This video probably holds my personal record for the longest time between initial idea and actually editing the video. I’ve found notes about this idea in text files dating back to at least 2005, so it’s 19 years old minimum. I had actually completely forgotten about it for quite a while, until I was going through some old hard drives and found one of my old lists of potential ideas.
The song had a lot of strong potential for using either Utena or Anthy as the viewpoint character, so I’d originally intended to do this as two separate videos, with working titles of “Ravine: Utena Face” and “Ravine: Anthy Face.” After finding the old list and pulling the idea out of mothballs, I decided to do a single video, side-by-side with synched edits that would be in parallel for some sections.
I edited the Utena side first, then duplicated the timeline and replaced each edit clip-by-clip for the Anthy side, so that all of the edits and transitions would retain the same timing. I had to do some adjustments for where I’d used a native cut or fade, but overall, it was a thankfully straightforward process.
There are places I wish I’d matched the direction of camera movement between the two sides a bit better, but overall, I enjoyed how this one turned out.
Video – Revolutionary Girl Utena
Audio – Ace of Base – Ravine
Completed February 2024
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