keep it that way.

While it's not an element of my style per se, my editing is very much distinguished by intense loathing of the technical aspects of video work (and ecstatic enthusiasm for the creative aspects of it. Too bad the two can't be totally separated

)

sayde · Post by **sayde** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 1:27 am

I don't think I'll ever "master" my own style since it's constantly changing as my editting skills improve. There's always something to work on or something new to try out. I don't care how good you get (as hard as that may be to believe for people). I think half the fun of even making amv's is knowing that you can always get better. I'm only speaking for myself w/ this next statement but I have to admit. If I ever felt like I "mastered" my editting style, it'd be kind of a buzzkill.

I apologize for not contributing anything useful to the topic.

Arigatomina · Post by **Arigatomina** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 3:05 am

If I admit that I have a style, I'd say it changes constantly - that progress/regress thing. I'll do something new in a vid, do it again in the next (usually to a bigger extent) and then never do it again, or go to something different and maybe pick up that old thing somewhere down the line if I remember having done it.

I like to think I don't have a style, not an editing style. The way I edit depends on the song I'm using, and sometimes on the video source I'm using and the available scenes. If it's style as in cuts and effects, I'm simplistic, I have a standard way of syncing things - usually to the sound of the lyrics more than the instruments - and then I'll do some funny odd things depending on the instruments I decide to highlight to go with the lyric sync. When I do effects they tend to be gaudy, colorful, and random. I don't do any editing consistently aside from my constant focus on the sound of lyrics (I like to sing along) and my ability to ignore instruments without knowing I'm ignoring them.

Style as in genre, I like romance, drama, slow stuff. I like faces. I focus on eyes first when I watch anime, or amvs, so my scene choices follow that. I like to show movements in my clips, so I lean toward in-clip sync more often than cut/beat-sync. I'd sooner have a person blink with the beat, than change clips and shorten the close-up. I think that was evident from my first amvs and it hasn't changed much over time - I just got used to using faster clip changes, since that's what I kept seeing in other vids.

I think my 'style' changes depending on my mood. I have to rewatch older vids to remember what I've done. If I do, I'm likely to incorporate an editing technique (a style?) into the new vid. If I don't, each new vid is like working with a blank record. I just do whatever strikes my fancy. If it happens to be similar to something else I've done, I probably won't notice till after the vid is done.

The only example vids I could give would be ones where I did something that could have been the start of a "new style" if I'd ever done it again. 'Fallen' was my first time using flashes for beat sync. I still do that once in a while, but not really. 'Ego Trip' was my first time planning the 'token effects' before I started making the video, just based on what sort of "trick/gimmic" I wanted to use with the music to make the otherwise standard editing a little more interesting. I did that again with 'The Chosen', but it's not something I'd stick with and do regularly. 'And Ever' was the first time I made a video I didn't plan to watch just to have made it. I did that again with 'Villains', but, again, it's not something I plan to stick with. 'Sufferance' was the first time I played with flickering back and forth between very short clips for beat sync. I did that a few times in later vids, but I dropped it really quick. 'Demon Within' was my first Premiere vid and my first time using excessive overlays. I used that sort of thing in 'The Chosen', but to a much lesser extent, and it's not a 'style/technique' I want to keep using. 'Gmen' was my first time "making" original scenes - I did that again to a much greater extent when I drew all the footage for 'Dark Half'. Way too time consuming - I doubt I'll try that again any time soon.

'Almost Golden' was my first time using the transform filter and black flashes for dramatic beat sync. I'll probably be using the transform filter a lot in the future. I used that and black flashes again (successfully, I think) in 'Sleepless'. That's one technique/combo I wouldn't mind doing regularly. It's an exception. I'd only use it for dark action or manga/anime vids where the source footage doesn't have the motion I want with the song. ^^;

Yeah. It seems like every time I do something new, I back away from it as quickly as possible so it doesn't catch on and become a habit with me. I guess my style would be simple and steady, focused on lyrics, with random one-time experimentation every now and then. In that case, I "mastered" my style when I stopped asking editors (who I admired) to do op exchanges and help me improve. I think that happened after I made 'Sufferance'. I think I felt like I'd changed my 'style' way too much in that vid and decided not to get advice anymore - because I was caving to the peer pressure or something. Or maybe I just got satisfied with making vids for me however I wanted and stopped caring/trying. Either way. o.O

BauziOLD · Post by **BauziOLD** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 3:43 am

After around 4 (or maybe 5?) years including 3 years with a more than lame PC... I think, that I´ve found my "style" out. I don´t know if it is the and product, because I will change in the next time to AE and FXhome Pro, but that there is still a style you can see now.
Uhm I and Mac studied at the first years everything alone. A really cool try out phase filled with DBZ

. It was fun to see us improving.

But here are thing, thoughts and videos about my style:

The beginnings were with tons of sync, that are figured out in white flashes:
http://www.animemusicvideos.org/members ... hp?v=91080
(made with a 200Mhz PC; changed at 75% to my high end PC)

The next level was "blur" + effects. Tons of blurs with more simpel effects and masks:
http://www.animemusicvideos.org/members ... p?v=128858
(It is dark as I wanted a video, but I am not pleased with this one)

Next time I wanted to spend more time on faster syncing and less on fx.
http://www.animemusicvideos.org/members ... p?v=129863

The nowadays goal is to mix all this things together into one amv and that is what I would call my final "style" or just another step to... absolution

http://www.animemusicvideos.org/phpBB/v ... hp?t=73389
(Beta version of my project now)

That all doesn´t mean, that I want to do only hard stuff, but also comedy and parodie amvs, trailers, but not really a romance amvs. I was made for fast syncing and my lovely blurs. I also think, that I work better with a single anime source or only a few. I don´t think, that I can or want to do a bright mix of anime just like Rythm Animation (I don´t think the amv is so called, but I think you surely know what I mean...)

godix · Post by **godix** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 4:08 am

I'm bored, I'll play along.

My videos tend to fall into two styles. Stupid comedies or experimental crap.

I'm most known, probably exclusively known, for the stupid comedies. The stupid comedy style is, basically, to do just enough editing to carry the joke and fuck going any further. Any trace of talent or ability shown in them is strictly coincidence. I got my laugh (or I didn't and no amount of editing will get it) so why should I care if it's well timed, looks good, or is skillfully edited? In fact several times the joke was that I intentionally made poorly timed, unskilled, and horrible looking pieces of crap. As such they tend to be fairly simply edited although every now and then I do something semi-complex. Usually these things take me a matter of a few hours or perhaps days at the most. I think the longest I've ever worked on one was two weeks, and that was because I couldn't figure out how to actually make it funny. This style has been present from my very first video. <a href="http://www.animemusicvideos.org/members ... >Dedicated to My Wife</a> is probably one of the better done examples of this although really anything marked as comedy in my profile is this style.

My experimental crap style is anything I actually spend effort on. I'm trying something new (to me at least). They tend to be somewhat short, stylistic to a flaw, and so boring they're damned near unwatchable. Anything in my profile that isn't marked comedy is probably me experimenting and serves as fine proof that I'm not a drama/dance/romance/etc. editor. My early experimental onces were dance videos because I was trying to learn timing, effects, and what all those filters in Premiere do. Once I got that down to my satisfaction I moved on to working with drama and style, most of which were never released because when I'm being serious I actually pay attention to that inner voice that says 'dude, your editing sucks warm monkey jizz through a short straw'. <a href="http://www.animemusicvideos.org/members ... ">Memories of Pain</a> seems to be the one most people liked 'most people liked' being defined as 'WTF? No one has bitched at me about how it sucks yet?'. <a href="http://www.animemusicvideos.org/members ... 3">Goodbye Cruel World</a> is my favorite of my AMVs just because it's still the only one that actually turned out almost exactly like I wanted when I first had the idea, although objectively speaking it's a semi-tolerable ending in desperate need of a beginning to set it up. I've decided I'm going to move away from stupid comedies and start experimenting again. Of course, last time I said that I started <a href="http://www.animemusicvideos.org/members ... ">DTSEM</a> within two weeks so who knows if I actually mean it this time.</a>

bum · Post by **bum** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 6:56 am

My style was defined, refined and mastered by the time I gave up making amv's.

SSJVegita0609 · Post by **SSJVegita0609** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 7:47 am

Keep em coming people. This is like watching a creator write a detailed and honest op about their entire body of work, I'm totally digging it.