Anime - Various
Song - Debbie Allen - The Fight Song
Completed November 2010
Premiered November 16, 2010
Animemusicvideos.org Link
YouTube Link
This was my video from AAC's EXTREME Iron Editor 2010 comptition, winning a three-way battle with Kiarrens and OtakuForLife.
I can't remember the tortures the coordinators put us through this time around, and it's probably for the better.
Anime - Sleeping With Hinako
Song - Joe Raposo - Everybody Sleeps
Completed June 2010
Premiered September 16, 2010
Animemusicvideos.org Link
YouTube Link
This one popped out of a silly conversation in #AMV. Kitsuner and inthesto were talking about how bad a source Sleeping With Hinako was, and how everyone should make a SWH video for AWA Pro. I was about to toss out "Isn't there an old rock ballad that goes something like 'Everybody Sleeps' or something like that?" but decided to look it up first to avoid looking silly.
Then I found the old Sesame Street song by the same title (and never did find the rock ballad, so I must have misremembered). I immediately started tossing the video together, and planned to send it to Expo, since I was working on two other ideas for Pro. Unfortunately, some of my Pro ideas fell through in the editing stage, so this one ended up going to Pro as well. I think it was pretty badly hurt by being the last of four SWH videos in Pro, but someone had to be.
All in all, silly and without a real point, but fun to do.
This video won Best Fun/Upbeat/Other at Bakuretsucon 2010.
Anime - Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS
Song - Various
Completed July 2010
Premiered July 19, 2010
Animemusicvideos.org Link
YouTube Link
My Round 4 video for Project NeoEditor. This round's theme: Memes. Take an internet meme and create something original.
This video finished first in a round of seven videos, and also won Best Comedy at Bakuretsucon 2010.
Anime - Wings of Honneamise
Song - John Rubinstein - Corner of the Sky
Completed February 2010
Premiered April 2, 2010
AnimeMusicVideos.org Link
YouTube Link
When Anime Boston announced that the 2010 contest would be in HD, I only owned three anime Blu-Ray disks, so my selection of sources was a bit limited. I had just watched Wings of Honneamise the week before, so I settled on that very quickly.
The song was a bit harder, but dumb luck in picking up a secondhand copy of the soundtrack to Pippen and hearing "Corner of the Sky" got me thinking about flying and the hurdles that Shitotsugh and his Space Navy compatriots overcame to get into space.
I deliberately focused on the flying and his relationship with Requinni and cut out as much of the actual combat of the last act as I could, preferring to keep up the hopeful tone of the song.
Conventions:
Finalist at Anime Boston 2010
Winner, Best Character Profile - AWA Expo 2010
Anime - Various
Song - BUS STOP feat. Carl Douglas - Kung Fu Fighting
Completed October 2009
Premiered November 20, 2009
AnimeMusicVideos.org Link
YouTube Link
This was my Project: Editor 2 Round 2 video. The theme of the round was "Word Association," and the word I was given was "Shoryuken."
I originally thought of using the Street Fighter Anime, but I don't own it, and figured it would be a bit of a cop-out, so I went to the original source: the games. Which led to the people that play the games, and my hunt for scenes of characters playing video games.
"Kung Fu Fighting" felt like a very appropriate song, and the BUS STOP version that was included in the original DDR was the perfect length.
Thanks to my friend Adam for being Player 2 in the screen captures, and to Kit for pointing out I screwed up the original capture of the Playstation footage. Also thanks to mirkosp, godix, Kit, G_Q, MeteorDragon, and ngsilver for making suggestions on where to find scenes that might work.
This received a "So Much Win" award from Code in the P:E thread, and also won Best Fun/Upbeat/Etc. at its con debut at AAC 09.
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
YouTube 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 - Various
Song - Def Leppard - Rock of Ages
Completed June 2008
Premiered August 22, 2008
AnimeMusicVideos.org Link
YouTube 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 successfully 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 - Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS
Song - Coldpay - Don't Panic
Completed October 2007
Premiered October 10, 2007
AnimeMusicVideos.org Link
YouTube Link
My video from the Online Iron Chef Tournament 3.0 Round 1, which lost to Douggie.
Not really a fan of the song, but the video didn't come out too badly.
I gave it a title when it got sent to Youmacon in response to ngsilver's begging for entries. The title means nothing, it's just a pair of words that sound relevant and form the initials "IC."
Convention History:
Youmacon 2007 - Winner, "Most Orignal"
Bakuretsucon 2007 - Finalist
Anime - Card Captor Sakura
Song - Lazytown Soundtrack - Step By Step
Completed February 2007
Premiered April 20, 2007
AnimeMusicVideos.org Link
YouTube Link
This idea came to me while I was digging through my short songs looking for something that might have fit the "Magical and Musical" magical girl MEP. I ended up not joining the project, but the song paired with CCS stuck in my head.
The overall idea was to showcase Tomoyo's contributions to Sakura's adventures, which mostly consist of costumes and videotape. The main realization I came to while going through the series:
Tomoyo is a really creepy girl at times.
Technical
Ripped/filtered on my Windows desktop, edited in FCP on my Mac laptop.
Digital effects came out in force for this one, especially the opening sequence, which took twelve video layers, and I'm quite proud of how it came out. Each of the "Hollywood Squares"-type also have their own internal linking theme, if you look for it.
Convention History:
Anime Boston 2007 - Finalist
Toracon 2007 - Winner, Sports/Romance/Other
AnimeEvolution 2007 - Finalist
Bakuretsucon 2007 - Finalist
Anime - Pom Poko
Song - Michael & Patty Silversher - Gummi Bears Theme Song
Completed December 2003
Premiered February 13, 2004
AnimeMusicVideos.org Link
YouTube Link
The blame for this one lies squarely on sleep deprivation, too much sugar, and Richard "Pocky" Kim's performance at Katsucon 9.
A few months after Katsu, immediately after our finals finished, two friends and I sat down to bounce AMV ideas off of each other, while we played songs in the background. When someone dropped this CD into the player (we're still not sure who did), we remembered Pocky's bouncing onstage to this song at the cosplay. I had the "bright" idea of doing a video to this song to torment poor, long-suffering Pocky with at the next Katsucon. After much laughter, we moved on to other ideas, but I hung onto the image of the ubiquitous con personality bouncing on stage in the back of my mind, and decided to actually do it.
The first order of business was to decide what anime to use. I rejected several ideas (Chibi Goddesses, Record of Lodoss War (SD segments), and other similarly cute shows) before I stumbled across the Ghibli classic Pom Poko in the anime club library, which was due for a R2 DVD release very shortly. The DVD was preordered in short order (Hey, you can never have too much Ghibli).
Unfortunately, the other piece of footage that I desperately wanted to include was not available, as the copy of it that I asked the Katsu con chair for got lost en route to me. Having the actual scene of Pocky at K9 in the video would have been wonderful, and I actually created an edited version of the song specifically to include that five seconds of his embarrasment. ^_^
Then came my final class, graduation, and moving back to my home state, along with applying to graduate school, so the video simmered on the back burner until I finally sat down to edit the video in mid-November.
As to the actual editing, I decided to not use any digital effects, since I had little enough time to edit the video already, and the fact the they were largely unnecessary to the video. So the only effects in this video are cuts and crossfades, with a very few clips slowed down to about 85% speed to fit a lyric.
I also had to choose whether to cut the song before the instrumental, or to do the entire song. I tried both ways, and eventually decided to keep what I thought was a fairly weak instrumental section because I liked the way the final vocal segment looked. In particular, I liked the final clip, (Actually not from the movie, but from the trailers on Disk 2) which makes the video look a little like a real opening with a title card at the end.
Convention History:
Katsucon 10 - Winner, Judge's Award
AnimeEvolution 2004 - Winner, Best Fun/Upbeat
Bakuretsucon 2004 - Entrant