LAMV

I made a trip to Japan in December 2024, and one of the places I made a point to visit was the Wakayama Electric Railway’s Kishigawa Line, and in particular Idakiso and Kishi Stations, where the famous stationmaster cats Niitama and Yontama were on duty.

In the gift shop, there were a pair of DVDs celebrating the first stationmaster cat, Tama, which I immediately picked up, thinking they’d be a fun source to use for a video.

My original thought was to use an instrumental version of “Sampo” from Totoro, since it had the striding quality that epitomizes how cats walk, but both versions of the song on the soundtrack had lyrics, so I went looking for other options. After trying a few other songs like the cat parts from “Peter and the Wolf,” I came back to the Totoro soundtrack to see if another track might work. Finding “Lets Go to the Hospital” was both satisfying and frustrating, since it was the instrumental version of “Sampo” I was looking for in the first place that I had overlooked because of the title.

In choosing footage, I decided to focus on just Tama, which made a large portion of the DVDs difficult to use, as I wanted to avoid using footage that included her two assistants, Miiko and Chibi.

The video got a good reaction in RICE 2025, and was nominated as a finalist in the Palate Cleanser category.

Video – Tama and the Tama Train; Super Station Master Tama: Riding the Strawberry Wind
Audio – Joe Hisaishi – Let’s Go to the Hospital
Completed January 2025

YouTube blocked the video due to the audio, but I can share it through Google Drive.

This was an idea that I know has probably been done many times, but it also just would not leave my head when I was trying to come up with ideas for RICE 2023. I’ve been a Weird Al fan for about 30 years, and switching to the sequel trilogy with the prophetic line “I’ll be playing this part ’til I’m old and gray” was the entire payoff to the idea in my head.

The rest of the video is a bit less well executed, partly because there’s a lot less footage of Yoda in Empire and Jedi than I remember, and going back to the prequel trilogy just didn’t make sense with Luke being the narrator.

It didn’t get any finalist nominations in the competition, but got quite a few “wait, that was yours?” reactions when the editor reveals were made.

Video – Star Wars Episodes 4-6, 8-9
Audio – “Weird Al” Yankovic – Yoda
Completed February 2023

YouTube Link

I’ve been a fan of Doctor Who for a long time, and my favorite post-reboot Doctor has always been David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor (Peter Davison as the Fifth Doctor is still my favorite overall). I originally envisioned this video as including the entire history of the show, but the amount of footage, combined with the lack of good quality footage of the early Doctors had me pare it back to focusing on the Tenth Doctor’s era, with small nods to his predecessors.

The song is one that stuck in my head from the first time I heard it, and I always thought that it spoke to the idea of what we leave behind and how we’re remembered by others, which fit very well with how Tennant’s departure was played in his final episodes.

I was surprised as I was editing with just how many defining moments of the series were done with just reaction shots of characters, especially of Tennant, and that ended up being how the video flowed, which unfortunately made it pretty inaccessible to people who weren’t familiar with the series. Overall, it’s a fun tribute to the era, and I’m glad it came together pretty well.

Video – Doctor Who
Audio – Trans-Siberian Orchestra – What is Eternal (from Beethoven’s Last Night)
Completed February 2022

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