I've been out of the AMV circuit for quite some time, but there needs to be some oldschool mastery in here. Keep in mind that the tools were much more limited in the days of these guys:
Kevin Caldwell - One of the major AMV makers pre-2001ish. Made a wonderful video of the 2nd Memories short, Magnetic Rose, set to Phantom of the Opera:
Last edited by Fireye; 05-02-2010 at 11:32 PM. Reason: Hopefully these are the right bbcode tags for youtube..
Kiro : us fireyes got dumb by his girl that y he is suck
Jay Locke - Wasn't a master of AMV, per se, but a friend of mine who made an AMV that won a few awards ~2001. There weren't many people using compositing/postproduction software with AMVs at the time. The vast majority of AMVs were cut to cut, which pays heedence to the origins of AMVs (VCR-->VCR dubbing)
Kiro : us fireyes got dumb by his girl that y he is suck
As far as I'm aware, Miyazaki/Ghibli has only made one music video, though I suppose I could be wrong on that. On Your Mark was a video done with the japanese pop stars Chage and Aska. For Ghibli, it was a test-bed for integrating 3d CGI with 2d Cel Animation, in preparation for Mononoke Hime. I think it's beautifully animated:
I'm not going to post any more AMVs, since I don't think they would fall under the "five star rating", but I want to link them somewhere, and here seems appropriate:
Two-Mix - White Reflection: This was featured in Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz. Don't let that frighten you off, the animation for this is absolutely incredible for the time period (1997). I have the dvd for this somewhere, and the animation is amazingly fluid, the backgrounds rich and lush, amazing since there had yet to be one digital paint anime yet to come out that looked decent.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0YKfhyrn0A&hd=1
Maboroshi Studios - Lain - Sleep now: This AMV wasn't allowed in to several competitions when it was released because the conventions thought it was actually a Pioneer/Geneon video made for promoting Serial Experiments Lain.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaFayr9zI-8
Kevin Caldwell - Neon Genesis Evangelion - Engel: Another awesome Kevin Caldwell video set to Ramstein. Hilarious how they use he uses the voice in the song. Note: All of his music videos EXCEPT Believe are done VCR-->VCR.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8EXJ5p4xZk
Kevin Caldwell - Battle Athletes Victory - Believe: One of Kevin's last videos, and one of first (if not his only) video to use Compositing/PostPro software. This is a very well edited AMV, which has some minor issues.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlTJbe5zvSs
Kevin Caldwell - Kodomo no Omocha - Caffeine Encodium: This debuted with Believe, above. Orchestral Music works pretty well for this really.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rg_qabWIQg
Maboroshi Studios - Nausicaa - Loved by the Sun: Ok. This isn't a great AMV. But I freaking love Nausicaa and this is a great song selection for it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9C2IfSMGm3U
Koopiskeva - Haruhi - Skittles: This... isn't the best video, but it's fun to watch one in a while. My only major objection to this HUGELY WORK INTENSIVE AMV is the use of onscreen text, which I think is cheesy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYoSYD2xORE&hd=1
Last edited by Fireye; 05-03-2010 at 12:13 AM.
Kiro : us fireyes got dumb by his girl that y he is suck