Forum - View topicHey, Answerman! [2007-08-24]
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Cephus
 Posts: 139 Location: Redlands, CA |
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You do know Roger Corman is supposedly doing a remake/sequel, set for release in 2008, right? http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0452608/ |
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Viga_of_stars
 Posts: 1240 Location: Washington D.C. in the Anime Atelier |
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Remember folks! Be careful of HOW you convert them. Don't be super forceful and stuff or annoying about it. i think someone mentioned some tips on that in this or another thread. |
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eyesopen0791
 Posts: 108 Location: A Sleepy Town in California |
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Hey, everybody.
About that fan whose AMVs were taken down on YouTube, there's a news story that might be of interest here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/topics/parody Since it appears to be a copyrighted news article, you have to scroll about 8 headlines down to this one, "The Sacramento Bee, Calif., Media Savvy Column: Parody Maker's Copyright Fight With Media Giants Takes Fair Turn" to read the whole article. Basically the article is saying there's an exception to copyright law. "Fair use is an exception to the law that allows people to use copyrighted material for commentary, parody, news reporting and educational research." "says Anthony Falzone, director of the Fair Use Project, 'As a general matter, if you're using small snippets of copyrighted material to say something about them -- critiquing, commenting, making a parody -- then you're off to a good start. We lawyers call that 'transformative' uses -- making something new out of others' material.'" So you could possibly argue that AMVs could fall under this criteria. Of course, you probably have to have an attorney writing on your behalf to YouTube or you can sic the ACLU if you want to make the effort... |
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indrik
 Posts: 365 Location: yonder |
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Except that you're still using the whole song, even if you're using snippets of the anime. I think this is a pretty well known argument, though.
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Zalis116
Moderator
 Posts: 6867 Location: Kazune City |
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But speaking of conventions and dating advice, I'd recommend going to the "How to Talk to Women" panel that Greg Ayres and/or Steve Bennett run at almost every con they're at. Even if it's not lifesaving advice for you, it's always a fun time. |
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Viga_of_stars
Posts: 1240 Location: Washington D.C. in the Anime Atelier |
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I knew of the fair use law when I looked for it for a project. I think AMV can fall into the catagory. |
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Talon87
Posts: 89 |
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Anecdotal evidence has its uses, but I don't believe it is something we want to heavily rely on when trying to describe trends of for otakudom in the West. :\ At the very least, you could have specified that girls outnumber guys at anime conventions. For every one story of a dude who got glomped by 20+ girls because he was cosplaying as Ichigo at ACen, I think we could find ten others of guys who walked into the anime club callouts at IU, USC, or PennState and were welcomed by over 90% guys. I know my anime clubs were like that. The smaller one (~20 regulars) was around 30% female, while the larger one (over 100 people at callout; ~60 regulars) had less than five regular girls. Since the staff at ANN do seem to (seriously) care about the integrity of journalism in anime, I'm curious if you guys have ever conducted a pen-and-paper poll that suits various factors for statistical accuracy (e.g. a sufficiently large sample, randomly polled [i.e. not culled from ANN's or Newtype's readerbase alone] with distribution representing the continental United States and Canada), etc. I know you guys have held polls here on ANN over the years, but I'm wondering if you've ever done something on a larger scale ... it could make for interesting (if difficult) journalism. I'd imagine you could find a few companies who'd be more than interested to sponsor it ... then again, that could just be naive anime fanboy talk. |
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ikillchicken
 Posts: 7272 Location: Vancouver |
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The problem with such a poll is its really not gonna be any more accurate.
Theres no plausable way to take an unbiased sample of the fanbase. Youre always going to be centering it around a certain place. Wether that be a convention, a forum, a store, etc. Unfortunately, even if you survey all kinds of places, you cant really get any kind of idea about which is most representative of the fanbase. |
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Goodpenguin
Posts: 457 Location: Hunt Valley, MD |
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'Cosplay' centric or not, wouldn't Con audiences represent a more accurate gender/age mix on anime fandom then college clubs or internet forums? Those are pretty traditional older male niche/otaku stomping grounds (as well as college clubs would be by nature outside the major tween/mid-teen audience group that comprises the majority of the market). While I'm not really familiar with 'Cosplay" habits, I'd have to imagine keeping up with characters/trends/designs would entail pretty heavy anime viewing, and while that may be more 'social aspect' in flavor than some other types of viewers, a fan's a fan. Just gauging the content of current anime, it would be kind of shocking to find female viewership at less than 50%. Excluding your niche older/otaku programs, the typical (in context) current anime (at least what gets licensed domestically, which might also tip one off to something) has more emotional turmoil, angst, and melodrama than three US soaps combined. I'm in no way implying a male audience wouldn't/couldn't enjoy that too, but in general that style of storytelling tends to be very appealing to female audiences. You see that even more in the manga field, where female audiences dip heavily into even the 'shonen' styled titles. |
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Talon87
Posts: 89 |
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I'm just saying that telling a member he has no idea about the anime community's gender ratio until he's been to a convention is little better than telling him the same with regards to a college anime club or an anime webforum. You say that these latter two are poor indicators of what the culture is really like because they under-represent women; my point simply is that the con is the same poison in reverse: it overrepresents women.
In the same sense that "it's a known fact that there are tons of female anime fans at conventions," I could turn around and say, "It's also a known fact that the cosplay scene is dominated by women" and "it's a known fact that there are few chances for people to demonstrate their cosplay prowess to the public and not be laughed at or get weird looks ; an anime convention is one of those places where the cosplayer can do what he or she does best." Putting 2 and 2 together, it follows that you just might expect to see a surge of female otaku at conventions (even outnumbering the guys) but that the population as a whole still grossly remains tilted in the male direction, as indicated by other factors (male:female ratios at other otaku hangouts, sales of traditionally male-catered vs. female-catered DVDs and merchandise, etc.). I agree that there is a need to realize that women account for a significant market share of anime sales in the United States, Canada, and Europe; however, I'm against swapping out one bit of anecdotal evidence ("at my anime club, we only have one girl") for another ("go to any con, they're all like 60% female") in the interests of trying to get people to realize that otakudom isn't as guy-centric as we often tell ourselves it is. |
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ikillchicken
Posts: 7272 Location: Vancouver |
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True, but odds are that conventions are still the best possible representation of the fanbase even if its not perfect. Also I think youre over estimating the increased appeal of conventions to female fans. Sure it might make a minor difference, but there are plenty of male fans who cosplay too, as well as plenty of other reasons why conventions attract fans. Plus at the very least, conventions prove the point that there are a very significant portion of female fans.
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Talon87
Posts: 89 |
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But what are you honestly basing that opinion ("I think cons are the best approximation we have") on? Obviously, we disagree somewhere, because I don't make that jump. In fact, I'd argue that the anime convention is a very vocal minority within the entirety of otakudom. If you really want to select one group and put them up as "the representatives for everybody else," I think the best choice would be the consumer chunk of otakudom, i.e. looking at the sales of DVD and manga (which FAR outweigh the sales of con tickets, even though we're talking the same potential market [Western otakus] in both cases -- this alone should tell us something about a con's strength as an indicator of the population trends).
The thing is, I really don't want to select *a* group when it wouldn't be that difficult (I imagine) for a squad of journalists to approach Geneon (for example) and say, "If you offer to fund us, we'll offer to do the grunt work of the research and share with you our results." I'm sure Tokyo would be pretty interested, too, in the insights such a poll would offer them for future commercial enterprises. Oh well. I think we'll just have to agree to disagree.  ; Thanks for your patience, and sorry for being a bit repetitive.
Last edited by Talon87 on Wed Aug 29, 2007 3:20 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Cephus
Posts: 139 Location: Redlands, CA |
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But they're not. Conventions give you a range of related fandoms, not just anime. That's like saying you can judge comic book fandom by the attendance at San Diego Comicon. It's just not going to be remotely accurate. |
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ikillchicken
Posts: 7272 Location: Vancouver |
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Quite simple, the fact that I can see where other things like an Anime forum would appeal much more to certain groups. I think conventions would appeal fairly equally to all fans. Thats where we disagree. If we could survey people who buy DVDs/Manga or something like that, yeah sure it would be even better. However in terms of a way to simply look around and figure out a general idea of what the fanbase is like, conventions are your best bet. Cephus: Were talking about Anime conventions obviously. 
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CCSYueh
 Posts: 2707 Location: San Diego, CA |
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Yeah, my teen's been telling me about it. She's disappointed Stallone isn't doing a cameo. "How many points for that one?" is an old joke about pedestrians in my house |
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