I don’t think people realize what rare and beautiful gifts really good full AMVs are.
Like… that’s hard. Really, really hard.
Something I’ve learned is that the longer you’ve been editing, the more time it takes to make an edit, which is probably the reason AMVs can take literal months to make, and most vidders usually cut the songs down and/or make short edits.
To keep up consistently good timing, clip choice, pacing, transitions, effects, and possibly even masking or typography over give or take three and a half minutes of song is a huge challenge.
It’s generally considered to take three hours to edit one minute of a movie. Apply that here, and we have it taking about nine hours for a fairly short AMV… and given that we don’t get paid to make these, and have to wrestle with hitting every single beat of the song, it can take much longer.
And we also have to keep our motivation up, find time to edit, not grow to detest the song, and struggle with technical difficulties. All of that is really grating.
I’ve been editing for a couple months over a year now, and, while I started out making almost exclusively full AMVs, I can’t do that anymore. I’ve improved a lot, and by this point, using the whole song is intimidating and requires a level of dedication that I could not possibly achieve every time I edit.
It’s been literally a year since the last time I’ve edited a full-length song that I didn’t trim.
So if you find an awesome full AMV, appreciate it! Tell the vidder that you love it!
I’m honestly just so in awe of AMVs and the people who edit them. Vidders are really badass.
Cherish them and their work.
