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Prepping
2011-04-30 18:24:35
My new resolve, if you're reading this, you are my witness!! I will spend at least 5 hours a week editing so that I can at least make some sort of progress. This will be ramped up to 10+ hours as needed, provided my health holds out. Do not tell my chiropractor.
I spent most of today preparing for hardcore editing by finally taking the time to reformat my PC. This hasn't been done for several years, which is testament to the superiority of Windows Vista (and, more recently, Win7) over XP when it comes to keeping things safe and sound. I used to reformat about once a year for system rehabilitation purposes. Things weren't getting that bad lately, but I figured better safe than sorry.
AMV plans have temporarily veered off on a tangent. My philosophy on this is that if an AMV idea I had back in the day (so long ago I can't even remember when that was) still seems quite attractive, it might be a good idea to finally act on it. Or rather, act on it again. This is the thing I spent around 100 hours screwing around with back in the day, when the wrath of the AMV Gods was coming down hard and - no matter what I did or how hard I tried - I could not make an AMV. Even 15 seconds of one.
Also, whilst reformatting I watched a few of my favorite videos, in particular Falling Dreams. I would kill to be able to make a video like that. -
@Castor
2011-04-22 13:25:18
"Also, hearing tales of the frustration of working on an AMV for months only to see it rejected from the finals while a haphazard quickie goes on to great success (hey, I think there's a bad romance movie plot, here) hit home."
That sums up the contest scene nowadays. Mediocrity is being more rewarded in an era of terrible judging and stupid decisions.
A successful quickie video is not necessarily mediocre, I didn't mean to imply that. To further clarify, I meant that the same editor creates both videos - the long-term project and the quickie - NOT that a long term project by person A gets trounced by person B's quickie. I don't even want to GO there. Nor do I want to go all the other places this can go, because we've been there hundreds of times.
I will question whose fault it is there's all these "mediocre" videos out there. If no one's stepping up to the plate to put out good videos which also grab the audience, we can't complain about what's winning. Back in the day, any AMV at all was a pretty awesome thing to most people. Nowadays fan-made videos are everywhere and anyone can make an AMV, it's not really all that special or exciting in and of itself. There's also an accepted culture of labeling stuff "good" for the most frivolous of reasons and getting enjoyment out of lame, overused jokes, lots of violence, the latest romance sensation and, of course, sparkly, shiny things. These are what currently push people's buttons, stuff that might get you accused of taking cheap shots by "pandering" to the audience if your video is judged to be otherwise mediocre in certain circles.
I have no issue with "pandering," to me it's another name for zeroing in on what it takes to win. Sometimes this results in mediocrity, sometimes this results in great stuff, but it's still paying attention to what it takes to get what you want and I would really hesitate to cut down anyone for that. All I'd ask is that you be proud of your excellent pandering, but recognize it for what it is. Let's face it, a competition is a competition. If you're out to win, don't pull any punches, and failing to do everything in your power to get the prize is pulling the biggest punch of all. Sometimes this means mediocre pandering will do the trick, other times it means only the absolute top-notch work will win. Anyone who's shocked their mediocre, pandering AMV doesn't trump the truly great AMV when the videos are evaluated at a higher level than mindless audience entertainment is clearly deluding themselves. Hence the judge's awards at a lot of cons, although their success is, of course, up for debate.
The obvious downside to this winning audience formula is that it's less incentive for folks to really try and make great videos if mediocrity+pandering is enough to get them an award and lots of attention. Not everyone deliberately panders with winning videos, or course, but inadvertently or not, they're still pushing all the right buttons.
And that's what I'm currently pondering and which led to musings on mediocrity. I'd much rather win with a good video than with a pandering mediocre one, but that's not easy to do (for me, anyways). When we're talking about deadlines and bad backs and my general distaste for editing, it's looking more attractive to create a relatively quick and easy panderiffic (but still 100+ hour) AMV than the big, splashy one I'd love to create Yeah, it's a big big BIG deal to me how much time I spend editing - AMVs WRECK MY HEALTH and rack up the medical bills!! I've been willing and able to put in the time up until now, but I'm getting old and decrepit and it's not so easy anymore. :|
AMV editing is a young person's game. Or at least, a person in good health's game who can afford to abuse their body by sitting around all the time staring at a computer screen. -
...I made it!
2011-04-22 11:39:37
First time in who knows how long, I actually made it to the AB Editor's Dinner! Much was had, though we wound up getting split into three different tables and so I only got to talk to a handful of folks. I've seriously got to knuckle down and at least finish another AMV. I felt a wee bit ashamed surrounded by folks who have managed to put the effort into editing, while I sit here and perpetually complain but don't do anything about it. :(
Fortunately - during discussion of the effect we'd most like to see banned from AMVing - we hit upon a possible new use for an abhorred effect that I'm going to try out.
Also, hearing tales of the frustration of working on an AMV for months only to see it rejected from the finals while a haphazard quickie goes on to great success (hey, I think there's a bad romance movie plot, here) hit home. I have no problem pouring hundreds of hours into something that comes out good, but I (for good reason due to personal experience) have a terrible dread of experimenting with time-consuming stuff that winds up not working out. YCDTTAC is 100% this pitfall, and several of my experiments for its must-have components thus far have proved a) terribly time consuming, b) not as successful as they need to be and c) weird. I don't mind weird as long as it looks good, but weird bad stuff is just not acceptable.
Sooo...do I scale back to a simpler project for the sake of my own sanity? What is my goal? To get into the finals at a con? Make an AMV I want to make? Methinks it's time to shoot for a convention showing again, so...go big or go safe? I don't know that I have any ideas which do both without too much trouble. Make two videos this year? One safe, one big? Yeah, right.
ARGH!! Every GOD DAMN TIME I go to Anime Boston, I have all sorts of energy and refreshed motivation, but am forced to wait lengthy periods of time before being able to actual touch Premiere due to travel and work. I won't be able to do anything until next weekend at this point, and I didn't even get to attend the con at all (just the editor's dinner) due to travel conflicts. I hate it when AB's on Easter weekend, it just screws everything up.
My new resolve, if you're reading this, you are my witness!! I will spend at least 5 hours a week editing so that I can at least make some sort of progress. This will be ramped up to 10+ hours as needed, provided my health holds out. Do not tell my chiropractor. -
Aaannnddd......
2011-04-20 22:58:07
I'm off the the editor's dinner at Anime Boston! Finally. Only took me
fourfivesix? years to successfully show up. Wait, did I just curse myself? Oh god no... -
Thank you to the .ORG
2011-04-16 18:18:25
Memorial Video
Pre-Edit: 14 hours
Edit: 43 hours
Post-Edit: 20 hours
I am getting more distraught and sniffly watching this video now than I was right after my grandmother passed away. Thank you AMV.org for helping to make this video possible, I couldn't have and wouldn't have done it without you.
Now. Onto the next project!
JOURNAL: DriftRoot (Lauren C.)
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