this will blow you away… please watch in HD

I don’t see a functional difference between an “AMV” and a “trailer”. The difference is discursive, established by pre-existing norms, not by what the thing actually is.

It is true that making a [let's call it a] promotional media tool for a comedy show is hard because, as you said, inside jokes make no sense to new viewers. But a promotional media tool needn’t rely strictly on inside jokes: it can advertise its studio (Sunrise/Kyoani flak etc.), its seiyuu, directors, slapstick comedy, or jokes that a wider populace will understand, like Genshiken-esque otaku-directed jokes. Those are classifiable as “insider” insofar as you broadcast it to the mainstream, while of course insiders will understand insider jokes. You can narrowcast media to a subculture.

I’d agree that, in the end, using an AMV produced by the methods we have discussed hitherto would be very effective. An AMV that is elected by the majority as the winner of a competition will have a very degenerated effect on that same populace – they’ve already seen it once, it loses its first-time-value as a “trailer”. So the difference between trailer and AMV is more temporal than anything, I think.

The primary purpose of an AMV is simple: remix content and share it. Consider its economic potential: zilch. Can companies do something about it? Maybe, but it depends on the treatment of it.

If we’re talking about quantitative to qualitative ratios, I’d wager that distribution companies are better off hiring good AMV’ers to produce trailer content for them. The idea of promotions is to entice viewers to buy the series. AMVs, by nature, put out several spoilers and inside jokes that can only make sense to those who have watched the series beforehand.

It can be something akin to a machinima, whereby the content is taken from single/multiple sources.

In short, companies can use them “as final promotional add-in” like this machinima from F.E.A.R. after publishing, but cannot use AMV as a replacement for trailers.

Of course there’s covers and doujin but music, but that seems so rare.

But yeah, you can really get into AMVs and what makes one fun to watch or technically impressive or wow an anime convention audience or a joy to put together. There are a lot of considerations, as usual.

Too bad the anime industry in America is just a super tinny tiny fraction of the NFL, and frankly what they’re going for is drastically different than the majority of AMV out there today. Plus, there’s still a music thing that the NFL thing doesn’t quite leverage that the Xam’d contest, for example, does…

@omo: thanks, that was insightful. I didnt think of the music part. And yeah, the video I posted is funny because it kind of distills all the action, haha.

First of all, check out the Xam’d/Boom Boom Satellite contest. It’s exactly what you’re talking about.
http://www.animemusicvideos.org/contests/xamd_bbs.php

Hmm, where to start. I guess the main thing I thought that was good is the recognition that AMVs are good for fans and good for companies to promote their wares. But neither is why most people watch AMVs or, most importantly, why they are created.

Sometimes, AMVs can bring viewers to get interested about a new show that they haven’t seen, but most people enjoy AMVs with footage from a show they’ve seen. So I think it is sort of weak as a promotional tool. It still is a good promotional tool for something else, I’ll get to it at the end.

There have been occasions where companies run contests (with money prizes!) to see who makes the best AMV. They’ll have official footages and music that you have to use, both for sake of legal-ness and fairness. But these don’t work out very well for various reasons. (Getting user-created video content for commercial purposes is a whole separate thread by itself.) One reason I’ll also address at the end.

Honestly, I think most anime companies (studios or distros or licensees or whatever) are plenty glad about AMVs because they do not make substitutes of the original work. Regardless people pirate it or buy it after they got interested, that’s their choice. And even if someone is happy enough to see an AMV with all of Samurai Champloo’s action scenes threaded together to some cool music instead of watching the show, that person isn’t really watching the show anyways.

But here’s the problem with AMVs–the music. People don’t realize this, but a picture or a song or a movie all have the same level of legal protection. In a audiovisual work, the video and the music are both subject to copyright. While we can say that so-and-so AMV uses clips from 50 different anime, very few AMV use more than 1 song per video. And the music isn’t even always edited in an AMV.

So you might have guess by now, the biggest problems about AMV as discussed in ths post is also the music. AMVs are greatest at promoting music, they are also direct substitutes in a way since usually the entire song is used in an AMV. It is also difficult for anime companies to sponsor user-created AMVs because they have to dictate the music you use, which is one big problem for serious AMV makers. It really gimps their mojo. Why do they have to dictate the music? Because they can only use videos with parts they have permission to use. It would be nice if people can go ahead and make videos and the company just go out and license the parts used in the final product, but that’s not how it works.

Lastly, a few AMV people ended up going pro and make trailers for anime companies. For example, Nightowl is this American AMV dude who’s been at it for a loooong time, and he ended up making trailers for ADV.
http://www.animemusicvideos.org/members/members_myprofile.php?user_id=4146