The Power of Green

LantisEscudoNovember 14, 2023LAMV, Videos

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

Into Infinity (Project OrgEditor 2022 Round 6)

LantisEscudoNovember 14, 2023AMV, Project Editor, Videos

After the previous week, I was planning to use a source I knew, but when the theme “Extraordinary Voyages” got announced, and specifically referenced Jules Verne in the challenge, my mind immediately went to another show I owned but hadn’t watched yet, Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water. Thankfully, it was only 39 episodes to scrub instead of close to 200, but it still took a decent amount of time. I went back to the Two Steps From Hell well yet again (third time in six rounds) for the audio, because “Beyond the Horizon” fit the tone of epic exploration so well.

Overall, a solid effort that scored fairly well, and it definitely moved Nadia up my backlog to-watch list, so I can see the context of some of those wacky scenes I found while scrubbing.

Anime – Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water
Music – Two Steps From Hell – Beyond the Horizon
Completed December 2022

AnimeMusicVideos.org Link
YouTube Link

Life’s Natural 1’s (Project OrgEditor 2022 Round 5)

LantisEscudoNovember 10, 2023AMV, Project Editor, Videos

Round 5’s theme for Project OrgEditor 2022 was “Roll For Initiative” and asked for videos demonstrating one of the Dungeons & Dragons character statistics. I decided that Luck would be my best bet, and decided to do a character profile of one of the unluckiest characters in anime, Ryouga Hibiki from Ranma ½.

This turned out to be a bit of a dumb move on my part, since although I’m familiar with the series, it’s mostly been through the manga, and I haven’t seen most of the TV series. Scrubbing 167 TV series episodes, 11 OVAs, and 3 movies for scenes of a secondary character in less than a week was definitely not the smartest move I’ve ever made.

For the song, while Hee Haw was a bit before my time, but my mother had frequently sung the “Gloom, Despair, and Agony On Me” song it made popular when I was young, so that musical phrase has stuck in my head for many years. I found a few different covers of it, and settled on the version by Starlings, TN to use.

The actual editing was pretty rushed because of how long scrubbing all the footage took, but overall, I like the result.

Anime – Ranma ½
Music – Starlings, TN – Gloom, Despair, and Agony on Me
Completed December 2022

AnimeMusicVideos.org Link
YouTube Link

Lineage of Ancient Power (Project OrgEditor 2022 Round 4)

LantisEscudoNovember 10, 2023AMV, Project Editor, Videos

The theme for Project OrgEditor 2022’s Round 4 was “Who’s that POEkémon?,” and called for a video exemplifying one of the standard Pokemon types. I only had two days to edit this round, as I was travelling internationally for most of the week and only got back on the Thursday before the Sunday deadline.

I took what I felt would be the easiest type, Dragon, and went back to the well of short-duration production music in Two Steps From Hell’s “Sky Titans” for the audio, and just threw together as many dragons as I could find in my collection.

For such an insane rush job, it worked surprisingly well and got a pretty good score from the judges.

Anime – Familiar of Zero, Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid, Pokemon: Black & White, Record of Lodoss War, Slayers, Spirited Away
Music – Two Steps From Hell – Sky Titans
Completed December 2022

AnimeMusicVideos.org Link
YouTube Link

High School Best Friends (Project OrgEditor 2022 Round 3)

LantisEscudoNovember 10, 2023AMV, Project Editor, Videos

Round 3’s theme for Project OrgEditor 2022 was “All Grown Up” and asked us to create videos exploring growing up or coming of age.

I had watched The Muppets Take Manhattan the week before this round, and “Saying Goodbye” was stuck in my head at the time. The original Muppets version didn’t quite work for the tone I was going for, but searching YouTube found me johnny0104’s excellent cover of it.

My original plan was to use as many graduation sequences as I could, but as I started searching, I kept coming back to Azumanga and the relationship between Chiyo and Sasaki. Of the main cast, they always struck me as the pair that would stay in contact even after life took them in different directions.

I originally wanted to use the whole song, but ended up cutting it down due to lack of footage and time. I might revisit the idea again someday, but not soon.

Anime – Azumanga Daioh
Music – johnnyj0104 – Saying Goodbye (from The Muppets Take Manhattan)
Completed November 2022

AnimeMusicVideos.org Link
YouTube Link

To Whom the Forests Speak (Project OrgEditor 2022 Round 2)

LantisEscudoNovember 10, 2023AMV, Project Editor, Videos

The theme for Round 2 of Project OrgEditor 2022 was “Drawn Together” and required using a variety of types of source material (animated, CGI, live action, video games, manga/comics, etc.). I generally work best with finding a song first, so I went digging through my music collection for inspiration, eventually settling on Two Steps From Hell’s “Elven Princess.” The song title and lyrics in Tolkien’s Elvish immediately suggested a collection of classical fantasy elves.

I deliberately structured the order to go from anime to CGI animation to live action and back as an attempt at symmetry, though I didn’t have a good place to use How Not to Summon a Demon Lord in the front half, and only included it in the back half.

Overall, this is one of the videos I liked making best from this year’s POE event, and came together better than I expected.

Video – Secret of Kells, Record of Lodoss War OVA, The Dragon Prince, Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, Lord of the Rings movie trilogy, How Not to Summon a Demon Lord
Audio – Two Steps From Hell – Elven Princess

AnimeMusicVideos.org Link
YouTube Link

Having the Whip Hand (Project OrgEditor 2022 Round 1)

LantisEscudoNovember 10, 2023AMV, Project Editor, Videos

The theme for Round 1 of Project OrgEditor 2022 was “Villains,” which proved a surprisingly difficult theme to find a good source for. Digging through my shelves, I discovered that while it’s a very large collection, I watch very few things that have outright villains – lots of antagonists and opponents, but not many true villains. I ended up settling on the first Nanoha movie more out of default than anything else. For the song, I’d been on a big Battle Beast kick at the time, and pulled out one of the songs I’d been listening to a lot.

The title comes from the idiom meaning having the dominant position or control over a group, which I’d seen used several times in a book a few weeks earlier, and the infamous abuse scene with Presea and Fate.

This made an okay pairing, but was hamstrung a bit by the lack of footage – I kept remembering scenes from the TV series that weren’t in the movie and having to change tactics every time that happened.

Anime – Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha The Movie 1st
Music – Battle Beast – Master of Illusion
Completed November 2022

AnimeMusicVideos.org Link
YouTube Link

The Daily Grind

LantisEscudoJune 22, 2023AMV, Videos

I owe this one entirely to attending They Might Be Giants’ 32nd Anniversary of Flood concert a few weeks before the AWA deadline. While I’ve owned a copy of the album for many years, I had completely forgotten the song Minimum Wage existed until they played it at the concert. The idea of using The Devil is a Part-Timer popped into my head as I was trying to think of a quick video idea I could do if I didn’t think I could finish my other AWA project (Waveform Manipulation) before the deadline.

I actually ended up finishing Waveform Manipulation a day before the deadline, so I decided I’d give speedrunning editing this idea a shot, and managed to knock it together just in time to submit.

I was a bit hampered by the lack of available footage – I only had the first season to work with, and there were a lot fewer scenes of the characters in the restaurant than I remembered there being, but since the song is so short, it ended up working out all right.

A bit of silly fun, a few people really liked it, but it ended up not making the finals in any categories.

Anime – The Devil is a Part-Timer Season 1
Music – They Might Be Giants – Minimum Wage
Completed October 2022

AnimeMusicVideos.org Link
YouTube Link

Waveform Manipulation

LantisEscudoJune 22, 2023AMV, Videos

During the pandemic, I started watching a lot of YouTube creators, and, in particular, found that I really liked the things made by Tom Scott. His video with the Gregory Brothers about Auto-Tune had me in stitches, and I decided I wanted to see if I could do a video using it. I scoured my collection of discs for sequences of people singing and managed to find more than I expected, though I had hoped for more recent series. Since so many of the usable scenes I’d found were from series with a 4:3 aspect ratio, I ended up doing the whole video 4:3, cropping all of the 16:9 footage as needed.

I also broke out After Effects for the first time in a long time to make the waveforms and the tracking effects with the equations (which are all accurate Fourier Transform equations for certain transform types).

It amused a few people in the AWA Pro competition (and at least one person immediately pegged it as mine, saying “you’re one of the only people who would try something like this”), but it wasn’t selected as a finalist in any category.

Anime – Various Anime
Music – Gregory Brothers ft. Tom Scott – How Auto-Tune Works
Completed October 2022

AnimeMusicVideos.org Link
YouTube Link

A Princely Fight

LantisEscudoJune 22, 2023AMV, Videos

I got introduced to this movie by a GIF on Twitter talking about the animation and how it had inspired the look of Samurai Jack. After watching it, I decided that I needed to make an AMV using it, because it fit my wheelhouse of “obscure old-school source” so well.

After hunting for a useful song for quite a while, I ended up falling back on my old standby of “epic theatrical music” for this one. I originally intended to use several of the fight scenes from across the movie, but I couldn’t get the narrative to flow very well, so I cut the idea back to only using the epic final battle sequence against the eight-headed dragon.

It came across all right, but I’d like to revisit the movie again someday and use more of the really cool animation sequences, especially the fire demon fight.

Anime – The Little Prince and the Eight-Headed Dragon (Wanpaku Ouji no Orochi Taiji)
Music – Epic Score – Their Fight is Our Fight
Completed July 2022

YouTube Link
AnimeMusicVideos.org Link