AMVts (Anime Music Video trailers)

First, what is an "Anime Music Video"? It is a fan made video combining footage from an animated production with seemingly unrelated audio. But together the final product takes on a whole new level of meaning, it is an art form in itself. As a subculture of anime fandom (which is already a sub genre), making and posting anime music videos is a hot pastime among fans.

Now the sub-sub genre of "Anime music video trailers"(AMVt) is not as wide spread but is not less vibrant. This involves animation footage as well but synced to audio sourced from movie trailers.

These are more prevalent on sites like YouTube. The only reason for that is copyright infringements that AMVs incur. Unlike AMVs which have legal implications thanks to the user using a full licensed song for audio, AMVts do not.


As long as one uses less than 10% of a particular show's footage, he is free from legal implications. And trailers become public domain already, hence using them is totally legal under Fair Use Law. AMVs using full songs are regularly taken off YouTube but since AMVts are using audio from trailers that are released to public domain, there is a small legal loophole there.

One may scoff and say "hey, anyone can cut and paste footage and audio".


But i say that not everyone can do so WITH SKILL. Making an AMVt is actually more complex than a simple AMV. IT takes a good amount of skill to actually make an AMVt because not only do you have to sync the music with footage that seems appropriate to the tune of the trailer music, you have to sync the sound effects and the dialogue. So if the original trailer featured a "bump" sound at a certain point you have to find appropriate footage that features something that goes "bump". If the audio features a gunshot, you have to find footage with a gunshot. Failure to do so would result in a very poorly synced video and a complete loss of face.

It is NOOBISH to not sync the sound effects properly.

Here are the other kinds of mistakes that one can make when creating a AMVt.

1) poorly synced sound effects - as explained earlier

2) no effort to sync mouth flaps to dialogue. - when the audio line is obviously something like "hello there" (3 syllables) but the video shows a mouth moving to only 1 syllable. The result looks stupid.

3) blatant use of repeated footage - sometimes repeating footage is a necessary evil but at least use post production editing tools to not make it look so blatantly like repeated footage.

4) using footage that make no sense - unless the resulting AMVt is meant for comedic purposes or as a parody, syncing footage that makes no sense together with the audio just.........makes no sense. A stupid and lazy move by the editor.


Just compare between these 2. Which do you prefer?