There’s something missing in me.
I can feel it. Every part of me yearns for it, something big, something great. My entire life, I’ve been looking for it, ever since I’ve felt that magical first touch of emotion I felt I’ve been spending my entire life searching for the “The Magic Touch.”
Counter-Strike fragmovies. Counter-Strike in general, as a game, whenever I’m in the flow-state of a good matchmaking session. Cinema, Anime, Reading, Swimming. I’ve thrown my life into them to rediscover that flow, to experience the full force of all those emotions and to turn them into something big, to help others experience the wide variety of emotions that I had also felt.
But once I had experienced these periods of high, I’d be left with this gnawing hunger. I wanted more. I needed more. I wanted to experience it again, again and again. I watched and rewatched countless movies, shows, video essays, and edits as a means to satisfy my everlasting hunger to learn, to satisfy, to progress.
In these edits, and these passion infused videos paired with the artistic stroke of good storytelling, this is where I truly fell in love with the art form. Good videos would take all the elements that were so special in the show and increase it tenfold, twentyfold. The sheer focus and passion put into it was awe-inspiring, the amount of attention to detail and the syncing of the music. It wasn’t just cool music put over sick fight scenes, instead it was an entirely passion driven project, one highlighted by the raw emotions and power of the editor who took so long to edit it.
I’d even get insecure, no I still get insecure about the amazing things that people can create. I look at their anime music videos, their video essays, their fragmovies and I would always question myself if I could ever get to the level of emotion and idea that their videos could convey. I wanted to create something, something that was great, but my music was never that good, I never really knew how to edit, nor did I know how to create a compelling video essay that would touch hearts. No, all I really knew how to do was write out my strong opinions in a brutal word barf and hope to Jesus that the main idea of my writing would touch the people that I wanted it to touch.
Eventually I figured out my standards for videos and Animes. Good Animes and videos had to make me feel something. They had to be packed with my raw emotions, acting as a free-flow of all my ideas. They had to challenge my morality and ideas to help me develop more ideas so that I could learn and grow as a person, and write about more philosophical concepts about the stories.
Good videos would make me think, it would spark a fire into me that would erupt into the passionate flames of my writing. Listening to people talk about a character or the story would make me want to learn more, watch more, read more. Good edits would make me feel those powerful emotions again.
Every little detail, every shot, every flowing movement of the camera as we flip onto the next shot is made by the people who live and breathe these works of art. It’s pure passion, 5 minutes, 20 minutes, half an hour of just pure emotions. Music. Lines of impactful dialogue paired with expert cinematography.
This is the art of Fan Made Videos.
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Not every video is made equally.
This is something that I’ve always unconsciously judged videos on. While there’s no doubt that edits take a tremendous amount of time to master and learn, the sad reality of them is that anyone could learn how to edit, and how to string together a group of anime, cinema, or gaming clips and proceed to overlay their favorite songs over it.
But I was looking for something more. Something that wasn’t just mindless clips strung together without a purpose but instead a beautiful love letter to the show that I enjoyed that would allow me to remember the heightened emotions I felt during my first watch.
Slyfer2812, TheGaroStudies, Hi-Top Films, Zurik 23M, Hiding In Public, Aleczandxr. These are the creators that I watched, over and over and over again to relive my experiences. Every single time I watched the videos filled with pure passion they never failed to appeal to my heart and my mind as a human, a flawed human, who can’t help but fall in love with flawed characters, whether they’re a villain or a hero, protagonist or antagonist.
I’ve once said that great films or pieces of art couldn’t be graded. You can’t put numbers on them and expect that they can capture the pure essence and the passion for works of art like that. Well, the videos that I watched always got the closest in capturing the exact feelings I had when watching them.
It even annoyed me sometimes. I look at my writing, and while I can write and write and write, talk and talk I can’t ever hope to capture the ideas as elegantly as those videos did for me. Emotions were something that was hard for me to describe using words, and even when words were utilized in lines of dialogue, or a video essay, hearing a person say it while also seeing the visual representations of what they’re saying made it a lot more influential to me.
The truth is, I’ve always really wanted to be an editor. Not just a regular YouTube editor who edits funny YouTube videos, but instead a person who impacts and touches people’s hearts and saves peoples lives.
Videos like these have given me a purpose, a reason to live. These were the inspirations to so many of my emotion fueled rants and writings about cinema, reading, singing, writing, and anime. While I’d always come out of watching something confused and dazed, filled to the brim with ideas but having not a single clue on how to organize them, these videos and essays would help me organize my thoughts and give me the courage and inspiration to write something about my feelings themselves.
They’re not just videos or edits. Just like how cs wasn’t just a video game for me, the ideas that these videos presented weren’t just ideas. They were a mentality, a way of life, all the things that I hated about myself but also the things that I found most intriguing part of the human condition and experience.
I loved it. Every single part of them, ranging from the smallest details to something as large as the music choice, the amount of passion that flows through, and the details, and the flowing state of their hands as I spend days upon crying upon crying at the same video and shows over and over again, like I was finally being understood.
I’ve learned more in my short time watching anime and watching these videos than I have ever learned in school. No, it’s not really a detriment to school, it‘s more a testament to passion. When you truly love something, when you eat, breath, sleep that thing, it’s a truly magical experience, something that can open your eyes to the true wonders of the world.
Some people won’t understand my love for contemporary videos and art, they’ll look at anime, videos, and writing without knowing the blood, sweat and tears that it takes.
But I love it, because I see it and I understand it, the details and the precision and the passion flowing through. And maybe, just maybe, I helped you feel it as well.
Thank you for reading.
