So for my first video I decided to do a serious, character profile about a self called fan
So for my first video I decided to do a serious, character profile about a self called fan service character to "hauntingly beautiful" music. But I'm getting a little ahead of myself.
I believe this idea first originated sometime in early May of 2002. That sounds about right since it would put in shortly after I re-discovered my passion for Anime. I had recently seen The End of Evangelion. One of the most memorable scenes for me from the movie was Misato's death scene. Misato was my favorite character, probably due to the fact that I felt she was the most sympathetic of the characters. Her death scene, I though was very beautiful, very tragic and just plain sad. It was from this that the idea of the video first sprang out of. I wanted to create a video that made the audience say, "Aw, she didn't deserve to die." That was the entire point of the video, and it was this goal of getting the audience to sympathize with the character that drove me over the next months. I felt the best way to do this was to not only deal solely with her death, but to do an entire character profile and give clues as to why I felt she had to die in EoE.
The first thing I did in preparation for this video was to put the NGE box set on my birthday list. However, I did not receive my present for my birthday since my parents did not really know what the hell I was talking about. Luckily they had set aside the money for me to buy the present for myself. Consequently I did not receive the NGE box set until mid-June.
While I was waiting for my source material I set out to find the perfect music. I wanted "beautifully haunting" music that still contained enough of a pace to carry the video through the portion of the character profile that dealt with the fun-loving Misato. I heard some really beautiful Celtic music and decided that I wanted something similar for my video. The first song I chose was "Wild Child" by Enya. This actually wasn't a half bad song and I went so far as to time all of the lyrics. However, I grew frustrated with the song, and decided to look elsewhere to see if I could find something that allowed me more freedom in displaying the many faces of Misato.
The second song I chose was Adiemus, by Karl Jenkins. U may have heard this song was used in a Delta Airlines commercial. It has very beautiful lyrics that are not real words, but instead are intended to reflect the sound of the music. More importantly, it has a very soft intro and ending that I could use to set up the mood of the video. So I started working on timing every line of the lyrics.
By about this time I had received my box set of Eva. So I sat down and watched the series with notebook in hand. Every time I saw a scene that I thought I could use, I would pause the DVD, and wrote a brief description about the scene and the episode, and when it appeared in the episode. And since I was doing a character profile on Misato, there were a lot of scenes. This took me two days. Once I had recorded all of the scenes I needed I started to story board my video. All together I spent somewhere around 30 hours just on prep works.
On July 5, I opened up Premiere for the first time, and thus began my odyssey. I worked on this video everyday, except 3, from July 5 to the last week in August. I got up thinking about this video; I went to bed thinking about this video. I tried to make this video to the best of my ability, and thus I was consistently re-editing the video. I finally finished the last week of August, or I thought I was finished. Much to my frustration I kept finding new errors in my video. I must have "finished" my video three or four times over the next two weeks. But eventually it was done.
This is an interesting video for me, in that I don't know really what to make out of it. I spent so friggen long on this video. One day I thought the video was great, the next I couldn't believe how bad the video was. By the time I finished the video I thought it was a good but flawed video.
Today, I am still not totally sure how I feel about this video, but it is still a very important video for me. I really like the end though.
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Added: 1 year ago
Views: 14,267
Ahhh Christmas....
Chestnuts roasting on an open fire...
Jack Frost nipping at your no
Ahhh Christmas....
Chestnuts roasting on an open fire...
Jack Frost nipping at your nose...
Faye beating the craip out of some poor fool...
Now you might not think that a christmas song is not suited to an action video, and your probably right, but that didn't stop this poor newb from attempting just that. My first experience with gratuitous violence and Christams carols can be traced to my experience with online games. During tournament and league play I would often find myself humming Christmas carols in an effort to calm myself down. Once i started making amvs (this is my second) it only seemed natural to take that experience and transcribe it to video.
Originally i was going to use white Christmas, but the song was so gosh darn slow, and the quality was not the best. I Decided to use Nat King Cole's The Christmas Song. This carol not only has a rich musical accompaniment, but also rich and very visual vocals.
Now for the video footage....
...Cowboy Bebop, 'nough said
Editing was a breeze. It was really, really, easy, especially compared to my first project which took many months and many revisions. Part of the reason the video came together so easy was because i had already planned out the video and story boarded 90% of the scenes. And to my surprise, the scenes I planned out actually worked with the video o_O. Also, the video didn't require any special effects. I did use alot of overlays and fade transitions but these were easy to put together and matches the tempo of the music in most of the video. I'm dissatisfied with one of the overlay/fade transitions, but it doesn't hinder the video that much. The hardest part of the video was timing the action sequence during the music interlude, and even that was rather easy
So there we go, we have an Action video put to a Christmas Carol, only its not all action. I had to put in some drama type scenes to help carry the song and match the lyrics. But I didn't want to have depressing dramatic theme to my video so i picked scenes that either eluded to or were in contrast to the lyrics.
I wanted to make a fun video. My goal with this video was to leave a smile on the face of the viewer, and I hope that my audience has as much fun watching this video as I had making it.
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Added: 1 year ago
Views: 1,853
Awards:
Best Trailer, Ohayocon 3 2003
Best Parody, Maindwarp 2002 Fall/Winter Contest
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Awards:
Best Trailer, Ohayocon 3 2003
Best Parody, Maindwarp 2002 Fall/Winter Contest
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Well I guess this idea started when I watched the Read or Die OVA series with my local Anime Club. Thought the viewing of this enjoyable series, I kept thinking to myself that this was "James Bond with a Library Card". And I knew thought it would be great to see how many James Bond trailers have been made to the series. Much too my surprise I searched the database and found none. While I usually have a backlog of 3 or 4 amv ideas, I decided too push back my future projects and just do a quick little trailer.
ROD to a James Bond trailer seemed like a great idea, especially since a new James Bond picture was about to premier. While I could have used "Die Another Day" trailer/teaser audio for the parody, I luckily decided to look at some older Bond films to see if I could find something better. When I stumbled upon the "Tomorrow Never Dies" trailer, I knew that this was the source material for my little ROD trailer. While not perfect, I found the trailer, and particularly the ending, to be perfectly suited for a joke at Pokemon's expense.
The trailer audio did need some work though. First, I replaced the introduction "Bond, James Bond" with audio from the teaser, which I found to be a little more ironic ^_^. Regretfully, I also had to remove the sequence between Q and Bond. This scene involved Q and Bond discussing the Insurance needs of Bond's new BMW, spliced with scenes that appeared later in the movie showing Bond destroying the car. ROD has very few car related scenes and I couldn't make the audio and the footage match up convincingly.
So putting together Pokemon and ROD sounded like a good idea. I mean hell, how hard could it be. Just open up After Effects do a little Photoshop and BAM you would have a good video.
I HATE After Effects
Well maybe HATE is a little strong, but damn, this was supposed to be just a little trailer that was supposed to take no time out all. While I did spend a lot more time then I intended on the "special effects" aspect of my video, it is far from perfect. The slap scene was the hardest to choreograph and still looks like donkey squeeze. Oh well, I enjoyed most of the other special effects. I tried to put a lot of detail into this video, and I hope that each time someone watches the video they will see something new.
Oh yeah, this is my first time using Lip Syncing.
...
...yep that's about all I have to say about the lip synching, its not great, its not bad, its just there ^_^
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Added: 1 year ago
Views: 20,865
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This was an interesting video for me. It was a video that I used to try and experiment wit
This was an interesting video for me. It was a video that I used to try and experiment with the process of making a video. For my previous projects I had done plenty of prep work before starting the videos, going so far at to storyboard out the scenes. However for this video, I was less concerned with prep work and decided to approach the video in a set of layers. First, I would pay careful attention to scene selection, then I would add in lip-synching and finally add in special effects.
The first phase of the video went very well for me. I felt that the tone of the song along with the lyrics, while not perfectly match to Isamu, was very close. Scene selection went by fairly easy, and before I knew it I had a video that I felt was decent. In fact the first time I ran through the rough draft, I was surprised at how good it turned out.
At this point I was tempted to call the video done, and move on to another project. However, I still wanted to try the approach of "layering" the video. The lip synching portion of the video did not turn out so well. I found that putting in scenes with lip-synching in them really disrupted the natural flow of the video. Consequently, the only portion of the video that has lip synch is at the beginning.
Layering on special effects worked better. However, I don't think that I am really that good at spfx and most of the spfx for the video did not turn out as well as I expected. Therefore I dropped most of the effects from the video.
It is my belief that the video itself flows rather well. I don't know if it's a good "action" video though, since the long hours working on this video has anesthetized me to any sense of adrenaline rush. Anyway, I hope that the viewer enjoys watching it.
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Added: 1 year ago
Views: 1,355
Several times I came very close to dropping this project. It was very difficult for me to
Several times I came very close to dropping this project. It was very difficult for me to nail down the central concept of the video. On one hand I wanted to create an inspirational video that dealt with glory and more importantly the struggle necessary to attain that glory. I also wanted the video to be made in the same style as other great baseball movies such as "The Natural" and "Field of dreams." Sort of a nostalgic look at the innate joy of baseball.
The inspiration for this video actually came not from the series, but instead from the trailer. The show on the other hand was disappointing. The show generally used stock characters and situations that did not appeal to me that much. However, Princess 9 did contain themes that I was attracted too such as struggling in the face of opposition, glory, competition, teamwork, reliance on other and various other themes. Also in-between Princess 9's dismal production work was an artistic style that I really liked. I feel that the trailer picked up on this style and subsequently so did my video.
The audio for this AMV was challenging. I wanted to use a song that has a great clash of symbols and trumpets yet still maintain a somber mood through portions of the song. I planned on using the great clash to show the triumph of competition while using the somber mood to show the joy of just tossing a ball around.
The song I eventually decided on was a remix of a couple tracks from the Apollo 13 sound track. Working with the song was somewhat difficult. Obviously, the soundtrack doesn't have any lyrics, so I couldn't use lyrics to provide structure for the video. Overall, The audio required me to give and take a little more with this project then with my previous videos. It is ironic then that I remixed the audio to better suit my needs
Overall I am pleased with the video. It can definitely be better but I felt that I presented some of the aspects I liked about the anime series in a respectable manner. I do enjoy the ending though, and I hope the viewer does too.
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Added: 1 year ago
Views: 6,835
A nice short little trailer that continues my work with instrumental only projects. The co
A nice short little trailer that continues my work with instrumental only projects. The concept is a little "off" since Jin Roh takes place at a much later date then the original trailer. But I thought there were enough parallels between the Last Samurai and Jin Roh to make it work. However, I was surprised at how violent and dark the trailer turned out. I guess I should have expected it would turn out that way since Jin Roh isn't exactly the happiest anime title out there.
This trailer also required me to do a little more fine-tuning then I expected. The spfx were not that bad though. Unfortunatily, I had to recreate the titles found in the original trailer. I found a AE filter (Shine) and a tutorial that gave me a spfx that was near enough to the spfx used in the original footage. I also had to hunt down a Kanji font. I tried to recreate the writing in the trailer but soon gave up and just threw some random Kanji symbols into the titles.
Overall it isn't a bad trailer ^_^
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Added: 1 year ago
Views: 1,897
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This Video actually started off as a romantic comedy.
Or so I believe, because honest
This Video actually started off as a romantic comedy.
Or so I believe, because honestly I have been working on this project for so long I don't exactly remember why I started it. I remember when I started it, but not why. How peculiar... Anyways, I started this project the day after I released my last video, which would have been late January 2004. It took me a while to gather the source footage and lay down a basic track. Although every frame went through After effects, the basis of the video was composed in vegas. I found this to be a lot more advantageous then composing the entire video in AE. I know other editors have done entire projects within after effects but i find it difficult to get my timing down within the program. Editing in Vegas also gave me the advantage of creating a good core video before I sent the project to AE.
When I had thrown about one third of the project down on the Vegas timeline, I sent the first clips to AE. And then I spent a month just trying stuff out. Ugh, it was not fun. In fact it was very frustrating. I think i ended up with 10-12 versions of the first scene before I was satisfied. (and this didn't even make the final cut of) Roughly 3 out of 4 scenes that I made for this vid didn't work out. Which is one of the reasons the video took so long to make. But early on I had decided that the motto for my vid would be "no limits" If i needed to do something for the vid I did it. And so i slogged on through the video. I'd spend months just trying something out, and then in the space of a few days I would have a breakthrough and get a large chunk of the vid done only to spend several more weeks just trudging on.
Ah yes, now I remember why i made this video. I wanted to make a fun video that the audience would enjoy. And I also wanted to amek a video that would help to push the bounds of "effects" in amvs. I was inspired by car adds and CNN promos =). Effects are fun to make. But I actually enjoyed the composting part of the video a hell of a lot more then the motion graphics/eye candy part. Its incredibly rewarding to actually create a scene from scratch. The scene with Chise looking over the ruined city with meteors falling around her (01:49) was exactly as I had imagined it! Which is amazing, because things NEVER turn out how i imagined them.
So umm about the actual video
-I enjoy movies/anime with strong female leads, so this became the theme for my video. " Little Girls with Big Mechs" and some little girls who are mechs and some big girls who I think are cool and have nice facial expressions that i can use a lot in my vid.
-Particular is a really fun plugin
-There are actually more keyframes then regularframes
- The scene with the square appearing on the city wall was a bitch to track. The squares looked like they were bouncing off the walls in the first version.
-I love the ending. In fact i believe the last 20 seconds are the strongest part of the video.
-They actually make programs that can lipsynch for you. But i couldn't find a free one. So I used Magpie instead. http://www.thirdwishsoftware.com/magpie.html
- If you need a good book on AE check out "Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects" by Trish and Chris Meyer and for more advanced users try "After Effects 6.5 Studio Techniques" by Mark Christiansen. Most of the stock footage I used came from The Meyer's book.
- I was originally going to use E Nomine's "Deine Welt" but i liked the soundfx at 02:48 in Das Omen so much i switched tracks.
-I showed an unfinished version at AWA 11 and named it fiction. Since this is the finished or" true" version i'm calling it true fiction.
I think that's enough for now, I'm sure I'll add more comments later.
Enjoy.
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Added: 1 year ago
Views: 4,494
My contest entry for the Tax Slayer.com Video Contest
Added: 3 months ago
Views: 166
ROID ADE Replaces sweat you lose when you work out because it is SWEAT, PRO-ATHLETE SWEAT!
Added: 4 months ago
Views: 613
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