音MAD (otoMAD) — art or madness?
This is an interview with some of the creators of “The Glorious Octagon of Destiny”, an 8-minute video created by around 30 people that took almost two years to create. The video is a high quality example of otoMAD culture, an ever growing trend.
What is otoMAD? What are the characteristics of this video genre?
MMaker: “OtoMADs can probably be classified as a ‘remix’ genre of video, but the biggest difference is that where most remixes are done from scratch, the majority of the content in otoMADs comes from already existing content, for both the audio and visuals. The idea is to see how much the original source material can be pushed to make something creative out of only that. A lot of this can be pretty subjective too because there’s a ton of different styles of otoMADs and everyone has their own taste, but in the end they’re generally all under the same bubble.”
SafNine: “What makes it different to me is how creative people can be with manipulating sources, in order to create beautiful music and animations. Since otoMAD creators do it purely out of passion and not money, they can be as creative as they want.”
Marlon: “I’d describe it as remixing pre-existing video content with music which (usually) also is taken from an existing source. That’s a bit broad, but there are so many different styles of otoMAD, it’s hard to come up with a single specific definition I think. Generally speaking almost all of these use ‘pitch-shifting’ and ‘sentence mixing’ as the main techniques used.”
What is the difference between MAD, otoMAD, and YTPMV?
MMaker: “Stylistic choice and the region of origin primarily (YTPMVs being Western and MADs being Eastern), but this is also up [for] debate because one person could call their videos “YTPMV” and another would call them ‘otoMAD’”.
The differences most people make are the source choices, otoMADs tending to have a lot more focus on sentencing and visuals, and YTPMVs tending to be more focused on making covers of a song with less focus on visual quality.
The Octagon collaboration is considered by a lot of people to be a hybrid between the two since Octagon originally was a Western source, but the collaboration also incorporates a lot of Japanese influence in terms of style, and this is reflected by the fact I personally believe most of the participants would consider themselves to make otoMADs rather than YTPMVs.
[Regarding the difference between MAD and otoMAD], really the only difference is the audio style I think, MADs sometimes don’t even have audio and are just solely visuals made for an existing song.”
SafNine: “OtoMADs are most popular in East Asia, especially Japan since it originated there. otoMADs made in other parts of the world will very often use songs and video sources which were first used in Japan, like Touhou music or Gachimuchi wrestling sources.
On YouTube originated YTPMV, which is similar to otoMAD, but otoMADs are more characterized by the usage of Japanese sources and (in my opinion) more professional video and audio production. Music Anime Douga is also known as AMV (example). Recognizable by anime scenes edited to music. ‘oto’ (音) is Japanese for ‘sound’, so an 音MAD would be a video where both the audio and visuals are edited (example)”
Marlon: “OtoMAD and YTPMV basically just the same thing in my opinion, but some people might disagree on that as there usually are some certain styles associated with it.
I feel like this might have been true in the past, but right now I don’t think there’s a good way to distinguish a otoMAD from a YTPMV because both styles have kinda blended in together over the years I feel.
That’s pretty confusing, but I believe they’re just essentially the same thing. The main difference obviously being that one originated from Japan and on NicoNico, and the other from the West and on YouTube.”
I tried to identify some trends by which you can recognize otoMAD-style videos:
- A set of frequently used tracks and/or remixes (RED ZONE, Evans , soundtracks from popular games/franchises in Japan: Touhou Project, Mario, Kirby, Undertale, etc.);
- It is important to synchronize the visuals with the background music;
- A set of frequently used video sources (anime, Japanese advertising, etc.)
Is that so?
MMaker: “Yeah, people will often stylize or make jokes in their videos based on other videos too, like Big Blue always having the switch to Inmu halfway through, or even stuff as simple as Red Zone having the split visuals at the ‘chorus’ of the song. They’ll sometimes mention the specific video too and say ‘respect to [video/author].’”
SafNine: “Some big common video sources genres are Gachimuchi, Jack Black defines Octagon, Old Spice commercials, Kitchen Gun, and more.”
Marlon: “Yes, people tend to use familiar material to work with, both in music and video material. Often with certain popular songs there are certain things in the video that are associated with it, like the way the main part of RED ZONE always has the lead and bass screenflipping right next to each other. People of the community really like to pay tribute to one original edit, and remake it with another video source, and give their own twist to it.
There’s something similar with video sources, there often are certain jokes associated with them that you often see in many different videos. Sometimes with popular video sources there is entire lore for it, where the people used basically become characters in a series, you see this a lot in Gachimuchi, Cookie☆ and INMU for example.People in the community love to follow certain trends, but I think in general, otoMAD is more defined by it’s editing style. There are plenty of videos that use obscure video and audio material, and I think that still classifies as an otoMAD.”
What is the history of otoMAD? How did you find out about it and start making videos?
MMaker: “There’s a lot of history of otoMAD, a big issue is it’s all in Japanese and even then a lot comes from word of mouth, much like YTPMV’s history does. There’s very few people still putting in translation effort for it now, even NicoNico had an English website back in the day but scrapped it due to lack of interest.
I first had seen MADs reuploaded to YouTube years ago but didn’t get into them until watching some videos by MowtenDoo, who’s from the West and considers himself an otoMAD author, from there I actually started making YTPMV style videos but now am more interested in otoMAD style videos.”
Marlon: “I’m a lot more familiar with the western side of these videos, which people usually call YTPMVs (YouTube Poop Music Video), which came from YTP (YouTube Poop) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube_Poop
[YTP] is hard to explain, but it’s basically remixing a video, changing it completely from what it originally was. There sure are better definitions for it online.
The MV part came when people started using that style of video and remixing it with music.
I myself got into it many years ago, I remember browsing YouTube all the way back in 2007–2008 and coming across some of these really early videos and really liked them, both videos from the western side of things and videos reuploaded from NicoNico.
I got really into YTPs around that time, then shifted focus to YTPMVs. I made my first one all the way back in 2009, when I was 12 years old and clearly had no idea what I was doing. (laughs)
But I just kept making them, got better and got to know people from the community, and just stuck around since.
My style has changed a lot over the years, I got a lot more interested in the more ‘otoMAD’ side of things back around 2015, mainly because of my interest in Gachimuchi at that time.”
Can you tell us more about the production of The Glorious Octagon of Destiny? How long did it take, how many people participated? How difficult is it to make a video like this? What software was used?
MMaker: “For the Glorious Octagon of Destiny it was originally going to be done in around 6 months but instead it ended up spanning close to 2 years. It’s all done in our free time so quite often collaborations will get delayed for various reasons.
About three dozen people participated, and we mostly choose participants just based on people we know, if they’re good at what they do, if they’re familiar with the source, etc.. Almost everyone in the collaboration knows each other and has been friends with each other for years, there isn’t an application for signup or anything like that. If you make videos you’ll usually eventually make connections and that’s how you can get into a collaboration like that.
Software can vary a lot but primarily everyone uses REAPER for audio and After Effects for visuals, at least for this collaboration specifically. A lot of YTPMV creators use Vegas for both audio and video, and Japanese users will use REAPER for audio but AviUtl for visuals.
The collaboration is split up into parts and everyone gets assigned a part to do, and usually it’s two people assigned to do audio and visuals for one part respectively, or sometimes a single person does both. There’s a good deal of communication with the people doing the part before and after them too so everything will flow smoothly together, and then it’ll all be compiled at the end (which was also something I handled!).”
Marlon: “The Glorious Octagon of Destiny took 30+ people and over a year to make (although most of the work probably got done in the last few months). I was one of the main hosts of the project and originally started it together with a few other people.
Making a video like this is pretty tough, but most people who have worked on this already had plenty of experience working on videos like this. We had both people remixing the audio and working on the video. For making audio any DAW (digital audio workstation) could be used, but most people I know use REAPER. For video people generally use Adobe After Effects, sometimes together with other software depending on what they’re making.
Short summary of the project process:
- People leading the project came up with a list of songs we wanted to do;
- Asking known people of the community if they were willing to participate;
- Getting a medley done for it (done by NOMA);
- Assigning everyone their role, which part they’ll be making audio or video (or both) for;
- We made sure everyone had a plan for the part they’re making, and helped assist each other whenever it’s needed;
- Audio production gets done followed up by video production;
- Then we put things together.”
What do you recommend for getting started with otoMAD? Something that is understandable for the Western/European mentality is desirable. SFW, of course.
SafNine: “For newcomers to get a taste of otoMADs, I would recommend otoMAD collaborations, since one of those already contains a lot of variety due to the many participants producing visuals and audio for it. I’d recommend these ones since they’re well made and don’t contain NSFW sources:
- The Glorious Octagon of Destiny;
- Muscular Wonders — Terry Crews’ Greatest Hits;
- Kitchen Gun — 3 Shots Of Derek Bum;
- 【Collaboration】 Gabe Newell Birthday Extravaganza.
Not all otoMADs are collabs, but there are too many great creators to list, so starting from those collabs, let the youtube algorithm do its work.”
What inspires you while creating videos?
MMaker: “Mostly other creator’s videos, and I think this applies to a lot of people, the whole community lives on through a sort of endless feedback loop which is pretty nice actually.
Other than that I’m personally inspired by a lot of Japanese motion graphics artists, and then just my own interests in general. I work as a programmer for my day job so I naturally tend to be interested in a lot of technical aspects of video creation and visual effects, so those aspects sometimes find their way into my work.”
Marlon: “Various things. Depending on what I work on I look at whatever it is the song I’m working with is from and come up with ways to incorporate it in the visuals. I often also look at other otoMADs that I like as reference.”
MajorMilk: “I’m an artist, I see videos as another form of expression.”
Is otoMAD an art form?
MMaker: “I’d say so, yeah, it’s just another form of remixing which is an art, but probably one that’s hard to stand on it’s own. It seems to have the most notoriety in Japan out of all countries.”
SafNine: “Yeah, one time I showed a friend some otoMAD videos and he called some postmodern kind of art. If you’re new, it’s hard to make sense of why people make these videos.”
MajorMilk: “It’s a form of transformative art. You take a source material, and modify it enough to make something new. This also makes us very susceptible to copyright claims.”
Do I need to know Japanese to understand humor/memes in captions/phrases?
MMaker: “Not always, depends on the video really. A lot of videos just have visual gags but a lot of them have jokes in the audio / dialogue too, and in those cases if the video isn’t in your native language it definitely helps to know a bit of the source language.”
MajorMilk: “Sometimes. You can ask the community as well; but it’s better to have at least a basic understanding, like being able to read hiragana and katakana. By the way, not all MADs are Japanese.”