I had a very nice custom layout with custom CSS...
And then I made a community/group on here. And even though it said I was acting as the group account, it changed my style on my main journal.

I don't even remember what the original base layout was and I don't know when I will bother redoing all my styles again, so so long, old depressing style. 😔

Preface

I've had the idea for this entry since When Fun Has a Time Limit, which was... Oh gosh, June of last year.

I kept putting it off because I wanted to do the proper research. I made a few cursory searches for info but then decided I was far too lazy, and kept putting off the entry.

Nearly a year later, I have found the perfect excuse to write an entry without doing the proper research.
It's the all-useful label of



And now I can finally get this idea out from my brain and away from anyone saying "these facts are wrong... In fact, they're not facts at all!!"

So, before continuing, please realize that:

- I am, foremost, an AMV editor.
- I have extremely limited exposure to the vidding community at large
- The rest of this entry is absolutely filled with generalizations.
- There will always be exceptions.



Time to break out a table.

AMVs vs Vidding: A Comparison
Thing	AMVs	Vidding
Act of making the things	Editing (Very rarely "AMVing")	Vidding (Very rarely "Editing")
The people who make the things	Editors (Very rarely "AMVers")	Vidders (Very rarely "Editors")
The things themselves	AMVs (anime/animated music videos) GMVs (games) MMVs (manga) Edits	Vids Fanvids
Community hubs * not super active ** not the typical editing culture/scene	https://a-m-v.org/ * https://amvnews.ru ** Discord Every social media site	https://ao3.org https://tumblr.com https://dreamwidth.org Small presence on most social media sites, including Discord https://vidders.net * https://creaspace.ru **
Challenging yourself/others to edit a video in a specified (usually short) time-frame	Iron Chef (IC) Iron Editor	Sprint
Works in progress and getting people to give you feedback on them	Beta Beta testing Beta tester	Draft (sometimes "Beta") Beta request
Events related to fan editing	Conventions Competitions Contests (Rarely "Expos")	Conventions Exchanges Fests (Vidders don't usually do any sort of competition)

So there's the boring vocabulary part out of the way.

Now for the actual opinion part.

My totally skippable personal history with both communities

I started editing in 2001, and joined a-m-v.org in 2002. Back then, I just considered everything an AMV, even if it wasn't anime, because a-m-v.org was the only forum I knew that existed for any such fan edits. Of course, there was videohelp.com, doom9.org, and gametrailers.com, but those weren't really the same thing. I literally grew up on "the org", actively participating and editing up until about 2005. I was still involved, just not very much, from 2005 - 2009. 2009 - 2018 I still edited maybe once a year or two, but did not interact with the community at all. 2018 onward, I got back into editing, and the community, but of course by this time "the community" had changed drastically and so I am mostly just on Discord.

Youtube was created in February 2005, and I joined in December. Youtube links were censored on the org and this is when a schism in the community started forming (for this and several other reasons). I don't know much about vidding history, but I imagine Youtube and Vimeo had it taking off in popularity now that some sort of hub existed outside conventions. Sidenote: If you're interested in actual vidding history, Vidding: A History exists, and the electronic version is free.

I made my first vid with live-action in 2005 and my first exclusively live-action vid in 2007. I don't make many live-action vids, but I wanted to connect with people who made more of them. Eventually I discovered vidders.net. It opened in 2008, and I joined it in 2015. But I could never really get into it.

Tumblr seemed to be the vidding hub for a long time, especially when Superwholock was dominating the platform. I did make 2 supernatural videos in 2013 when I (briefly) had a tumblr account (that wasn't primarily for vidding OR spn stuff), but ultimately I got nowhere.

I've been circling the vidding community periphery for years. For some reason, the group seems really difficult to get involved in? My perception was that it's either:
- people dedicated to a specific fandom and only making vids for that fandom (which I wasn't interested in doing)
or
- groups of friends making stuff for their small friend groups and really not interested in interacting with anyone else

There's also this third group of people that just make vids of their crossfics or original stories by sharing masks and stuff and I find that SUPER INTERESTING but even MORE of a mystery in how to become involved in.


I realize the easiest answer is "just make those things and you're in" but what I am talking about is not the making of the things, but the talking to the people who make the things like in a forum.
Fortunately, 1-2 years ago I was introduced to vids on ao3.org and dreamwidth, which should make the entry barrier much lower, but for some reason I still have yet to jump over it.

I get the impression that vidding groups are just super inclusive and protective; that the actual non-public forums are extremely careful with who they invite/allow in.
I am in one vidding discord server that isn't very active, and I still get that impression even from them; although they've told me it's not true.

So I really don't know what's going on there. Maybe I just don't communicate the same way they do?? Who knows.

So basically:

The Culture Clash

Both communities have tons of history, but this entry is already quite long and it's getting kind of late (and I don't want to delay this entry for several more months lmao).

So let me over-simplify the over-arching appearance of the community cultures I have experienced, and how they differ. And again let me emphasize that these are: 1. generalizations, and 2., my impression, so they could also be entirely wrong.

Gender

AMVs (or at least A-M-V.org) started out pretty male-dominated, but now seems to be equally spread among all binary genders. There are queer editors, but they're usually not the "out and proud" type; the ones who are seem to make their own communities dedicated to the purpose.

Vidders are by and large female-dominated, and always have been. There are male vidders, but in my experience they typically don't participate in any sort of community, although they may lurk in some of the community hubs. Most vids have queer content, though I have yet to have come across a vidder that identifies themselves as queer. Maybe this is just an oversight on my part. I've never seen a bigoted, sexist, or queerphobic vidder, though; they all appear to be extremely accepting, inclusive, and welcoming.
Meanwhile, AMV editors run the gamut; They're mostly fine but I've run into quite a few bigots too.

Accessibility

In a nut shell, AMV editors just don't care, sorry to say. I think it's mostly ignorance (myself included). "Why would blind/deaf/photosensitive people be interested in music videos, which comprise all the things they can't do?"
Turns out, quite a lot of them are interested, and blindness, deafness, and photosensitivies are a whole spectrum and not a binary on/off switch.

Vidders have always been at the forefront for accessibility; their major community hubs are built around it; their conventions, expos/shows, etc., often require subtitles for the songs, and many vidders will list "physical triggers" in their descriptions for photosensitivities. This is casting aside the predominance of content/trigger warnings which they've adopted from (I assume) the fanfiction community. Those have always been present in vidding and are basically muscle memory to add to every vid at this point.

Meanwhile, back in AMV land, CWs/TWs are only just now being thought about in larger scale events (and it's usually only the "big ones" like suicide or sexual violence), and it's really only being pushed by the female editors. Photosensitivities are only just now being considered in small groups (and not at all in large-scale events) due to the recent popularization of the VPR (Vidding Photosensitivity Relay). Alt text, music lyrics, and/or subtitles are only even barely considered if the sources are not in English.

The Events

AMVs have tons of events, or should I say... Competitions.
AMVs are extremely competitive. Even among in-group events, there's almost always a winner, and from any large AMV contest, there's almost always some sort of physical prize.

Contrast this with Vidders, who also have all sorts of events, but they are more focused on small groups. Somewhat due to the legal nature of Vidding (live-action media companies are far less forgiving than the animation ones), they had to be somewhat secretive; but even then, I've never heard of a vidding competition where there's a winner or a prize. It's always about sharing their vids and getting more people to view them, and never about who is better than anyone else.

The AMV community is split on this; there are some expositions and there are more non-competitive events for small groups, but the competitions and contests at conventions dominate and always have.

This leads to some interesting culture shock when an AMV contest allows live-action videos and then the vidder finds out they need to give the contest their name? and address (to mail the awards)??? More than once I've seen a vidder get wigged out by this and just not enter at all. They value their privacy a lot more than AMV editors seem to.

On the small scale events, smaller groups of AMV editors hold lots of Iron Editors (timed challenges) for fun. Typically the smaller ones in my experience are not judged, and thus don't have a winner. They also do exchanges, primarily for birthdays and christmas.

Meanwhile, Vidders seem to deal with "fests" (which are more or less videos made to some sort of theme or prompt), and their own version of exchanges, which have tons of made up holidays. These exchanges differ from AMVs as they appear to be more... public? For lack of better wording. It's similar to a secret santa, but it's a collection on ao3 and/or a community/group on dreamwidth and/or tumblr. They have a whole system with special terms for all the parts involved.
For example, a "pinch hit" is a vid that needs to be made in a very short timeframe because the original vidder dropped it, and a "safety fandom" is using a fandom/source that is much more common than the request you would actually prefer.

Self-Promotion

I really don't think Vidders do much self-promo, to be honest. They post their vids on their platform(s) of choice and hope people see them.
You could argue that many AMVers do the same thing, but, it seems to me that there are far more AMVers that are interested in cultivating some "professional" type of image, like making their youtube channel out to be some kind of brand, having "studios" with their own promo accounts, and having some quality control by refusing to release videos they did on the side for fun or small exchanges.

Obviously I don't have as much insight into Vidders for this since I'm not really close to any, but they by and large seem to just... Be themselves, sharing everything and everything, and if they "brand" themselves, it's because they only edit to a particular fandom and want to broadcast that. They don't generally appear to come up with bumpers/intros for their videos, and studios aren't really a thing. Sure, many get embarassed by older works and remove them later, but that's totally different from refusing to upload them in the first place, which is a thing that far too many AMV editors seem to do.

Video Goals

AMVs are filled with competition, and as such, this really leaks through to their content. AMVs are generally about showing off a certain technique someone learned, trying to be the best at something, having a goal for winning an award/fame/notoriety, or just putting out some sort of "quality piece." There's a lot of visual effects play, with different AMV communities focusing on the most vfx they can use and/or making original content with them (telling a story independent from the sources) while other schools of thought stick to "raw AMVs" which avoid (obvious) vfx as much as possible.
There are some unwritten rules in AMVs, like how it's generally seen as "better" if someone can understand the story in the AMV without having any familiarity with the source footage, or that an AMV always has to have some type of story contained within.

If I had to summarize what AMVs do, I guess it would be to "show off" whether that be their editing skills/techniques, or their desire to tell a specific story.
The most famous AMVs in history all have some kind of "new technology/technique" component, "Euphoria" probably being the most well-known for its use of masks, which was ground-breaking for the time.

Vidders do the opposite.
They expect the audience to know the source footage, and are often making some sort of commentary on the footage or production of the footage.
There are the vidders who do their own fanficcy thing, but I'm not sure they're the typical type of vidder; the "famous" fanvids in vidding history are all commentaries on media in some form or fashion. Arguably, the most famous vid (I know of) is "Women's Work" which shows the suffering of women in the show Supernatural, and is essentially a commentary of the fridging of women.

By and large of course, both communities just do it "for fun," but when the goal isn't "fun," for AMVs it's generally "winning" and vidding it's shining light on some issue they've noticed with their fandom/source footage.

Scholarly Work

Vidding seems to be chock full of people in academia. You can't seem to walk three feet without some sort of essay on something fandom-related, and vidding is no exception.
There are books, a whole "fanlore" wiki, any sort of "fandom essay" on even just a hobby blog is often formatted and sourced, and the main organization behind their popular community hubs are legally fighting for vidding to be considered fair use.

Contrast this with AMV editors, who seem largely involved in the convention circuit. Tons of editors run or staff some sort of convention or contest, if not multiple. There have been a few attempts at documentaries, but mostly seem to be focused around documenting the hobby rather than scholarly work.

I don't have much to put in this section but I did want to note that this difference existed.

The terrible segue for the conclusion

What are your experiences with both communities?
What assumptions have you made?
Observations you've seen?
Changes you've noticed?

Is there anything in particular you like or don't like about one of the communities or wish was in yours?

Preface

I took Kendo classes(? lessons?) in a dojo for 2-3 years as a teenager. During that time, I was introduced to a type of meditation I had never heard of before. It involved staring at a specific point. In our case, we stared at the wall for ~30 minutes.

Before then, I thought meditation was the stereotypical "close your eyes and chant Om." As an adult, I've learned that meditation can be done while doing pretty much anything, and find it a little disappointing that in popular depictions you're limited to either chanting or focusing on breath.

AMVs as Meditation

This entry isn't going to be that long.

I am by no means a meditation expert. I don't research it, listen to others talk about it, or even officially partake in any sort of group meditation, despite being Buddhist myself.

I just kind of... do it. Is staring into space meditation? In my opinion it is, but I'm not going to tell anyone I meditate 2-3 times a day, as that just sounds absurd.
And yet, here I am.

Anyway, onto the point:

There are several different types of meditation, Here's a list of 9 popular ones I quickly found via google.

The first time I found myself slipping into, we'll call it, "meditation mode" with an AMV was last year when I watched CrackTheSky's AWA PRO video, Repeater (VPR all).

I am normally not a fan of long videos, especially not videos like this one, with a song that literally repeats itself several times. But at about 3 minutes in it kind of got me zen for lack of a better wording.

Another editor who seems to go for this type of feeling is Synæsthesia, who makes a combination of "mood" videos and "normal" videos (for lack of better terminology). Some meditation-y vids from Syn include Blossom (VPR particles), My Everyday Vibes (VPR peripheral, jump cuts), Love of Two is One(VPR for some subtle vignettes, zooms, and brief flickering at 2:01, photosensitive-friendlier version in description), Spellbound (VPR black dips, blurs, fast cuts & particles at 2:20), and D U S T(VPR particles, fades, minor peripheral, minor flashing, photosensitive-friendlier version in description), just to name a few.

There is also a sort of subgenre of minimally edited AMVs. I'm not sure how to categorize them (or even search for them specifically). Maybe atmospheric? This genre of AMV is ripe for use with meditation. There are plenty of editors who go for this type of video, and for those recommendations I'd recommend looking at CrackTheSky's Retrospectives and Seasons's "Favorite AMVs of [year]" blog entries, as both their lists usually feature a lot of them.


However, the reason I made this entry was due to an editor who pretty much makes only these types of videos (there are a sparse few non-meditative/mood ones). An editor who has become one of my best friends and I recently decided isn't getting enough views for his content (LOL).
Vivafringe is a somewhat newer editor, having started AMVs about 2 years ago. Viewing his videos, you can see his youtube channel pivoted from game streams to AMVs rather abruptly.

Viva is all about psychedelic AMVs, but the psychadelia is usually the climax instead of the focus. He also highlights the appreciation for nature (Deep Wild) and gives abstract representations about complex emotions and/or life events (Birth and Rebirth, among others).

Viva is a super interesting person, but unfortunately as a fan of short AMVs, I hardly ever view his content. His best works are 5-8 minutes long, and thus seems like I've really gotta set aside some time to take in his stuff. I feel about about it, because all of his videos are amazing, and are excellent for meditative use.

So without further ado, here's his latest video:

Ram Dass was a spiritual leader who first got kicked out of the psychology department in Harvard for allegedly giving a student psilocybin. After that he helped popularize eastern philosophy in the west. He's featured on this haunting track by Jon Hopkins, which is one of the most profound songs I've ever listened to. It comes from the album "Music for Psychedelic Therapy," which was my favorite album last year. This is what Jon Hopkins has to say about the track:

"Sit Around The Fire" exists from one of the deep synchronicities that ushered this thing (Music For Psychedelic Therapy) into being. I was contacted by East Forest, who had spent some time with Ram Dass in Hawaii before he passed. He was given access to several lesser-heard talks from the ’70s, and asked to set them to music. He sent me some starting points, including the beautiful choral vocals he recorded which open the piece. I put my headphones on and with Ram Dass’ voice inside my head, I sat at the piano and improvised. What you hear is the first thing that came out — it just appeared in response to the words.

I usually don't make single anime amvs, but in this case the themes of the song resonate so much with the themes of the eva rebuilds that it was really a perfect fit. A lot of the memorable scenes from the rebuilds seemed to just slide right into the song.

In a lot of ways this feels like a sequel to "Spiritual but not Religious" (one might call it a spiritual successor, harhar). "Spiritual but not Religious" ended up being one of my more popular amvs, which surprised me. I'm not sure Sit Around the Fire is going to match that but maybe it will surprise me too. It seems like the kind of video that most people will just bounce off of. But if a couple people are moved by it, that feels like it would be enough. (Source)

Do you know any more editors who make these types of videos?
Please give recs in the comments.

Preface

Back in the dial-up internet days, my house had two phone lines. My dad worked for IBM and would do some of that work from home. One phone line was specifically for the internet, and the other for the telephone. Because of this, I could never relate to others my age about fighting over the telephone line for the internet. Also because of this, I was on the internet a lot.

I used to be super outdoorsy. But once I discovered chat rooms, it was all over. I became addicted to chat-based roleplaying, and would be on the computer from morning to night. It became such an issue that in an effort to curb it, my parents gave me a "computer time limit."

The problem was the allotted hours were for the whole week - not per day. So, obviously, I'd burn all my weekly hours in a couple days, then do something else for the rest of the week. My parents weren't happy about this, but at least they did not alter the deal.

This weekly computer time limit influenced my life for years to come. I never got into computer games, for instance.
Console games didn't count toward my time limit, so I'd play those instead. I was always keeping track of how many hours I was online. Mostly because I had to, so I could prove to my parents that despite being on the computer from morning to night again, I still had some weekly hours left!

It's no surprise that habit bled into keeping track of how long it took to edit an AMV.

Why I Track Editing Hours

I started tracking editing hours due to the weekly computer limit. Once I discovered AMVs, I had to somehow manage my time between them and my true love of chat-based roleplay. Tracking my editing hours had the side effect of noticing trends in my AMVs.

When I first started editing in 2002, I found that I really did not want to spend more than 10 hours on a video. In 2003, YCSTR had challenged me to make a video that synced to everything. The resulting video, Jealousy was the video I spent the most effort on up to that date, and had only taken approximately 15 hours.

Later on, the next most-effort video I made, Sword of Schizophrenia, took 18 hours.

Generally speaking, somewhere around the 10 - 15 hour mark of editing a video zapped all of the fun out of it for me. Around that point I just wanted to finish and be done with it. But still, as the years passed, the editing hours trended up.

Part of the problem in my early editing years was that I tended to edit a video in a day or two. Obviously you'll get sick of an activity if you don't stop doing it for 10 hours straight! Once I finally started splitting up the work, my videos would take "months" but I would not have an actual hour amount to connect with them.


When I ask others how long it takes for them to make an AMV, they also usually say "months." But the problem with saying this is... What does that actually MEAN?

Do you work on your video every single day after work in those months? Or do you only open up the file once in a blue moon? "Months" really says nothing about how long someone spends on a video. Hours really are the standard, here.

Growing up, I was told I was fast. A fast learner, a fast editor, etc., etc. After I outgrew the computer time limit, I always felt the need to compare myself to others- was I still fast at doing things? Without others keeping track of their editing hours, I'll never know how I compare.


Around 2008, I took a few years-long hiatus from editing. I tried to make one video a year, but sometimes it didn't happen. During that time, I didn't keep track of hours. Once I came back from the hiatus in 2018, however, my interest in keeping track of them renewed. I found a program called Procrastitracker, which was unique in that it kept track of the window titles. This meant I could track of hours spent on specific projects, instead of just overall hours in Adobe Premiere.





With Procrastitracker installed, I was able to track literally all of my projects. I still struggle with the question of whether I am fast or slow in comparison to other editors (and why that honestly shouldn't matter), but I also enjoy finding patterns. What videos took longer than others to edit? Why was that? Is there a specific time when I stop having fun?

These days, I'm starting at 15 hours with any project I am actually putting effort into. Somewhere after 30 hours is when it stops being fun for me.
I also found that my time spent editing has almost nothing to do with how long the video is. Using a source I'm unfamiliar with, or don't have a clear idea for, will vastly increase the amount of hours it takes to finish it. Meanwhile, if I get the inspiration and/or use video footage I've used several times before, I can make a 4 minute video in 15 hours or less.

It still astounds me that hours spent also has no clear tie to quality of the edit, either. Two (2) Millennials only took 8 hours but practically everyone whose seen it has enjoyed it. I spent nearly 47 hours on Avant Garde, but it completely misses the mark for me. Stockholm Syndrome, a 1 minute video, took 15 hours to make. Meanwhile, Vengeance, a video I started with the intend of finishing in less than 15 hours turned into a 44 hour project.

When I talk to others about tracking their editing time, it seems most people don't want to know. I guess there might be some shame involved with how long they spend on a relatively obscure hobby (all things considered). I've honestly never felt that way. I keep track of the hours out of pure curiosity, in an ever-continuing experiment to figure out when "fun" becomes "work" (a blog entry for another time).

How long do you typically take to edit videos? If you keep track of it, why?
If you don't keep track of it... also why? 😂

Thanks for reading~

Hi, I'm SQ, StandardQuip, Jy, and Vars on Discord. I have been editing as a hobby since 2002 and run a fairly active discord server called BentoVid.

I've an AS in Digital Video production and BS in Business administration.
Personal Vid Site


BentoVid follows several RSS feeds, most of which are blogs about AMVs from fellow BentoVid members. I do have things I'd like to talk about with regard to AMVs too, so eventually I caved into the (unintentional) peer pressure to create my own blog about AMVs.

I highly doubt I will be updating this in any regular fashion. I almost fully expect to write one or two entries and then never write anything again.

I am 100% a hobbyist; I do not edit professionally. I also rarely edit competitively.
This blog is just my personal thoughts about editing, the AMV community (specifically BentoVid & A-M-V.org) and my very limited experience with the greater vidding community.

Please also recognize that I am probably not up to date with current hobbyist editing trends! So don't take anything I say as fact or the "right way" to do things. There is no "right way". Editing is art.

BentoVid Webring

This information can also be found on my profile.