DEEP SPACE – HateKiri

VPR – ALL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tW4YaaMJaqE

This video is what pushed me over the edge to start this blog, there’s a lot I want to say about this AMV.

As I first watched this, I suffered a small crises of self. This video contains many things I normally dislike in AMV’s, however I continued watching it until the end. Everything in me wanted to hate this video simply on principal, but in honesty, I enjoyed it quite a lot.
Why? Why are there thousands of other AMV’s out there that I don’t like and are similar to this, but this one is ok? More than ok even?
When I’ve liked other AMV’s that also don’t match my usual tastes, they often have obvious prominent features that I enjoy and these outweigh anything I personally find negative. That’s not the case with this AMV, so to answer the question of why I like this I had to look deeply into my preferences and what I value in AMV’s.

To start with, what are the typical things in this video that I dislike?
The most noticeable is it’s highly over-edited. I’m not sure I’ve seen another video that has as much unnecessary editing as this. The first five seconds of the video are probably the the most intense, there is so much going on visually that it doesn’t match the music at all. I’m a big fan of quality over quantity when it comes to editing choices, so this editing style isn’t my thing at all.
Next is the music, which is the slow drawling type of rap/hip hop that seems to be popular these days, but doesn’t do anything for me personally.
Finally, the anime is one that I have no attachment to. While this isn’t necessarily something to actively dislike, having no interest in the anime within an AMV can make it harder to connect to the video.

In short, the three main elements in this video that make it an AMV (the editing, the music, the anime) are things I normally don’t like.

Cue the journey of self discovery!

Let’s address these elements again, starting with the anime.
There is so much happening in this video that the choice of anime doesn’t really matter at all. This is the type of video where the visuals have been chosen to match the mood of the music and in this case I think the editor did a good job of that. The video title indicates that the clips chosen revolve around a specific fight within Naruto, however there is a wide variety of scenes shown with different characters and things happening. This means the video doesn’t feel constrained like other AMV’s that use singular fight scenes often do.
Ok so, the anime doesn’t bother me and I understand the aesthetic choices the editor made with using it. Lets move onto the music selection.

This isn’t typically music I enjoy, however this particular song sounds a lot more interesting than other similar music of this genre these days (at least to me). The artist comes across as very genuine in the sound and the lyrics seem rather thoughtful. I’m really not familiar with popular artists so initially I thought this must be a well known song/artist… and then I noticed the link to the artists Soundcloud in the video description. That absolutely blows my mind, that a song created by someone on Soundcloud who has barely any followers, sounds so much better to my ears than more popular music in this genre. I genuinely can’t tell the difference in production quality. Although I think this genre was popularised from Soundcloud in the first place (I’m probably wrong about that), so maybe this is true to the sound.
In any case, all of this was to admit that I actually like the song, so lets continue onward.

Here we are at the big finale; the editing.
There are hardly any moments in the video where the editor hasn’t synced something to every single sound within the song. Often there is more happening visually than there is audibly, which is why I previously mentioned about unnecessary editing. AMV’s are about the matching of visuals to music, so to create movement or add an effect where there is no matching sound is very over the top.
Not only has the editor externally synced some kind of effect/movement/transition to every part of the song, but throughout the video they also utilise every single other kind of sync. It makes me feel like HateKiri was asked, “what kind of sync should we have?” and HateKiri went “yes”.
Underneath all the flashy external sync, we have internal sync, lyric sync and lip sync. There’s also some text, which technically isn’t a sync type, but I feel I should mention it somewhere.
It’s fairly normal to have several sync types within an AMV, however as I’ve mentioned previously, with the amount going on in this video generally, I feel it’s rather notable.
All of these combined make for some surprisingly compelling moments, and this is what makes this video stand out for me. There are so many layers to this, and it all coalesces into an audio/visual experience where the finished product is so much more than the sum of its parts. Possibly the first point where this is evident is 0:12 – 0:13, the lyric sync choice is perhaps obvious, but the way the editor chooses to do it combined with everything else going on, I find it rather poignant.
Then the there’s the very impactful internal sync that happens at 0:25, and that’s the point where I was completely sold on this video.
I’m not going to go through and highlight every moment that I particularly enjoy, as I hope if you watch this video yourself these moments will be fairly evident and will succeed in pulling you in as much as they did myself.
Ultimately, this video is over edited to the point where that in itself is what makes it a thing of beauty, which is something I never thought I’d believe.

Throughout this, I’ve come to realise that I don’t actually dislike heavy effects editing, instead I dislike the way some people choose to edit. I was always of the opinion that effects should be used to enhance the viewing experience, not distract from it. This video has shown me that extremely in your face effects can become part of the viewing experience. I’m still not entirely sure how the editor has managed this. Possibly because there is a solid base of thoughtful clip choices and good internal sync, which can’t be detracted from. Also, somehow the effects used add to the overall experience. It’s really quite something, though it definitely won’t be to everyone’s taste, and that’s fine!

I think I have said everything I wanted to. I’ve spent a ridiculous amount of time going through my thoughts on this, considering I’m pretty sure the intention behind this video was simply to make something cool for the music artist. No matter what it’s supposed to be though, this video has become important to me and that’s all I really care about.