YouTube AMVs

So I've been a bit obsessed with music videos, stop motion animation, and animation music videos on YouTube.

On the stop motion animation side, there are a batch of movies from famous and not so famous animators available; most notably Jan Svankmajer: Czech surrealist filmaker. He's been a major influence on Terry Gilliam and Tim Burton among others.

Death of Stalinism in Bohemia

(I want to post some of his other stuff but this is not really the right forum)

Brothers Quay: Stephen and Timothy quay. According to wikipedia, their best known work is Street of Crocodiles.

Wladyslaw Starewicz influenced the Brothers Quay
The Insects Christmas: A Russian Animation piece from 1913

A random movie: creature comforts

I will post something later on YouTube music videos but for now:
The Shins Pink Bullets:
This video was created by Adam Bizanski, an Israeli director. He did this as a personal project and then gave it to the Shins. After they saw his video, they decided that they would use it, which is kinda neat and in reverse.
[Update: Ach, YouTube removed this video. Here is the ifilm link]

There is a ton of stuff on the anime side. A search for AMV in YouTube (by no means the only channel for this stuff) yields 145,000 videos.

I became more interested in this after running across what still may be the best AMV I've seen. I don't know the anime but the song is Am I Awake (They Might be Giants):

The mix is changing but it seems that 90% of YouTube AMVs are still Naruto/ Bleach/ Dragonball remixes glued to Rock/Rap tracks and it's inspiring and all that but I like looking around for less obvious songs and clips. With that in mind, I started by searching for various songs and some trends emerged in the anime choices. It turns out that some anime just seems to attract people who post a wider variety of music

AMV: FLCL, Song: Jerk it out, which kinda fits since half of the anime seems to center around the forcible extraction of items directly from the protagonists head

AMV: FLCL, Song: Concerning the UFO Sighting near Highland, Illinois, by Sufjan Stevens. I like this because it works and its is not obvious.

AMV: FLCL, song: Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots

AMV: FLCL, Song Clint Eastwood by the Gorillaz

FLCL/ Ataris: I shouldn’t really link to this because it’s a bit too close to a standard AMV song (there are at least six Naruto/Ataris AMVs). Oh well:

AMV: Spirited Away Song: I still need to figure that out. It’s appealing though. Does sound Disney, per viewer comments.

Powerpuff Girls/ Belle and Sebastian: I can’t link to that.

Bugs Bunny/ Tribe Called Quest: I can link to that. This AMV is great [Update: the video has been removed due to terms of use violation. Almost all AMVs violate copyright so this happens a great deal. Sooo... I will replace it with the non-AMV Dangermouse Gray Album video, which shares the same spirit. The Gray Album was pulled offline a few years ago but the video is still around. This is a "must see" before it is yanked off YouTube]

So there is an Anime called Air, which makes it hard for me to find an AMV that uses La Femme D’Argent as the soundtrack

Which makes me think of Thievery Corporation (no AMV’s yet)

Alphaville, Forever Young, the quintessential 8th grade slow dance song of the mid 80's. The anime is Ginga Nagareboshi Gin: I don’t know anything about it but it looks just post speed racer. The video is not very good but I am posting it because the song is reasonably obscure.

There is an Aphex Twin AMV out there but it annoys me for some reason (it might just be too similar to thousands of other AMVs.) Instead, I am going to put up a different AMV. How is it linked? The director of the anime behind this AMV also directed the anime used in the Aphex Twin AMV. I'll post this because I like Boards of Canada and Cowboy Bebop. The video is a bit hard to watch, with endless scene transitions, but the song is great

It pains me that Apples In Stereo does not have a YouTube AMV yet

Aretha Franklin/ Fruits Basket (I know nothing about this anime but seems kinda annoying)

But no Astrud Gilberto yet..

Tori Amos has been linked to a few AMVs. Here's an appealing mix of Spirited Away and A Sorta FairyTale Kinda slow, yes, but sweet.

So this does not really fit (it is a different music video genre) but here is a second Tori Amos Song, Happy Workers, set to video clips and scene sequences from the video game Silent Hill. Much, much less sweet (Silent Hill is a bit of a gruesome game)

The same director has posted a fabulous AMV using an anime called The MAXX (adapted from what I assume was a comic series) and a song by Thom Yorke The animation reminds me alternately of noir comic books and R Crumb. Like the They Might Be Giants video above, this AMV stands alone as a real music video; this time in the vein of the FeelGood Inc video by the Gorillaz

Speaking of actual music videos with animation (instead of AMVs) Zero7 has a terribly appealing music video with a "Waking Life" feel. I like Sia's voice. If only I could find an AMV that used "Breathe Me" that did not use Naruto clips (for the record, I really like Naruto-- it is the storyboard equivalent of Harry Potter-- it is just used in far too many AMVs: 31,421 at last count)

And, because I'm browsing through the Tori Amos AMV list, here is a Tori Amos cover of the first half of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" set to an AMV

Also, in the semi related "Artists whose names begin with A" set, I've run across a Raffi sounding song called "Hubba Hubba Zoot Zoot" apparently written by two ex members of ABBA. This video is entirely goofy and just a smidgen less addictive than the $&%^* BananaPhone song

And, lest you think that YouTube animated videos concern themselves only with modern/ popular music suited for the young'uns. Here is an animated video version of John Coltrane's Giant Steps by Michael Levy.

Anyway, that does it for the A’s for right now. MTV is dead. Long live cheap online video. Digital, it seems, killed the video star.
- posted by JB @ 9:13 PM