Go watch your old videos. Right now.

[Castor Troy]

So what are your feelings when watching your old videos nowadays?

Embarrassment?
Nostalgia?
"They were cool, but you've matured and moved on?"
"These were awesome and always will be awesome?"
"What the hell was I thinking?"

The reason why I brought this up was because I'm working on an old school type video right now and the difficulty of editing it is trying not to time every beat, drumroll, etc. in trying to tell the theme I want to express with it. But at the same time, I still imagine myself timing every beat because it's pretty much what I've been used to doing for the past several years.

I needed some kind of motivation, so I decided to watch some of my old videos again. At first I felt really embarrassed and shut one of my videos off after 5 seconds, but after 3 more tries, I finally decided to watch one all the way through.

Seeing the bad quality, small resolution, very long scenes set to the verses, orphan frames, mistimed beats, etc brought back a pretty cool nostalgic feeling that I haven't felt in a while. The term "make videos for yourself" felt the most real back then since I was ignorant in the standards of what made "good videos". We all gotta admit when we started watching these so called "good videos", we felt the need to improve up to the so called "standards" which isn't a bad thing. But I think along the line, we lost the concept of "making videos for yourself" in order to please the masses to get our names out there.

Now that some of us have become more well known and established in the community, we can "make videos for ourselves" with the skills we learned with more evolved and mature concepts. However, with all the recent discussion about the "next evolution of amvs" and "slumps", has caused some kind of outcry for "old school" videos. So what's exactly going on here?

Watching my old videos made me realize how tightly knit and uniform the community has become about timing, effects, etc. I think Beowulf said in his mp3 rant last year that people nowadays have ADD even worse than 5 years ago. We've become so used to this style of editing that now we're complaining about "mediocrity" among current videos. How much further are we even supposed to take amv editing now?

It's not exactly a bad thing to evolve and change. People can still make what they want, but the outcry of "too many effects and beat sync in videos" has always been something we've been complaining about. At the same time, if we decided to go back to "old school", people will complain about the lack of effects and beats sync. Basically, we can't have it both ways...

To be honest, I'm actually feeling burned out on making and watching videos with too much beat sync, effects, etc. I do miss the days where I would just place something on the timeline and feel content with it. I know I can't truly go back to those days, but the yearning is still there. For me, it's extremely hard to put down a clip in the timeline over a fast drumroll part of the song and *not* strobe it.

I dunno if I'm even truly making videos for myself anymore. I try to convince myself all the time that I do, but I dunno if it's really true. Some part in the back of my head will always want to impress others by conforming to the standards set nowadays.

Like I said before, there's nothing wrong with the way things have evolved and people should still make what they want. However, that won't exactly stop everyone else from complaining.

I'm not exactly making this old school video because I want to defy the norm. I'm just making it since a certain *ahem* someone bugged the hell out of me to do it.

So yeah, go watch your old videos. It'll bring back some good memories and maybe even change your perspective on things.

[OropherZero]

I'm still not completely sure about the difference between 'old school AMVs' and AMV 2.0. Is there a post somewhere which clearly labels the difference in terms of editting tools and techniques?

[TwilightChrono]

Well, one thing is for sure. If your not getting paid to make the AMV's, then you are doing them for yourself. Your doing it without getting paid and thus means you enjoy doing it as a hobby. That's how I see it. Next thing you know, people are gonna start putting ads in the paper or over the internet that say:

"Will pay for a Badass AMV to be made and full credit given to me. Will make it worth your while" Or something along those lines. The line between mainstream AMV's and AMV's set to today's standards are really far apart. It's getting really hard to distinguish yourself nowadays.

It's kinda like that topic, "What Makes A Memorable AMV" on another forum I used to visit. They talked about getting their names out their but it was extremely hard to because you would have to make something insanely badass to be remembered for it.
How people brag about that Princess Tutu-Hall Om Mig Nu AMV urks me to no end. Besides the timing, I never really saw anything that special about it. It's good, I'll give it that. But does it conform to the standards that we have today?

Everyone dreams of making or seeing the perfect AMV, but in reality, it will never happen, because people have far too many different tastes and opinions on what they like to see in an AMV, so no matter what you do, somebody somewhere is going to have a problem with the AMV that you just made. Tis a fact, tis life, get used to it.

[Pas]

Well, one thing is for sure. If your not getting paid to make the AMV's, then you are doing them for yourself. Your doing it without getting paid and thus means you enjoy doing it as a hobby.

I'd disagree actually. A lot of people are in it for the praise and/or recognition. There are people out there who make AMVs to impress other people, and not as you may believe, solely for their own personal satisfaction. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, if they get enjoyment from seeing other people enjoy their creation, then all the better for them. I mean, why else would people even be here? If everyone was making these things just to please themselves, then nobody would have any need to upload.

I believe that most of us are in this hobby to create and share our creations, to watch others create and their creations and to enjoy the company of people who enjoy the same activities as ourselves.

[Castor Troy]

I really hope this post didn't come off as "If you make videos for contests, competition, etc, you're not making them for yourself" since you can still make videos for yourself and still compete and amaze people at the same time.

But if you are feeling burnt out on videos or just reading the opinions of people in general, watch your old videos again and remember what brought you here in the first place.

[Bauzi]

I'm still not completely sure about the difference between 'old school AMVs' and AMV 2.0. Is there a post somewhere which clearly labels the difference in terms of editting tools and techniques?

I don´t know. I look at videos that I liked a few years ago and I still like some of them and they´re just different. Look at this video:

It just works with it´s simpel editing, right? That´s somehow fascinating for me.


It´s all about impressing other editors. Editor for editor editing. Fuck this shit. Anyway it´s natural somehow. You see as beginner somebody with tight sync and you´re just impressed by it and you try to do the same and even more. In the end you have some piece of crap wich only follows a certain beat without thinking anymore of something else and than the chance is high that it somehow fails.
Personaly I do step back somehow from tighter sync. Well I can´t say that I step back from effects too, I think I just try to use it in a more usefull and not cheesy way.
People burn out today because all they see are silly syncpatterns and shit. There is often nothing else that matters.
I talked to my bestfriend Mac at a con. He just makes bad ass syncage rampage and he still likes it. He said that a good action amv is something that syncs and also simply ignores beats at the right time and he misses such "ignorence" to don´t give a fuck on certain beats. Though I have to agree with him.


About my videos in the past? I don´t often watch my amvs wich are prior 2004 because of the trash factor. I like them, but don´t want to watch them too often
My other videos are in my taste and are fine for me. Of course there are typical mistakes in quality and editing, but I can overlook them ^^ I´m pleased.

[8bit_samurai]

I could only watch two of them all the way. One of them I thought it was okay, the other one I thought "WTF I was thinking." The other two I couldn't finish because of the quality.

As for the definition of old school, I've always thought this was it, but after what I seen in some of the threads in the General AMV Forum, I'm not so sure now.

[CrackTheSky]

I'm pretty much totally embarassed by any video I made before mid-2007. Except for one or two videos, I really can't stand most of 'em.

[Nessephanie]

Old videos? What are those? I has none >_>

Personally I like where amv's are right now compared to what they used to be. Things are more clean technically and I like that. I think people can convey their themes and stories just as well with editing now, and make them look alot better.

I like the 'standards' and being able to kinda follow them, it means I can make videos that I like more because they look nicer, not just everyone else, but to me as well. I don't think amv's need to 'evolve' or that we're in a slump. There will always be videos that we like, and ones we don't, no matter where the community is *shrugs*.

I like my stuff just fine.

[Kionon]

Some of the most heavily watched videos are the videos from around when I started. My own videos and the videos of others. I would be as proud to show someone Utena (Story of a Girl) today as I was when I first made it nearly a decade ago. Why should I be embarrassed? That was my ability at the time, and I put hard work into it. If there are mistakes, well, it was part of a learning process. Being embarrassed about something you lovingly created is just silly.

Yes, it is true that every few years I try to do something really experimental, something I feel is different, or something certainly I have never ever done before. However, I don't believe my style has changed. I believe I am the same type of editor that I was in 2000, 2003, 2006, and now. My processing has gotten better, my sources are different, my editing is tighter... but style? No. It is the same.

And frankly, I wouldn't want it any other way. The moment I edit for someone else, the moment it's no longer about it being therapeutic or fun for me, the moment that I am still editing when I it is possible for me to stop without feeling like something is missing in my life that is very important... that's the moment I retire.