Video announcements
About a week before BasharOfTheAges’s birthday in 2017, I had the silly idea of doing a parody MEP project for him, so I reached out to several other local editors – drewaconclusion, hamstar138, potsandpants, and Samiti – who agreed to help out and made fun segments for it.
Bashar got a decent laugh out of the result, which was the goal.
I’ve always loved using very obscure sources in AMVs, as a way of introducing something new to viewers. I stumbled across Momotaro: Sacred Sailors because of an ad on Facebook, of all places, and decided that a 1942 propaganda film was exactly the sort of obscure I wanted to try to make a video to.
The audio was also something of a lucky find. I first heard “Oh How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning” from my grandfather as a little kid, and only learned that it was originally an Irving Berlin showtune from his This Is the Army revue more than 25 years later. The fact that the musical was also a propaganda piece from 1942 was a nice bit of accidental symmetry.
I had hoped there were more scenes in barracks to use for mentions of sleeping, but all in all, it came together pretty well. It generated a bunch of “I don’t really know what to make of this” responses at AWA Pro 2017 and got a finalist nomination in the Best Musical category, but didn’t win.
Anime – Momotaro: Sacred Sailors
Audio – Irving Berlin – Oh, How I hate to Get Up in the Morning (from “In the Army)
Completed August 2017
2017 marked the 15th edition of Anime Boston, so I wanted to play with that history theme, and looked back at earlier years of openings for this one. The opening for 2006 in particular was ripe for a parody, which is what ended up happening.
Unlike previous years of parodies, I ended up shooting the “modern-day” segments as a solo effort, with the “past” segments taken directly from the 2006 opening. The hockey player segment in particular was an interesting bit to shoot, as I had to be careful not to cross the center line from either position.
This was my personal mini-tribute to the original DDR Project MEP, in honor of its 15th anniversary.
We showed the MEP at a small one-day convention I helped at, and watching the many memorable tracks, “Upside Down” stuck in my head afterward. I had just recently watched Patema Inverted the week before, and the combination was too much fun to pass up.
I originally planned to use the full length song, but I realized while scrubbing through the movie that there wasn’t enough upbeat footage to carry the whole song, so I fell back to the game-length version instead.
The title is a math joke, alluding to how the two leads fall in opposite directions.
It was cute fun, and got a decent reaction at AWA Pro 2016.
Anime – Patema Inverted
Audio – COO COO – Upside Down
Completed August 2016
Adam decided to hand off being the AMV Contest Coordinator to me after Anime Boston 2015, and suggested this Star Wars parody for 2016 as a nod to the change.
With more time to plan and put together this opening, it came off a lot better than our 2014 effort. We originally planned a lot more digital effects (full lightsaber animation), but ran out of time before the convention to actually do it. It got a lot of laughs at the actual showing, which was our real goal, so we’re pretty happy with it.
This was my first video in almost two years, as after changing jobs and moving two states away, my free time was a lot more constrained than I had anticipated.
I’ve always liked Broadway musicals, and Wicked has spent a long time on my rotating playlist (I did get to see the touring show in 2009, and hope to catch it again if it’s back in my area again).
After watching Toradora!, even though I had really disliked Ami through most of the series, the parallels of Ami’s and Elpheba’s character arcs struck me. Elpheba’s reprise of “I’m Not That Girl” in particular felt like a good fit for a video.
I did end up cutting part of the song that didn’t quite feel like it fit, but the final result I thought was pretty nice.
Anime – Toradora!
Audio – Idina Menzel – I’m Not That Girl (from “Wicked”)
Completed August 2015
After the issues we had with 2014, I decided on a much simpler plan for Anime Boston 2015’s Mecha and Monsters theme.
I found a huge gigapixel photograph of the Boston skyline at night, and a bunch of high resolution pictures of sci-fi and monster movie toys to pop out from behind the buildings with the instructions and warnings.
The opening worked well, and I’ve used a similar format in other years when time was running short without a better plan.
For Anime Boston 2015, the theme was Magic & Mischief, so a parody of The Princess Bride seemed appropriate. Unfortunately, lots of scheduling conflicts pushed the only chance we had to shoot this until just a couple weeks before the convention. So Adam, the AMV Contest Coordinator, and I shot this in his kitchen in about three takes with no chance to rehearse or reshoot. And both of us are terrible actors, so the rush job shows.
In 2013, the local public access station I worked at held its first annual independent horror film festival, and I decided to participate. I didn’t have the time or opportunity to gather a crew, so I ended up doing it as a solo effort.
I was going for an Alien sort of feel, and despite how rushed this was, I still enjoyed making it, and it got a good reaction at the showing.
I shot this in the storage/HVAC space of the building, which lent itself well enough to looking a bit like a space station.
While I had an outline for the plot as I was shooting, I wasn’t sure of the exact dialogue. Also, the HVAC system was incredibly loud, which made recording actual dialogue impossible. So I decided to use a full-face helmet as part of the costume to hide my mouth and recorded all of the audio in post.
For the monster, I decided to never show it, pulling largely from the example of Jaws – the less you see of the monster, the more the audience will fill in with their imagination (which is usually scarier than anything you can create), and it simplifies production immensely. I was inspired by several sci-fi movies and shows for the monster’s perspective shots, most immediately the Autons vision from the first episode of the reboot of Doctor Who.
This video was inspired by Aimoaio’s excellent video Enchanted, which introduced me to both Kimi ni Tokoke and Owl City.
The idea with this video started in the name. I wanted to show both how Sawako adapted to her changing circumstances, and how those circumstances were portrayed in the manga, anime, and live-action movie adaptations of the story.
Conveniently, the first season of the anime and the live-action movie ended at about the same narrative point, so which events got shown were dictated by the movie (as it had the shortest running time and fewest events).
The manga portions of this one are the weakest in my opinion, and I found a new respect for manga music video editors while working on those sections. It’s a lot of really hard work to make an engaging video out of still images.
This video got nominated as a finalist in the Romance category at AWA 2014 and won Best Romance at Another Anime Con 2014.
Anime – Kimi ni Todoke
Audio – Owl City – Meteor Shower
Completed August 2014