Honou Productions

Anime – Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou, Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou ~Quiet Country Cafe~
Song – Stockwell Brothers – Before I Go
Completed September 2009
Premiered October 3, 2009
AnimeMusicVideos.org link

The best part of my job is filming local bands in concert. I heard this song and immediately thought of making a “travelling” story video using it. I picked up the original artist’s performance of the song, and absolutely hated his vocals. So I went back to my tape, which had a direct line from the band’s sound board and used that version instead. I shortened the song by one verse and chorus, though.

For the video, it really ended up going in a different direction from how I first envisioned it. I originally thought of Alpha on her Vespa. Unfortunately, I forgot that most of her long trip in the second OVA series was done on foot. So slowly the video shifted into a light yuri romance between Alpha and Kotone. It’s a little slow, but it fits the folksy mood of both the song and the OVAs.

Convention History:
Kurokiiro 2009 – Finalist
Bakuretsucon 2009 – Finalist
Youmacon 2009 – Finalist
Another Anime Con 2009 – Entrant

Anime – Various
Song – Carl Sagan – Pale Blue Dot Chapter 1: You Are Here (excerpt) & Dana Cunningham – The Color of Light
Completed July 2009
Premiered September 18, 2009
AnimeMusicVideos.org link

I really can’t say much about the content for this one, since I’m not sure I have the words to say it right. Mr. Sagan will just have to speak for me.

On a technical level, my goal was to not use any series more than once, but time pressure (this was actually finished during the two-day FTP upload window) forced me to use a few twice (I think there’s four or five that are repeated).

I’m really proud of this one, and I’m glad that people have said they liked it. Thanks for watching.

Contest History:
Anime Weekend Atlanta 2009: Pro Contest – Finalist, Best Artistic Endeavor category
Kurokiiro 2009 – Finalist
Another Anime Con 2009 – Entrant
Bakuretsucon 2009 – Finalist
Youmacon 2009 – Winner, Best of Show

Anime – Ah! My Goddess (TV & Movie)
Song – Immediate Music – Blasphemy
Completed April 2009
Premiered May 8, 2009
AnimeMusicVideos.org link

This one was created especially for Anime Central’s 2009 Theme contest of “Trailer.” I decided to go the “original trailer” route rather than a parody trailer, taking a romantic comedy series and turning it into an action/drama/epic movie for its “new” theatrical installment.

When the theme was announced, I had just finished a book on myths from many cultures, and that in turn led me to think of the events of Ragnarok paired Ah! My Goddess. The video took about three weeks from first inspiration to completion, which was a surprise to me, since I normally work much more slowly.

The subtitles were deliberately styled to look like Pioneer/Geneon DVD subtitles, to further the “real trailer” idea (P/G were the ones who released the real AMG movie in the US).

The voice of Kami-sama is actually my own, since I couldn’t find any closely corresponding lines spoken by the real Voice. It was run through a number of filters to get the resonant quality my real voice lacks as well as the needed “long-distance telephone” effect, and to disguise my atrocious accent.

Each of the text overlays was written in English first, then translated as best I could manage into Japanese (apologies to anyone who can actually read my clumsy translations) for the red kanji versions, and each is also one of the events leading up to Ragnarok in the original myths.

The release date (Sept. 9, 2009) was both too great an idea to pass up (a flipped 666) and a nod to the upcoming movie “9″ which shares that release date.

Convention History:
Anime Central 2009 – Finalist
Anime Boston 2009 – Finalist

Anime – Tokyo Babylon
Song – Luca Turrili – Throne of Ice
Completed January 2009
Premiered January 30, 2009
AnimeMusicVideos.org link

The idea for this one was inspired by the call for entries to the Gothik II MEP. The list of suggested anime included Tokyo Babylon, which I’ve wanted to use for something for quite a while, so I went looking for an interesting song that might fit. I didn’t have time to make it for the MEP, but put this together about a month later.

The title was inspired by the scene of the shattered glass falling in front of Seishirou, which, for a second, looked like flower petals the first time I saw it.

Overall, a pretty simple video that I enjoyed making.

Contest Participation:
Ohayocon 2009 – Finalist
Tekkoshocon VII – Entrant

Anime – Angelic Layer
Song – Naota Shibata PROJECT – Theme of Simon
Completed December 2008
Premiered January 30, 2009
AnimeMusicVideos.org link

Listening to the Castlevania: Dracula Battle soundtracks always makes me think of action videos, so I decided to try one out. The goal was to make the various fights in the series flow together into what seems like one long mostly-seamless fight.

I think it came out pretty well; there’s a few spots that feel off, but I like the transition points, especially the Mao/Blanche one.

Convention Participation:
Ohayocon 2009 – Finalist
I-Con 28 – Finalist
Tekkoshocon VII – Entrant

Anime – ef ~a tale of memories~
Song – Johannes Brahms – Waltz in A Flat, Op. 39/15
Completed August 2008
Premiered October 18, 2008
AnimeMusicVideos.org link

Since ef had such an interesting and unusual artistic look to it, I wanted to do something a little different with this video. Classical music really doesn’t get much use in AMVs, so that’s where I started looking, and found this very nice piano piece by Brahms.

In the end, it’s a simple Renji/Chihiro romance video that I’m pretty happy with.

Convention History:
Another Anime Con 2008 – Finalist
Bakuretsucon 2008 – Finalist
Youmacon 2008 – Finalist

Anime – Various
Song – Def Leppard – Rock of Ages
Completed June 2008
Premiered August 22, 2008
AnimeMusicVideos.org link

As far back as my first full-length video, Big in Japan, I’ve wanted to do something like this, with as much concert footage as possible jammed into a single video. The idea went through at least ten different songs paired with it, and I actually started working on something using Eric Johnson’s “Cliffs of Dover” to all guitar footage before realizing how boringly repetitive and low-energy what I was creating was (plus the need to sync so much guitar movement was a serious pain for the tiny benefit it gained). I scrapped the idea, but for some reason kept all of the ripped DVDs on my hard drive for a couple months.

Meanwhile, I picked up Def Leppard’s “Vault” album after hearing a couple of their songs on the radio and liking them. The song “Rock of Ages” just jumped out at me, and I started gathering even more footage to work with, since so much of what I had already pulled together was guitar-focused. During this time, I was helped immensely by Val and Kim, who lent me several DVDs that I ended up using, as well as recommendations for series to look in from Meteor Dragon (thanks especially for the BECK recommendation), GloryQuestor, ngsilver, Kionon, and Kitsuner.

I also have to extend immense thanks to ZephyrStar for allowing me to use (and providing lossless copies of) the scenes of Yotsuba playing the guitar from his incredible Daydream video.

There were also quite a few series I had that didn’t end up in the final video, for whatever reasons, especially Idol Defense Force Hummingbird and Perfect Blue.

Technical:
Probably the most problematic footage of what I actually ended up using was from the Zillion: Burning Night OVA, which came from a VHS tape, as no DVD of the show exists, even in Japan. I ended up playing the tape in an SVHS deck, recording it onto a MiniDV deck, then importing from the MiniDV tape to the computer, and finally running it through a metric ton of AviSynth filters to clean it up (the final script ran at about 0.7 fps).

The rest of the footage was pretty easy to work with by comparison, though several of the DVDs I was working with exhibited ugly frame blending, which I was sucessfully able to fix in some cases, not so well in others, but the result still looks fairly good.

Other than a little bit of lip and instrument sync, the most complex effect in the video is an additive dissolve, so the goal of a simpler-looking old-school video was achieved.

Contest Participation:
AnimeEvolution 2008 – Entered
Anime Weekend Atlanta 2008: Pro Competition – Finalist for “Best Various”
Another Anime Con 2008 – Finalist
Bakuretsucon 2008 – Finalist
Youmacon 2008 – Winner, Staff Pick

Anime – Area 88 OVA
Song – Kenny Loggins – I’m Free (Heaven Helps the Man)
Completed April 2008
Premiered May 16, 2008
AnimeMusicVideos.org link

This idea’s been kicking around in my head for a while, though originally it was using the Area 88 TV series, not the OVA, before I decided to go entirely 80’s cheese with it (source from 1985, song from 1984).

I mainly wanted to do a drama about the separation between Shin and Ryoko, and give it a bit of a different twist, with Shin wanting to stay in Area 88, because the fight is something he believes in to the point of leaving Ryoko behind (which is the exact opposite of the actual series).

Convention History:

Anime Central 2008 – Entrant
AnimeEvolution 2008 – Entrant

Anime – Shakugan no Shana
Song – Triumph – Somebody’s Out There
Completed February 2008
Premiered March 21, 2008
AnimeMusicVideos.org link

This was a nice simple Shana/Yuuji romance video that sprung into my head after hearing the song on the radio.

The footage only goes up through the first few episodes of the second season, since that’s as far as the DVDs were when I was making this video.

Overall, I like the video, but for such a fast-paced series, this slow video sometimes feels a little off.

Convention History:
Anime Boston 2008 – Finalist
Tekkoshocon 2008 – Finalist
Anime Central 2008 – Entrant

Anime – Kanon (2006)
Song – Trans-Siberian Orchestra – The Lost Christmas Eve
Completed June 2007
Premiered August 17, 2007
AnimeMusicVideos.org link

Kanon has been in my mind for this song for several years, and I was planning on making an all-girls video using the 2002 version of the series for quite a while. I was looking for a copy of the DVDs for the series for less money than I was finding when the first episode of the 2006 remake broadcast. My plans for this video were immediately put on the shelf until I could get the new version.

The first step was shortening the song; I’ve always hated the middle section with the “Christmas…” chant, so I wanted to take that out, along with the final section after the faded chord, since it seemed superfluous to the song. I ended up also cutting the second verse and chorus, since I was having a great deal of difficulty finding scenes that would fit that section of the song once I decided to focus on Ayu rather than have the video skip among the various girls for different parts of the song (Ayu was always intended for the final section before the instrumental finale, though, which I think is the best segment).

The video on the R2 DVDs was insanely high quality; it’s no surprise that they retail for 6000 yen each. They were progressive and anamorphic with almost no video issues coming off the disk, so I didn’t need to filter a thing, and it allowed me to release an 848×480 distro copy. Whatever KyoAni paid their encoders for these disks, it wasn’t enough.

Editing was pretty straightforward, without much in the way of effects other than a few white flashes/fade to white moments. I’m still a KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) editor, and prefer to have the footage tell the story, rather than have the video taken over by effects. Editing this way does make the user have a passing knowledge of the series you use, but it’s the way I feel more comfortable.

Convention History:
AnimeEvolution 2007 – Finalist
Anime Weekend Atlanta (Pro Competition) 2007 – Finalist, Best Sentimental
Bakuretsucon 2007 – Finalist
Another Anime Con 2007 – Winner, Best Drama