27/05/2013
21/05/2013
Top 50 Idol Music Videos
Well, it's been a while. wu has gone more than a week without posting, quite a drastic change from about fifty in under a month. Henkka's busy translating for benefit of pageviews and glorious profit for nation of monotones, and I haven't seen skald or Delrey around in a while.
So we come to this, the latest of my insanely long, occasionally pointless and soon obsolete lists. This time I’ve chosen to step away from music momentarily and focus on the other side of my formal training. Sort of. I’m a stills photographer, not a cinematographer, but I have a deep-seated affection for the art-form that is the promotional video. That said, I do have a slightly different view than some as to what makes a music video good. To me, a promotional video should be a silent film with the music in the background, a short film no more than a minute or two longer than the length of the song. I also look highly upon abstractions, concepts and PVs that tell a story without the need to resort to dialogue. This sort of disqualifies a lot of later-day AKB48 videos that may otherwise have stood a chance, because they’re no longer really PVs at all, but full-fledged drama episodes. Another thing I disapprove of is ridiculous amounts of post-processing work unless it’s in some way required to gain the needed effect. For example, the ridiculous sparkles in recent Momusu PVs = instant fail.
For a change, there are no draws in the top 50. This happened by accident, which is confusing, considering how many PVs there are in incredibly close proximity to each other in score. In fact, in the 84 PVs I gave scores to, there's only one draw: between AKB's Hitsujikai no Tabi and Momusu Sakuragumi's Sakura Mankai at 66.
I drew in some help for listing the PVs this time. As I had no inclination to watch nearly 1000 PVs to determine the best, I helpfully found a way around it: get other people to do it for me. Sort of. I asked a bunch of people for recommendations and as a general rule got about zero. A few people gave me one or two. Henkka gave me about 30, some of which I deleted. So in the end I had to go through and watch a bunch of stuff. Of course, AKB were the most annoying. Any group that puts out 32 PVs in one year, not counting sister groups, subgroups, soloists or other stuff is really going some to annoy me. Even so, through sheer spam power, AKB have more PVs in this list than any other group. I suppose if you release enough of something you're bound to get a good one eventually. For most groups I accepted that the vast majority of their output was shit, and then carried on thinking so until convinced otherwise, unless I could specifically remember something. Thus, SKE PVs were done entirely from memory, Momusu almost entirely by memory, yet on the other side of the coin I watched some PVs I'd never even heard of before, let alone seen, including a bunch by older groups like Hinoi Team and SweetS. However, none made it to the list so I could have better spent my time elsewhere.
This post will contain possibly a huge amount of "alternative" video sites, because for some reason some idol groups seem to not want to release their music videos online. Also one label which blocks us filthy gaijin from watching entirely. I may devote an entire hate post to them at a later date. So, if you have problems with Yinyuetai, Tudou, Youku or other Chinese video sites, you may not be able to see all of them. But I'm sure there are "resources" at your disposal anyway.
So we come to this, the latest of my insanely long, occasionally pointless and soon obsolete lists. This time I’ve chosen to step away from music momentarily and focus on the other side of my formal training. Sort of. I’m a stills photographer, not a cinematographer, but I have a deep-seated affection for the art-form that is the promotional video. That said, I do have a slightly different view than some as to what makes a music video good. To me, a promotional video should be a silent film with the music in the background, a short film no more than a minute or two longer than the length of the song. I also look highly upon abstractions, concepts and PVs that tell a story without the need to resort to dialogue. This sort of disqualifies a lot of later-day AKB48 videos that may otherwise have stood a chance, because they’re no longer really PVs at all, but full-fledged drama episodes. Another thing I disapprove of is ridiculous amounts of post-processing work unless it’s in some way required to gain the needed effect. For example, the ridiculous sparkles in recent Momusu PVs = instant fail.
For a change, there are no draws in the top 50. This happened by accident, which is confusing, considering how many PVs there are in incredibly close proximity to each other in score. In fact, in the 84 PVs I gave scores to, there's only one draw: between AKB's Hitsujikai no Tabi and Momusu Sakuragumi's Sakura Mankai at 66.
I drew in some help for listing the PVs this time. As I had no inclination to watch nearly 1000 PVs to determine the best, I helpfully found a way around it: get other people to do it for me. Sort of. I asked a bunch of people for recommendations and as a general rule got about zero. A few people gave me one or two. Henkka gave me about 30, some of which I deleted. So in the end I had to go through and watch a bunch of stuff. Of course, AKB were the most annoying. Any group that puts out 32 PVs in one year, not counting sister groups, subgroups, soloists or other stuff is really going some to annoy me. Even so, through sheer spam power, AKB have more PVs in this list than any other group. I suppose if you release enough of something you're bound to get a good one eventually. For most groups I accepted that the vast majority of their output was shit, and then carried on thinking so until convinced otherwise, unless I could specifically remember something. Thus, SKE PVs were done entirely from memory, Momusu almost entirely by memory, yet on the other side of the coin I watched some PVs I'd never even heard of before, let alone seen, including a bunch by older groups like Hinoi Team and SweetS. However, none made it to the list so I could have better spent my time elsewhere.
This post will contain possibly a huge amount of "alternative" video sites, because for some reason some idol groups seem to not want to release their music videos online. Also one label which blocks us filthy gaijin from watching entirely. I may devote an entire hate post to them at a later date. So, if you have problems with Yinyuetai, Tudou, Youku or other Chinese video sites, you may not be able to see all of them. But I'm sure there are "resources" at your disposal anyway.
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