Doing Prep-Work for AMVs

Knowname · Post by **Knowname** » Sat Jan 13, 2007 1:41 pm

starseekergem wrote:My strategy is usually to first think of an idea, then mentally plan at least the first 2 verses, chorus or 2 and maybe the instrumental bits. After that I put the rest in as I go along. If I'm just making an AMV for the hell of it then I tend to only have an idea and the rest is done on the fly. Those vids get consigned to boochsack.

That's like the whole song!! lol I just do the chorus in my head. It's amazeing how much and how well you can improvise.

badmartialarts · Post by **badmartialarts** » Sat Jan 13, 2007 5:08 pm

I have to agree with some of the above posters on the idea of planning one or two major bits of the song, then filling in the rest. If I can make the whole thing look cohesive, it's great. If not...well...I scrap the video and file the idea away, since the basic premises I was gonna use for one video might work with a different song later on down the road (this is the case with a new Elfen Lied video I'm working on, and possibly a short Lain video).

Taruto! · Post by **Taruto!** » Sat Jan 13, 2007 6:51 pm

Prep work absolutely kills me. If I have to thoroughly skim through a series, plan each clip, rip each clip, sort each clip, USE each clip, make any edits etc.. I just lose interest, and usually never finish the videos. My ongoing project has been pretty much ditched because of it. I love the idea and will probably return to it one day, but for now.. I'm back to the drawing board.

"Winging it", however, works for me. all apart from 1 of my completed videos (The Court of Suzumiya Haruhi - which changed a lot from the plan anyway) were made with pretty much no planning involved - I mean, I've always had some idea about what to do and where, but for large chunks of my videos, it'll be things I've found & used when editing other parts/watching the episodes through again that have just "clicked".

Though most of the music I use in my videos is stuff I've listened to and imagined videos to anyway, so all that's left is to fill in the blanks. I probably should put more planning into videos.. but s'long as I like the result and my "audience" like it I don't feel the need to go back and edit things over and over again until it's "perfect".

Probably my biggest downfall as an editor though. Laziness always gets the better of me somewhere.

Szwagier · Post by **Szwagier** » Sat Jan 13, 2007 10:09 pm

I usually write some sketch about the whole idea, main parts and the ideas of scenes I have in mind. Then if the amv is planned from 1-2 series, and they are not longer than 26 episodes i watch them, to recall how the scenes really looks like and what could be used (i skip that part if the series suck though).

After that I usually think of what I want to put in the current scene, and jump to episode that have it. If that seems not good enough I go to another idea until I find what I need or I'm out of ideas. If the second option occur I tend to think about it during classes in university, and write some short note of what come to my mind on the margins of my notebook.

When I tried to do a complete planning before editing/recalling series but it turned out to be completely useless ;]

CrackTheSky · Post by **CrackTheSky** » Sat Jan 13, 2007 10:29 pm

I'm pretty sloppy when it comes to prep work. Usually I listen to a song and as I listen to it scenes from an anime fit themselves to certain parts of the song. Now, this happens with at least 50% of the music I listen to, so if the idea's good enough, THEN I consider making an AMV with it.

When it comes to ripping scenes, I'm incredibly inefficient. I generally rip at least 80% of an episode into several ~30 second clips; I always think "I might need that" so I cover all my bases. Luckily I have enough room on my HDDs...

When I edit, I will almost always edit in a linear fashion. I very rarely put scenes in out of order; I go from start to finish, and I do all the detail (i.e. effects, masking, etc.) and stuff as I go, so when I get to the end of the song that usually means I'm done. The only problem with this is I can get hung up on certain parts of a song (for example, a tough or ambiguous lyrical match) for hours or days at a time, which prevents me from going any further a lot of the time, although occasionally I do just skip parts and come back to them.

It's probably not the most efficient way to make a video, but it works for me :/