Anime – Mahoromatic
Song – Sophie B. Hawkins – As I Lay Me Down
Completed July 2003
Premiered November 8, 2003
AnimeMusicVideos.org Link
YouTube Link
This is the first video I finished after graduating from college, so I was looking to make a fairly nostalgic and sentimental video to fit my mood at the time.
I had just finished watching all of Mahoromatic and Mahoromatic 2 with my brother, so that was the series that stuck in my head when I sat down to find a song. It took me a few days to find an appropriate song in my brother’s collection, and another day to watch the first season again (DVDs of the second season hadn’t been released yet) and take notes on the scenes I wanted to use. I’d have liked to use several scenes from the second season (especially episode 13), but without high-quality source, I couldn’t.
Actually editing the video was a lot easier than I expected, especially since I didn’t use almost any special effects except crossfades and speed changes. The most interesting technical hurdle was determining how to edit the anamorphic footage in MediaStudio Pro 6. I eventually decided to edit in the full 720×480 squished mode and resize/letterbox after the final export.
The one digital effect I used was the gaussian blur “transition” at 1:19 and again before the quick flashes at 2:22. I really liked the way it looked, and might use a similar effect in future videos.
One thing that irrites me that I didn’t catch earlier is that the horizontal black padding on the first DVD is about four times the size of the padding on the other two, so it’s very easy to tell which scenes came from the first DVD.
As Mahoro Sleeps was entered in the Nekocon 6 AMV contest and missed the submission deadline for AnimeUSA 5 because I mailed the form too late.
Convention History:
NekoCon 6 – Entrant
Bakuretsucon 2004 – Entrant