I’ve been talking so much about different series and characters that I thought it was time to step back and write about a more generalized topic. Now when it comes to showing one’s appreciation and love for a particular series, fans have been known to come up with a wide variety of means to demonstrate their affection. Fanfiction, cosplay, fan art – all are means to show one’s love for a series or character. But there is another.

Anime Music Videos, most commonly called just AMVs, are the compilation of footage and images from one or more anime series that are set to a song of the creator’s choice. The goal of the creator is to synchronize the images playing with the audio so that the pitches and emotion of the song fit the images playing out. In parody and humor-styled AMVs it is common for the creator to edit the facial, most notably the mouth, of characters and synchronize them with the lyrics so that it appears that they [the characters] are the ones singing.

AMVs are generally fan-made creations, although some series have released music videos that utilize scenes from the series and are paired with a popular theme song from or written for the show. Songs used for AMVs come from a variety of genres, the most popular being J-pop, J-rock, Rock, Metal, and Orchestral Rock. The source of the footage for the video tends to be clips or stills lifted from the anime by the video creator themselves. That is not to say that other images are not used. It is not uncommon to see a video compromised entirely of scans from the manga and or mixed with still images from the anime.

A growing trend in AMV creation is to use popular fan art in the video interspersed with stills or making up the entirety of the video. While the art can be just as moving, for the most part, a great many AMVs using fan art have never asked permission from the artists. I would like to take a moment to point out that it is terribly bad form to take an artist’s work without their permission, let alone not crediting them, and your video will certainly not endear you to your fellow fans.

AMVs tend to be created using linear image editing programs. The more popular programs used are Windows Movie Maker (which is the one I use) and Macromedia Flash. That is not to say that those are the only programs used or that you have to use those programs. WMM is a very popular choice due to it’s convenience and availability. In recent years, WMM was included in all new computers free of charge. With no limited trial periods or purchase necessary, WMM has become a popular choice for video makers. In order to fully utilize WMM and be able to open and edit any video of your choice, you will need to download more codecs to your computer. WMM comes installed only with the bare minimum of codecs, meaning you won’t even be able to view let alone edit .AVI format media.

Have you ever made an AMV? If so, then please share it! How about your favorite AMVs, what were they about? Share!

I recently made an AMV myself, my first ever really. It’s a music tribute to Maes Hughes from the anime series Fullmetal Alchemist (Hagane no Renkinjutsushi). If you’ve never seen the series or haven’t seen up to episode #25 “Words of Farewell” there are spoilers ahead:

In Memory of Maes Hughes

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Video Documentation:

Created by: Joana (me!)
Anime series: Fullmetal Alchemist (Hagane no Renkinjutsushi)
Song Used: Even in Death
Artist: Evanescence
Program(s) used: Windows Movie Maker

A little about the video. I made an AMV once, really small one not even 30 seconds long, at the direction of a friend. I honestly didn’t even remember how to edit videos, images, and clips in a program anymore! So this was truly an amateur attempt. I really dislike it when people make tributes to characters, but only use images from one or two episodes so I tried to include images and shots from several episodes. Images and clips used came from episodes: #5 “The Man with the Mechanical Arm”, #6 “The Alchemy Exam”, #13 “Fullmetal vs. Flame”, #14 “Destruction’s Right Hand”, #15 “The Ishbal Massacre”, and #25 “Words of Farewell”.

Last 5 issues of FAnime Friday:

• Issue #23, February 8, 2008: Souya Akira
• Issue #22, January 18, 2008: Bleach: The DiamondDust Rebellion
• Issue #21, December 28, 2007: Sky Girls
• Issue #20, December 14, 2007: Kage Kara Mamoru
• Issue #19, November 16, 2007: Sai

Read the rest of the FAnime Friday issues on the FAnime Friday page! ^_^