Author: LantisEscudo

Round 4's theme was "The Magic School Bus," where we had to present something educational.

I grew up with Schoolhouse Rock, so as soon as the theme was announced, I knew I'd use one of their songs. I settled on Nouns  partly because it seemed like it could work as a direct narration (many of the others are a bit too specific lyrically) as well as being one of my absolute favorites.

For the video, I tried to think of anime that involved a train robbery, and the only one I could remember was the episode of Rurouni Kenshin with the ridiculous horse jump, so that was what I went with, adding the "Science Lesson" frame from Gunbuster for the explanation pieces in homage to the frame in the original video.

People got a good laugh out of it, so I'm glad it worked.

Anime - Rurouni Kenshin, Gunbuster
Audio - Schoolhouse Rock - A Noun is a Person, Place, or Thing
Completed October 2020

AnimeMusicVideos.org Link
YouTube Link

The theme for Round 3 of POE 2020 was "Tis the Season" where editors were supposed to highlight a holiday or season.

I had just seen the Christmas episode of a show the day before, so I landed on using the classic Christmas carol "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year," set to as many Christmas episodes as I could find in my collection.

I generally hate Christmas music because of how overplayed so much of it is for two solid months of the year, so this was a hard video to edit. It still comes off pretty well, and it got some good comments from some of the other participants.

Anime - Various Anime
Audio - Andy Miller - The Most Wonderful Time of the Year
Completed October 2020

AnimeMusicVideos.org Link
YouTube Link

The theme for Round 2 of POE 2020 was "The Thrill of the Chase."

Dragon’s Lair is a source that I’ve wanted to use for a while, but didn’t have a good idea for, but Dirk’s chase through the dungeon in search of the Princess felt like a good fit for this round’s theme.

This one was kind of rushed because of the one-week time limit, but still was a fun one to put together.

Video Source - Dragon's Lair
Audio - Naora Shibata PROJECT - Vampire Killer
Completed October 2020

AnimeMusicVideos.org Link
YouTube Link

The theme for Round 1 of POE 2020 was “Parts of the Body.”

I had the idea several years ago of doing a multi-source parody of the opening title sequence from the movie Footloose, which fit the theme perfectly. With the time restriction, though, I went looking for the source that had the best variety of foot and leg shots and landed on Welcome to the Ballroom.

It got a decent reaction from the judges, and I enjoyed making it, so I’ll count that as a success.

Anime - Welcome to the Ballroom
Audio - Kenny Loggins - Footloose
Completed October 2020

AnimeMusicVideos.org Link
YouTube Link

I’ve always been a fan of musical theater, and especially enjoy obscure ones. For a short while, I had an XM radio subscription, and the On Broadway channel introduced me to quite a few shows I hadn’t known of before, including First Date.

I had just finished watching My Love Story a few weeks before sitting down to edit my video for AWA Pro, and the idea of putting the innocent-seeming Yamato into the role of Allison made me laugh, and having Sunakawa available to play the role of Gabe worked out well, too.

The ending unfortunately confused a bunch of people that didn’t have the context of the rest of the show, but the majority of the video amused several of the other viewers, so overall I consider it fairly successful. It got one finalist nomination, but didn’t win anything.

Anime - My Love Story!
Audio - Cast of "First Date" - Allison's Theme #1
Completed September 2019

AnimeMusicVideos.org Link
YouTube Link

After finishing Day of Flight for Animethon, I had a day or two before the deadline for Animethon, so I decided to see if I could quickly edit together this pairing that had gotten stuck in my head after hamstar138 gave me a copy of the Finding Neverland Broadway soundtrack.

I’ve made a Patema Inverted video with a song about being upside down before, but I like this one’s pacing and structure a bit better. 

This also was entered at Animethon 2019, but didn’t make the finals.

Anime - Patema Inverted
Music - When the World Turned Upside Down (from "Finding Neverland")
Completed July 2019

AnimeMusicVideos.org Link
YouTube Link

While Rakka was the main character of Haibane Renmei, it always felt to me that the series was Reki's story. It told the tale of how she became the support along the path for so many others without becoming a doormat, and how she had to make that realization about herself to embark on her Day of Flight.

I've used the soundtrack to Pippin in a video before, and I've always loved the soaring optimism Pippin displays in Morning Glow, that a better future is coming soon. The parallel with Reki's early-morning final departure was what stuck with me for this video.

I'm not sure I expressed all of that clearly in the editing, but that's what I was going for.

This was entered at Animethon 2019, but didn't make the finals.

Anime - Haibane Renmei
Music - John Rubenstein - Morning Glow (from "Pippin")
Completed July 2019

AnimeMusicVideos.org Link
YouTube Link

I was absolutely buried in several other editing projects when I needed to put together the opening for Anime Boston 2019’s Tales of the Shogunate year.

I ended up just slapping together a very simple series of clips from the first three Lone Wolf and Cub movies and overlaying the instructions and warnings. Simple and effective, but not very engaging. I’ll have to step up for next year.

YouTube Link

I grew up in a hockey-crazy area, and I’ve always loved watching it, but didn’t have the time or money to play growing up. When I moved to Massachusetts, I started attending college hockey games regularly, which rekindled my interest in the game and eventually led to me joining a beginner’s adult league, first as a skater, then later as a goalie. I was finishing up my first season as a goalie when the time to start editing for AWA Pro came around, so I had hockey on the brain.

There are a lot of great hockey movies that have been made over the years, so I decided pairing a bunch of them with a classic Canadian song about hockey was an amusing combination. Balancing the action with the storytelling of the song was a challenge, but it came out quite nicely in the end.

Also amusing was when the other AWA Pro editors saw it, they were convinced that a Canadian editor had made it. It got a finalist nomination in Best Live Action, but didn’t win the category.

Video Source - D2: The Mighty Ducks; Goon; Goon 2; Slap Shot; The Mighty Ducks; Miracle; Mr. Hockey: The Gordie Howe Story; Mystery, Alaska; NHL Playoffs; Sudden Death
Audio - Stompin' Tom Collins - The Hockey Song
Completed August 2018

YouTube Link

The theme for Anime Boston 2018 was To The Stars… but I couldn’t come up with any good ideas for an opening that were doable in the time we had before the convention, so I ended up falling back to the structure of the 2015 opening, and pulled out a bunch of images of iconic anime spaceships to pair with the instructions and warnings.

This wasn’t my best effort, but still was pretty nice.

YouTube Link