AMV Autobiography

General discussion of Anime Music Videos
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Vlad G Pohnert
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Post by Vlad G Pohnert » Wed Oct 22, 2008 11:58 pm

Hmmm.. I think ny history is a bit too long to post :roll:

Vlad

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dwchang
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Post by dwchang » Thu Oct 23, 2008 12:08 am

Vlad G Pohnert wrote:Hmmm.. I think ny history is a bit too long to post :roll:

Vlad
Let me start for you...

When Vlad was a wee lad back in 65,000,000 BC, he discovered that he could create cave drawings by scraping rocks against the cave walls. Those cave drawings would later be known as 'the first AMV ever.'

Later in the Mezazoic era, Vlad found a piece of flint and hit it against a rock. It produced a spark and thus the first lens flare was born.

Sound about right Dad?
-Daniel
Newest Video: Through the Years and Far Away aka Sad Girl in Space

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Otohiko
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Post by Otohiko » Thu Oct 23, 2008 3:08 am

DAYS BEFORE THE .ORG: pre-2003

The odd thing with getting into AMVs for me was that the main reason I ended up getting into them was neither interest in anime specifically nor interest in video editing, but music. It all goes back to the fact that I grew up in a musician's family, and always had a very personal relationship with music - but I never learned to play music myself. Being a visual person, I always pretty much imagined things in my head to go along with music, usually something along the lines of really over-dramatized or abstract stories. I was also pretty much raised on artsy movies, especially Tarkovsky - which still influence my approach to visual+sound combinations. By 2001 I was into some really trippy music (King Crimson and whatnot), which only exacerbated my tendency to space out and dream up videos in my head while listening to music.

With anime and AMVs, the story is a lot more routine of course. Around 1999 I started watching your typical TV anime, beginning with Pokemon and whatnot. Once I got bored with TV, I started looking for more - and for those of you who were around back then, I'm sure you know that DVDs were few and fansubs were hard to get in those days. Shitty internet didn't help... what did, ironically, help was my ridiculously boring physics class in grade 11 when I basically gave up on following it and spent the second half of the semester in the back of the room, messing on the computers (the teacher, strangely, didn't mind). Not usually being able to find fansubs just lying around online, I did find one thing: a couple of websites that had downloadable videos of anime OP sequences. I saw a whole bunch of these OPs and thought they were ridiculously cool. On those websites, there also happened to be links to an AMV or two lying around. I only saw a few, including works by ErMaC, doki and Kevin Caldwell (I thought Engel was the shit). I later downloaded a few of those via Kazaa and watched them at home on occasion over the next couple of years. My brother joined the .org in 2001 and kept me supplied with the occasional AMV as well.

In 2002, I went to my first con (CN Anime) and of course stayed for the AMV contest. That one further reinforced my faith in the fact that AMVs were definitely a cool thing and I recognized more and more their creative potential. At the same time, I recognized the potential to make shitty videos too, and the predominance of Linkin Park videos even in that contest started getting on my nerves.

By 2003, ironically, I started cooling off towards anime but was really into music and visualizing it (that year I went to a King Crimson concert and that experience fueled my audio-visual imagination for the next year), but at the same time I used to go to my brother's friends house to hang out there, and the guy was really into DBZ and Trigun such. He kept showing us AMVs he downloaded, and this is where things started pissing me off. I was getting really, really irked by the music choices. Why couldn't people just do something besides, well, LinkinballZ? I went to the .org just to check and see if there were other things being done. Somehow, and I don't remember how, but I bumped into a lot of AMVs to music I didn't like and yet - shock and horror - searching for AMVs to music by my favorite artists brought few if any results.

JOINING THE .ORG (and being pissed): May 2003

Well, being about as pissed as I was, I joined the .org in May 2003. My first post asked how long it took to make an AMV (I thought about 'fixing' the situation) - because for me that was (and still is) the number 1 concern, since by then I was already a university student, and had quite a few other hobbies that took up much of my free time. Then I went on a pretention-spree on the .org forums, basically telling how much their music choices sucked and how my music was objectively superior. I was totally an uptight, pretentious dick, and I seriously thought AMVers were a bunch of useless fucking fanboys (and hey, there are no women on the internet!) :roll:

I gave myself 3 days on the forums - I said to myself that if I didn't find some sign of intelligent life in the AMVing community, I'd just flame everyone and leave. By some fortune, people were actually not at all complete assholes to me, although dwchang did mistake me for Mad Hatter ( :lol: ). Well, by day 2 I was already bumping into proof that I was wrong. There was actually quite a number of intelligent people on the forums (shock and awe), and better still, there proved to be some sign of hope for good AMVs. I only remember that AbsoluteDestiny's videos made a good impression on me then, though I know there were others too.

FIRST EFFORTS: June 2003-December 2003

So, retaining my pretentious attitude but deciding not to quit, I spent the next month familiarizing myself with AMVs, AMVers and technical guides. By June 2003, I decided that I should probably edit something after all. So I took the first video idea that came to mind and sat down to edit (with slight help from my brother, who also never edited an AMV before but was always a bit more technically savvy than me). The first scenes of my first video were literally the first cuts I ever placed in an editing program - no practice, no tutorials, just jumped in like that based on what I read in guides... Thus came my first video, Dangerous Curves, which was driven (pun intended) by my impressions of hearing the song performed life at the aforementioned King Crimson concert the same year. The video was a bit ambitious (as in, long and kind of unusual) and was basically a mood-oriented video based heavily on internal sync, especially percussion elements. Unlike a lot of people who seem to hate their first videos, I was completely happy with mine and I still am, looking back at it. More importantly, from the very first cuts I established an editing style that I have largely stuck to since - and reflected my conviction that odd, trippy music + internal sync + mood sync > all, which I also stick to. By that point I sort of felt validated in the AMV community, was on good terms with a whole bunch of people, got excellent feedback on my video and was really having fun. I didn’t really edit for the rest of the summer, and while I did make some failed attempts at editing in the fall, I spent more time messing around the OT forums and enjoying the solid, creative videos that other people were making (much to my initial surprise).

Then came black day of December 6, 2003, when the .org’s OT forums were taken down. In a way, that was the day a particular animemusicvideos.org died. We lost a lot of good people in the subsequent weeks. In a way, that jolted me back into editing. So I took some of the nonsensical attitude that was going around the community (and shameless references to Project Genius) and made RPBP I, which I dare say is one of the weirdest things that even I have seen. Again, I have no regrets whatsoever about that video, I still enjoy it very much and it did open up my other editing direction – bizarre, messed-up videos that pretty much make no sense and push the envelope music-wise. In many ways, that was my first (and not last) “fuck you” to the sense of normalcy in AMVing.

SEASON ONE: February 2004–August 2004

From then on, my editing became more regular for the next few months. In February, I decided to do some preparation for once, and challenged myself editing-wise a little with a silly video to End of Evangelion of all things to get myself ready for working with the source for a more serious video later. It was fun, although I do wish I spent more time with lip-sync there.

The real purpose was to get ready for my next video, which like my first video was influenced by my impressions of hearing the music track performed live, and is still probably my most creative effort to date – The Wasteland. Not to be pretentious about it, but it really was an extremely ambitious, long, moody video, and I thought I pulled it off well and got my crucial mood + internal sync completely established there. I still like that video a whole lot and I don’t mind that (from what I know) a lot of people still associate this video with my work.

Just after that, I got involved with the Animasia project, which was this really pretentious instrumental compilation started by rose4emily (who later dumped it, but more on this later), and met a lot of cool editors through that, with whom I would later work on other projects as well. This was my first MEP, and besides contributing Wasteland to it I also made an original track for it, known as Ararat – which is a little pretentious with all the text, but I thought it was a neat experiment with storytelling structure which again, I was quite happy with.

In May and June, I did another pair of opposite videos using the same Gainax source type of deal, this time with KareKano – first the ridiculous RPBP II – The Assumption of Innocence, which started with me making an audio mix so retarded I never thought I’d make a video with it, except I actually did make a video with it (highlight – a 2-minute philosophical rant that makes nearly no sense; my lipsync improved quite a lot by then and this is still my favorite part of the video and makes me laugh); and then afterwards, the slow, sappy Damage, which was an experiment in making an AMV with very slow, sparse, vocal-oriented music where I couldn’t rely on the same internal-sync-with-rhythm deal that I tend to fall back on. Here I stretched mood sync and played with colours, to the point of obsession where I didn’t do anything other than edit this video for two days. I was pretty worn out by the end, but as usual, happy with the result.

By July-August 2004, I was starting to get burned out on AMVs. Firstly, I moved and was still settling into a new city. Secondly, things seemed to have slowed down with my .org activities, in large part because rose4emily was at that point basically ditching Animasia and the group I worked with on AMVs was gradually falling apart. I still kept in touch with Animasia, and for a period also got involved with ProjeKct Life later in the year (which also eventually got ditched), but in terms of real productivity – I only made one more video in 2004 before going on a prolonged de-facto hiatus, which was Destruction Dive, which was my first take on a more straightforward, metal/hard-rock action video, which initially I was uneasy about. In retrospect though, I learned to like it, in particular the lyric sync which actually ended up being quite clever (I first thought it was sort of cheesy). I don’t watch it as much as my other videos, but it was alright.

SEASON TWO: June 2005 – December 2005

I was really busy at school in the first half of 2005, and pretty much disappeared from the AMV community for a time. In fact for a while I’d accepted that Destruction Dive would be my last AMV. Around this time I also picked up an obsession with the submarine simulator Silent Hunter III (war games were always a hobby), and was pretty into it for much of the time.

Oddly enough, it was my involvement with that game that brought me back to AMVing. I got an idea to do the first ‘serious’ GMV to that game, which eventually turned into a very serious project that even took on anime footage to support the story. The result was my odd offshoot, The Blind Man’s Tale. It was my most ambitious (and longest, at over 12 minutes) effort at narrative, and is basically a short movie more than a music video, dedicated to World War II veterans. By current standards, the video isn’t technically impressive and I had to work around certain game limitations to get the footage for it (basically capturing footage while playing the game in real time). I spent more time capturing footage than actually editing, but even then, I spent more time on that video than any of my AMV projects. While working on it, however, I incidentally rediscovered how fun it was to edit, and a few AMVers got to see it and made encouraging responses.

With that video I appeared back on the AMVing radar, and by some incident one of the AMVers who caught it was jasper-isis, who soon after asked me for a small bit of input into the “AMV Telephone” game she and krzT were running, which was eventually released as EPYC. Although that input amounted to two little titles invented for tracks in that project, I got pretty damn fascinated with what she was doing with that project, and also curious with what was going on with Animasia (which at the time she was trying to force rose4emily to release). Not to mention I was extremely bored that summer. As a result, we ended up talking a lot and basically got to be good friends and editing buddies of sorts. Thanks to that I got excited about AMVs again – working closely with another editor on projects has been pretty much irreplaceable for me since, and more or less a necessity to keep editing. Jasper eventually got control of Animasia, along with all the source material, after rose4emily FINALLY admitted he wasn’t up to it, and for the next few months she worked like crazy to have the whole thing polished up and put together, late though it was. I only had minor direct involvement with the project at this stage, but it was fun following it day-to-day when I could see real work being done on it. There was tons of excitement when the project finally got released on Christmas, and I’m glad to have participated in it.

I wasn’t totally wasting time as far as my own editing work, with one week in September seeing a pair of maybe my weirdest videos. First came The Plot Thickens, which literally came out of a random challenge by Jasper based on which I came up with a whole concept for a video in the space of about… 5 seconds. That video I still like, even for its tongue-in-cheek artsiness alone. There’s no characters in that video, and it’s almost entirely composed of still life. I laughed while making it all along – but not as much as I laughed a week later while making RPBP III, which certainly upped the ante on audio sources, and was ironically my first “native-language” (Russian) video. Apparently I came up with it while climbing in the nearby hills, contrary to popular belief that it came out of a bad trip. Both videos got a solid WTF reception, and probably coincided with my funnest editing period.

SEASON THREE: February 2006 – January 2007

While I made a few individual videos during this year, the real theme for me this year was working on the AMV Telephone Project, which was an extension of Jasper’s original idea and was honestly a really neat activity (although I have to admit she’s helped more than her fair share to get this project finished and out the door as well). It has a bit of a story of its own, which can be found on the video description page.

I edited only sporadically for my own purposes, releasing one individual video and three jerkoffs, plus participating in Cat on Keyboard in Space MEP, which is an even bigger jerkoff. The serious video, a metal project titled Crimson, was actually a very good challenge from which I learned a lot – firstly I had to work with an older animation style (Berserk) which took some effort to get used to and get to look dynamic in an action video, and then I also polished the editing, filtering, and other technical aspects of the video more than any project I did before. The result was a really competent, heavy video I thought – although I don’t tend to watch it as often as some of my other projects. It was honestly a bit more of an exercise to me. I learned a lot from it, and from this video on the technical quality of my output increased, in large part thanks to extensive beta help from people like Orwell.

Of the jerkoffs, Milkfight.avi had two interesting things about it – it was a 50-second video that I made out of a grand total of 1 minute of source footage, and it also drew the attention of the musicians behind the audio track, who featured it on their myspace and videoblog, and with whom I got to be in touch thanks to the video. Considering they are some of my most favourite musicans ever, that was downright awesome. RPBP * continued the tradition of weirdness, with the help of Orwell and Hebrew music. Batwards Seagull Orange I basically made right after the AC^3 con in November that year, because I felt bad for not releasing anything else in a while, and because I was inspired by Fall_Child42’s Schism that I saw at the convention to go forth and do all things weird. So, it’s definitely the most bizarre-looking thing I made, although hardly impressive. One fun fact about it: the time it took to render that video exceeded the actual editing time thanks to the ludicrous amounts of “effects” in it. It was actually uninspired, and admittably for most of the later half of 2006 I really sucked at anything editing related. But hey, it was fun times anyway.

At the start of 2007, I got my editing act together and with Jasper’s help, pushed the Telephone project out the door. Mission accomplished.

SEASON FOUR: February – September 2007

2007 turned out to be my most productive year – not counting Telephone and Cat on Keyboard in Space 2, I released 4 full-length videos, two shorts, one MEP track and one jerkoff bandwagon track.

The first two videos I made were, unusually, serious videos in Russian. The first was right in line with my tendency to release odd videos, I mean eh – Lain + weird Russian music calls for weird. It was pretty much instantly inspired by discovering this strange alternative underground band from my hometown, and fit effortlessly. While it’s not a complex vid, I think it ultimately had very strong mood sync and adequate editing. Russians over at AKROSS generally approved it as well (even if it’s way simpler than the typical “pro” AMVs in my native land). The second video I initially had very conflicting feelings over and almost scrapped it. It was, in the end, a Shinkai video based on a sort of self-expressive desire, and I tortured myself for quite a while over it due to perceived ‘unoriginality’ and an inability to get pretty much anyone else to see the personal meaning that the video had to me. In retrospect, I was stupid to ever go defensive and unconfident over it. It took about a year for doubts over it to wear off, unfortunately – but I really like that video now.

The two shorts that followed were kind of fun to do. The first one was a sort of impromptu Iron Chef I did against Jasper, still the only IC match I ever went through with. It went pretty fun, although I think the way we organized it and made it all like “Elitist Bastards IC” made it a little bit more ‘official’ than a random match between friends should’ve been. On the other hand, it inspired the loosely-organized but highly creative Donator Forum IC, from which several excellent videos (such as this one) came out.

The other short I did was this spontaneous Romeo+Juliet instrumental short made using only one episode’s worth of footage. I was in a good mood and it pretty much showed; also it’s the only true romance video that I’d ever tried to do, so I can chalk up that in my list of ‘achievements’ now.

The next two videos, which proved to be my last serious output to date, I personally consider to be my best. Sheep Go To Heaven was inspired by the several (very good) serious videos to Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo – but I wanted to really be a smartass to everyone and make a complete opposite of them. To me it totally made sense, because watching the anime, I actually found that by and large, it was quite funny and had a lot of rather fun slapstick humour. There was totally enough in there for comedy, but I took a more non-comedy fun-video approach to it, focusing on largely senseless slapstick – and I think I largely succeeded. Sync-wise, it’s by far my best work to date, with internal sync using footage sped up 250% on average combined with a Moldovan folk-punk (!) about sheep (…). I actually really like watching this video, and probably watch it more than any other of my own videos. Or any videos, possibly >__>

The last serious project I took on is in many ways a development of the same I used in my earlier “Damage” video – even the musical artist I used was the same. Here I took an even more ambitiously stark audio source, essentially amounting to poetry with an abstract texturist music background. Unfortunately the video source (5cm/sec) was a lot less ambitious, and I feel like this video gets unfairly overlooked. Unlike my other Shinkai-source video though, I never had many doubts about this one and I think it’s my best sentimental/other video to date. It’s a total opposite of “Sheep”, with very little internal sync to fall back on, and I spent quite a bit of time on the subtleties of it. I never promoted it much, given the negative air surrounding Shinkai anime as source these days, so it more or less went out quietly.

Thus more or less ended my most productive AMVing period.

HIATUS: December 2007 - ?

From that point on, my AMVing activity pretty much dropped off. It’s not true to say that it completely disappeared – but the only releases I made were MEP tracks for that one weird dada project and Improv Project, neither of which were very serious efforts on my part. I started up two fairly ambitious individual projects this year (one using Haruhi, one using Code Geass), but I’ve scrapped both – probably not permanently, since both had good ideas, but were just badly composed. Of course the real problem is that I got extremely busy. AMVs were never my main hobby, and AMVs have nothing to do with my career or my life besides entertainment. I have no passion for editing or any technical work with video. However I really like seeing final products of my own AMVing and I really like the community here, so I’m not likely to retire or leave anytime soon. I don't think I'm any sort of kickass AMV editor actually, and I'm definitely outclassed in terms of talent and ability by many of the editors here. And in the end, I think perhaps the only person who reliably gets a kick out of my work is myself. Which is both a good and a bad thing, but I'm not competing with anyone (except for fun)...
Of course, the fact that I had to write a massive thesis this year and am now a PhD student has imposed a lot on my time and energy and probably continue to do so.

It’s pretty likely I’ll start editing again soon, but I doubt I’ll really get back to editing with any real energy and ambition until 2009. But with all the friends I’ve made through this community, I don’t think I’ll be very far from AMVing generally!
The Birds are using humanity in order to throw something terrifying at this green pig. And then what happens to us all later, that’s simply not important to them…

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Radical_Yue
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Post by Radical_Yue » Thu Oct 23, 2008 3:55 am

So THAT'S what you were typing like a madman O:
Interesting stuff Dr. Krylov

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Post by JaddziaDax » Thu Oct 23, 2008 5:04 am

oh yea this thread... I'll post my stuff later... maybe... I'll think about it... jerk |:>

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Post by Radical_Yue » Thu Oct 23, 2008 5:40 am

Mmmk now... I'm only doing this because Jay told me to =/ If I had my way...I wouldn't at all -__-

2002

Back in 2002 or so, when I was 12 and still in middle school, I was given a disk by some kids I hung out with from time to time. I brought it home to find this disk contained AMVs...Dragon Ball Z AMVs, but AMVs none the less. I was wowed by videos like Dark Kamui's "Vegeta" and MeriC's "Heart Of Sword". I watched that disk for hours on end...

2003

I was given a couple other disks over time and wanted more. I continuously searched the net for AMVs, but could only download low quality/small cruddy videos due to an amazing dial-up connection.
I happened across this "A-M-V.org" place quite a few times, but ignored it due to the fact that I didn't want to sign up for a site =p

2004

In 2004 I had a breakdown and dropped out of normal school to enter Independent Studies where hopefully, I could clear my head...this also gave me more time to search for AMVs =p
One day...while roaming the Neopets boards, I found a person who posted a link to their site and their AMVs...and they took requests O:
I emailed them my request which resulted in this video... Samurai X...with Vanessa Carlton's "White Houses" :| I desperately wanted to try making AMVs for myself, so I asked this person who to do so.
"Download footage and import it into Windows Movie Maker. Put some audio in there and pull it all onto the storyboard." I hastily searched google for "Anime Clips"...yes, those are the exact words I used to search with...I took whatever I could find, whether it be high-esque quality GIFs to random blips from subtitled episodes.
Luckily, right at that time, I acquired, from the dumpster of an Oral-B building...a laptop O: Well, actually, some drug dealers got it and sold it to my mother for $100, but yeah...a laptop none the less. With a whopping 128mb ram and 5gb hd, I was ready to go. I didn't want to edit on the main computer, so I would burn my footage to CD-Rs and transfer them to my laptop to edit with. Without normal schooling to bog me down, I began to edit, completing my first video in September of '04...You Are
Unfortunately, I didn't know how to burn from my laptop, so I was stuck without feedback due to lack of internet connection...but I continued to edit...

2005

I edited like a madman...constantly going...pumping out crappy videos one after the other. But I was happy. My breakdown brought me something wonderful...who would have thought? =p
Finally, in February 2004, we upgraded from Dial-up to DSL =D I got a wireless connection for my laptop, and signed up with A-M-V.org. I
entered my videos into the database (by that point in time I had made 8...) and hosted them on my freewebs account since I couldn't figure the FTP out. Of course, with the bandwidth limit, freewebs continually went down and I began to lose hope of ever getting an opinion on my AMVs.
Eventually, I wizened up and figured out the FTP process and I was a very happy panda.
Later that month, I downloaded a free DVD ripping program(well, the trial version was free :P), and ripped the only disk that I owned that wasn't protected... Samurai X: Reflections. Of course, the files were way too big for my laptop, but I easily fixed that by running the videos through Windows Movie Maker...twice each...rendering them out as 320x240 WMVs.
I went on to create Welcome Home~ Numb. My first well received video =D I entered it into The Scoobs Awards AMV Contest. An online AMV contest in which I lost in the first round, but started getting out there =] From there, Katie (JaddziaDax) started oping my videos. I was ecstatic to have a popular editor giving me feedback. Of course, I was a moron and didn't pay any attention to the feedback, but I kept going. >:O
I prided myself in being able to edit a full video in under 6 hours tops. I thought subtitles were good. I was in happyland.
Due to the crappy-ness of my laptop, I was unable to download the more popular AMVs of the time since it would choke everytime I tried to play something larger than a 320x240 video, but I kept alive on cruddy videos like mine =w= And I thought they were AMAZING :|

Now, over the course of a good 8 months of editing on a shitty laptop, with subtitled footage encoded in DivX and Xvid, and reencoding DVD rips that were encoded with DivX from the ripper I was using...WMM died on me. It refused to import any new media. I cried.

I had no choice but to move to the main desktop. Now, the desktop was MUCH more powerful than my laptop of course, so this made it possible for me to render at a bit of a higher resolution. My first video on that computer was The Two Of Us In The Twilight. I knew it wasn't the best, but I was very happy with it. From there, I "remastered" Welcome Home~ Numb and created Always Waiting, which became my favorite video out of all that I had made at the time. I nearly died when I woke up 6 hours after completing it to find 4 opinions. I was on top of the world.

After finally realizing that SUBTITLES = BAD I attempted to cut them out of my videos.
With ~†=- Illusions Of Blue -=†~ I used subtitled footage, but restricted myself to only using scenes that had 1 line of subtitles. I then rendered it out as a DV-AVI from WMM, ran it through a trial version of a DivX converter I had downloaded, and then into Virtual Dub Mod to remove the subtitles.
I used this process once more on my video Rumina's Nightmare. A video which I edited to take my mind off the death of my ferret Jasper. It was also the video in which I had found out how to create a strobing flash...and I abused it so...

Fantasy was my last AMV using Window Movie Maker. A quickie I made using Howl's Moving Castle, an anime which I dearly love due to the fact the book is one of my favorites and I adore the author.

Once Upon A Time was my first AMV in Vegas, the program I still use to this day. I was so proud of the fact that I figured out a new program...I couldn't wait to edit more =]

2006

Wow...a lot happened in 05 o_o

Give Me Wings was my first video I ever considered to be "effects heavy."
I was so excited about it since I had finally figured out how to do a type of overlay =D
This was followed by Silent Screams, my first properly encoded Xvid with the help of Katie, once again.

Around this time, I had finally gotten the nerve to talk to Katie on AIM and I met more amazing editors through skype, such as Batto!, Mamo!, Jade_Eyed_Angel, Scoob and Shinodude. I have to say, that the summer of 06 was one of the best of my life. Editing happily and playing games with new friends till the dawn...it was good times =]
This was also the time I finally worked up the courage to check around the forums a bit. I didn't post much and played the fool when I did (as I do quite a bit now still) but I was getting involved none the less.

Grace...my first dance video. I was SO EXCITED =D When I came up with the color cycling border...my mind nearly exploded. It was really well received too =] I made semi-finals in the VCAs and even got an honorable mention at Otafest. I never thought I'd go anywhere with my videos, but small victories like these made me want to get better.

Poison Lament, the video I won my first award in. It was a small con...but happiness ensued.

2007

I had been having so much fun editing, but I was getting fed up with my system. My computer was crappy, and the motherboard was so outdated I couldn't even upgrade the ram from 128mb. I was sick and tired of the restrictions.

Desire was the last video that I made on my old computer. It serves as a reminder of the days when I would hit play and the preview screen wouldn't move...and the 14 hour renders for a small wmv beta... I was done with that.

In about September of 07, I had finally saved up enough, bought all the parts and had my computer assembled. My first project I decided on...would be Radiance. This was a big project for me so I only worked on it from time to time, creating other videos in the meantime.
Angel being the first one successfully completed on my new computer.

If you asked me what my favorite AMV out my own collection was, it'd have to be Blessed Days In The Cherry Blossoms. An AMV made it 2 hours, and made to be HORRIBLE.
You see, as time progressed and I got better at editing, I began to hate my editing more and more. I saw what others could create and was astonished at their knowledge that I could never even begin to grasp. I still feel this way to this day, but Blessed Days was a release for me, and it gave me the little push that I needed to keep editing and attempt to have fun...even if I despised the result with every fiber of my being.

Fairytale was my last AMV of 07. My New Years Rush Job as I call it. For a couple days, I was actually very happy with this video. I had a really fun time editing it and I guess I was in my own personal euphoria for a bit after finishing it, but it became one of my hated videos after a bit. As they all do.


2008

By this time, thanks to Kitsuner and Niotex, I had worked up enough courage to play in #AMV. That's where I started talking more to everyone, especially ZephyrStar, Aesling and Fall_Child42. From there, I fell so head over heels in love with this community, I never wanted to leave my computer.

Of course, I finally did in May of 08 to go to my first convention...Acen O:
I fangirled inside each time I saw an editor that I had worshiped over the years.
You guys seriously have no idea how loud I can squee in my head |:
"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE, HOLY SHIT! THAT'S ATOMX O_O;; AND THERE IS KISANZI! OMG JCD!!! ....holy fuck...I just groped Aesling O____O And I likeded it =w="
It was really a dream come true.
Now, for Acen, I worked hastily to finish Radiance...I didn't make it into finals, but I was shocked to have the it played at the All Girl panel o_o I seriously...almost died...
Radiance...started as a video that I wanted to pour every ounce of my being into...but I just got so angry at myself for not being able to produce what's in my head that I finally just gave up and released it in June of this year.

And that's basically where I am now. In love with the community and it's members, loathing my own work, but loving editing so much I can't stop.

HAPPY NOW JAY? IT'S ALMOST 4AM AND I'VE RAMBLE/TYPED FOR A GOOD 30 MINUTES >_o
I can sleep nao?
I can?
kthnx.

/me passes out

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Fall_Child42
has a rock
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Status: Veloci-tossin' to the max!
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Post by Fall_Child42 » Thu Oct 23, 2008 9:57 am

Radical_Yue wrote: This was never the way I planned
Not my intention
There was a boob in my hand
At the ACEN Convention
AMVs, on you_tube
suck too bad to mention
It's just those boobs on you
Caught my attention

I groped an Aes and I liked it
The feel of Victoria secret
I groped an Aes just to try it
I hope her boyfriend don't mind it
It felt so wrong
It felt so right
All the guys pants became real tight
I groped an Aes and I liked it
I liked it
Image

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ZephyrStar
Master of Science
Joined: Fri Sep 17, 2004 3:04 am
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Location: The Laboratory
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Post by ZephyrStar » Thu Oct 23, 2008 11:40 am

Doktor F.C. Mad Genius wrote:
Radical_Yue wrote: This was never the way I planned
Not my intention
There was a boob in my hand
At the ACEN Convention
AMVs, on you_tube
suck too bad to mention
It's just those boobs on you
Caught my attention

I groped an Aes and I liked it
The feel of Victoria secret
I groped an Aes just to try it
I hope her boyfriend don't mind it
It felt so wrong
It felt so right
All the guys pants became real tight
I groped an Aes and I liked it
I liked it
This... HAS to be made into an actual song.

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Ileia
WHAT IS PINK MAY NEVER DIE!
Joined: Mon Aug 09, 2004 12:29 am
Status: ....to completion
Location: On teh Z-drive, CornDog
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Post by Ileia » Thu Oct 23, 2008 12:50 pm

2004:

I had no computer of my own, and had NO experience with computers or the internet or anything. I happened to be staying at a friends' place and she showed me some AMVs that she made, and I was smitten. I kept watching them, playing them with the audio muted, while playing a different song to see how it worked.

When I went back home, I had my boyfriend make me a computer so that I could make an AMV. That's right. I only got a computer for the purpose of editing AMVs. I started off with Windows Movie Maker since that was the program that my friend had used. I didn't know there were other programs you could use. She said she used downloaded episodes and music. So I did that too. The only anime I had seen was Inu-Yasha. So, that was what I used. And I made three videos in about week's time.

Then I thought, "Hey. I bet other people have made these! I'm going to google AMVs!" and I found the .org. I made a beeline for the VCA winners, because I didn't know where to start. I saw Mitternacht and my jaw dropped. I made everyone else come watch it. Then Euphoria. Again, a jaw drop. I decided to message the creator of the latter. He was a bit short with me, but I attributed it to him getting the same questions over and over again. It went kinda like this:

me: I liked your Euphoria video. What editor did you use for that?
him: Magix
me: okay


So I got Magix.(Though it was Music Maker, it could still edit video.) And some DVDs. So I made one video using Magix and DVDs. I didn't even watch the DVDs, I just immediately went into using them for editing. And I went about it all wrong, technically, I just ripped the DVDs and edited with the vobs, then exported whatever sort of AVI Magix would let me. Even after editing it, I kinda realized it sucked, because I compared it to other videos I'd seen. So I stopped for a little while. I wanted to use the time to watch more videos to see how things should look, to get a feel for all types of videos.


2005:


This is the year when I really hit it hard. I made 22 videos in 2005. Video after video, I kept trying new things. Romance, dance, action, comedy, drama, even hentai! I wanted to try everything. Some failed, but I learned from them, some were successful, and I learned from them too. I never really spent long on the videos, but I could visually see my own improvement. I started fixing some of the technical aspects as well. AMVapp ftw.

This was the year I started getting into the community. After the video Date Rape, some other editors started to recognize my name and I started talking to them. a-m-v.org was my first experience with forums. I actually thought you were supposed to look and see who was online and PM them to start a chat. I recall messaging Willow, being all noobish, telling him what my favorite anime characters were. Then I decided to enter the IRC chatroom (which took some doing because I didn't understand IRC.). I still remember the first line of text I ever read in IRC:

Decoy: omg date rape girl

Through IRC and the forums, I made a shitload of friends. And it grew by the day. We'd play games (Gunbound is still fuckwin) and skype and chat and laugh and it was awesome. I had never really had a lot of friends (in fact I was pretty introverted) so this a new experience for me. I absolutely loved it.

This year was also my first experience with Iron Chef'ing. I didn't understand the concept at first. I thought you were supposed to finish the video, ALL of the video, as quickly as you could. So my first IC video was made in 45 minutes, and I finished the whole song. :O So I learned something: "Hey! I'm pretty good at fast editing!"


2006:


I wanted to step it up a notch. I made less videos (only 12 this year) but they were of higher quality. I still kept with my need to do new or different sorts of videos. (A Saikano rap comedy video?!!) Quite a few MEPs that year, as well. Though I was presented with sort of a challenge. Both Niotex and Decoy told me that I couldn't do action videos. Couldn't! I had to prove to both myself, and to them that I could not only do them, but do them well. I was determined! A Burst Angel video that I made I sent to AWA 2006...and I won Best Action! It's funny because now I get people who say that all I can do is action. If I focused on any one genre as much as I did on making sure I was good at action, I'd be just as good at them. I just haven't yet. :O

Speaking of AWA, it was the BEST TIME I HAD IN MY ENTIRE LIFE AND IT STILL HAS NOT BEEN TOPPED. It was a whirlwind of awesome, with editors and convention stuff and drinking and meeting soooo many people, and lions and tigers and bears, oh my!! It was my first convention. I'm told that at most people's first conventions they just kinda test the water....if that's so, I dived in headfirst! I loved these people and never wanted to leave.

I also came to a decision this year: I wanted to do video editing as a career. And since I had recently broke up with my boyfriend, I was free to go to wherever I wanted to go to college.


2007:


Clearly, I decided on Chicago. I had such a good time there, that's where I knew I wanted to go. I even went and surprised the Chicago peoples with a visit (See: ROS 5). This is where I have my first break in editing since after I first started, my transition from Minnesota to Chicago. Koopiskeva and peropero were nice enough to come and save me and bring me to Chicago, where we were going to have an a(mv)partment together, with Nessephanie and AtomX!

Living together with them definitely helped motivate me to keep doing better and better. Brad was already going to school in a related field, and both Liz and I want to go to Columbia for the same major. Unfortunately, both of us had to put our dreams on hold for various reasons. Mine was that my parents' (whom I disowned as soon as I was 18, when I moved out) refused to give me their tax info, so I couldn't fill out financial aid forms. So I was gonna have to wait until I was 24 and officially independent.

Oh, and my first ACen! I got to meet some new people that I didn't get to meet before, so I had fun, but it was definitely more toned down than AWA. (and that's saying a lot, considering some of what went on at ACen :uhoh:)

And for AWA, I decided I was now good enough to enter Pro. And I wanted to use School Rumble, an anime that I not only watched, but loved. There was a LOT of searching to do, there was a metric shit-ton of DVDs to sift through! Usually I stuck with one or two DVDs, or a movie, so this was kinda a big deal for me. I stayed up most of the night before the deadline, getting it all finished. Close to the deadline for the Master's competition, I had a little spark of an idea and decided to make good on it. I decided on the day of the deadline. Luckily, we were given two days to upload the video. And I made use of both of them! (granted, I did have to work on one of the days, so it was only technically, like, a day and a half). I also sent an iron chef video I made to Expo. So I was entering all three contests, when I had only planned to enter one.

To my tremendous surprise, I won all three. I hadn't expected it at all (I even just gave Wagner a guessed size for the jacket, because I wasn't planning on winning. The sleeves are a little long XD). The reception the videos got even after AWA was surprising to me. One Fine Day, the video meant for the contests, received very little attention, while the other two, the ones that had very little work put into them, were loved. My rush jobs are better than when I put a lot of work into a video? o_O

I only made one more video that year, a Beck video with a song that I felt was really powerful, but once again, not well received. I love the video, but it seems that the videos that I like are the ones that don't get liked. I don't have good taste in my own videos?


2008:


This has been a strange year. I had no definite plan, but I knew I wanted to slip into some more genres. Because of AWA, I still haven't been able to shake this preconception that I am only good at action videos, so I knew that for this year's AWA, I wanted to make a drama video, still unreleased, but I'll get to that.

My best-liked video so far this year has been a Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei video, that I barely paid attention to, just edited little bits here and there. When I released it, I was expecting it to be hated because of the song, but it seems the opposite, and that surprised me.

Another surprise, I made a funny little video with Goldenboy for ACen specifically. It didn't even make the finals for the convention. I was generally kind of "meh" about it, but once again, it got a pretty good reception when I released it. I sent two new videos to ACen and neither won. First time for everything! Though at ACen, I did have my first experience doing a live Iron Editor, and it was so much fun. I used Premiere for the first time for the competition and took an instant dislike to it!

So yeah, AWA. I knew I wanted to do something different. So I made a drama, sort of trippy video. But as it is...I hate it. I disliked it when I sent it and I still dislike it. How I ever got Best Artistic and Best Overall, I'll never know. I still haven't released it, I want to fix it. This may mean a dramatic overhaul, or maybe I should leave it. Enough people seem to like it and I do seem to have bad taste in my own videos, haha. CDVV did an awesome job at AWA, we won a lot of awards between us and I'm proud of myself and the other editors.

So after AWA, I've been releasing a new video each week. I still have a lot to go, including a dance video and a romance video, so we'll see how the rest of it goes!




a-m-v.org is my life. The other editors are my best friends, I am always editing and watching videos. Nothing is more important to me.

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aesling
Mad Scientist
Joined: Thu Feb 03, 2005 10:55 pm
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Location: Wall Rose
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Post by aesling » Thu Oct 23, 2008 2:32 pm

ZephyrStar wrote:
Doktor F.C. Mad Genius wrote:
Radical_Yue wrote: This was never the way I planned
Not my intention
There was a boob in my hand
At the ACEN Convention
AMVs, on you_tube
suck too bad to mention
It's just those boobs on you
Caught my attention

I groped an Aes and I liked it
The feel of Victoria secret
I groped an Aes just to try it
I hope her boyfriend don't mind it
It felt so wrong
It felt so right
All the guys pants became real tight
I groped an Aes and I liked it
I liked it
This... HAS to be made into an actual song.
Lawl, but I don't wear Victoria's Secret.
:ying:

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