Anime Boston - Con Rundown

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Anime Boston - Con Rundown

Postby dokool » Sun Apr 20, 2003 11:30 am

Hey all, just got back into my dorm after an AMAZING two days in Bahston, Mass. I'm gonna start this rundown w/ the AMV stuff, then talk more about the con in general.

Winners - Anime Boston 2003 AMV Contest

I can't remember the titles of all the vids, but at least I do remember most of the song combos

Best Novice - Ruroni Kenshin OAVs/Hoobastank - Crawling In The Dark
Best Journeyman - Trigun/Garbage - When I grow Up
Best Master - Lain/Mirage (forget the artist, but the video was Mirage)
Best Action - Ruroni Kenshin/Garbage - Push It
Best Drama - Uber Depressing Video (She, the Ultimate Weapon/I Believe by those dudes)
Best Comedy - Fight! (Hello Kitty/Mortal Kombat)
Best of Show - Fight! (Hello Kitty/Mortal Kombat)

Much kudos and congrats to Tom the Fish for one of the most hilarious things I've ever seen. I know James of Dark Guyver Studios wasn't happy with the results, which I can understand, as they were pretty mainstream, but I'll let him air his grievances. As far as my grievances...

The Evangelion/Excalibur vid was amazing and deserved either best Action or Novice. The second Grave of the Fireflies vid (Dreams was the song, I believe) got ripped as well, it was much more cohesive than the first GotF vid. The Berserk vid got shafted as well, as did James' NTHT/Modest Mouse vid. I do agree with him (James) in that the results were very mainstream. Two Kenshin vids and two vids with music by Garbage. I think what dissapoints me is that I know that with some effort, I could do as well as any of the vids (except for Mirage, which will need more After Effects mastery)

The AMVs: Do's & Dont's panel went well, though I don't think we gave nearly as much advice as we needed to. Perhaps next year, whoever's running it should ask ConStaff for 1.5 or 2 hours. Much thanks to Greg (NeilPeartnoy), Lyndsey (kiarrens), Kai, Tom, and my co-host, Rob (Ashyukun). I handed out over half of my AMV cds after the panel, and stayed behind afterwards and ended up getting a great seats for the ADV panel =)

At the Clubhouse, me, Greg, and Lyndsey were standing outside the room for 15 minutes, b/c we thought that the MIT club meeting was spilling over. Then we asked who the people inside were with, and it turned out to be Kai, Tom, and another guy (can't remember his name). That was... slightly embarassing, but it was cool.

Random things I'm just gonna throw out there:

The ADV panel was absofuckinlutely packed. When they announced that they'd picked up Azumanga Daioh, this guy behind me just SCREAMED, it was hilarious. "YEAH!!!!" Then he kept screaming. Then I turned around and said something like "Guys, I think he came." That shut him up REAL fast.

Then the ADV guy asked us to figure out what the next announced release would be. I instantly threw out "Evangelion remastered!" He hit play.

Evangelion Episodes 21-26: Director's Cut. Rawk.

Magical Shopping Street Abenobashi looks interesting, as does Kaleidostar.

Greg and I both got Tiffany Grant to do our voicemail as Asuka. *swoons*

If you people think that dealer room was small, I can't even imagine what a REGULAR dealer room looks like.

s-CRY-ed looks cool as well.

Cosplayers under the age of 15 should not be allowed to expose more than their arms, 1 inch above their knees, and their head, and should be given a 2-pound minimum for clothing. Case in point, the Yuna from FFX-2. 13 years old and a centimeter or two away from being child pr0n. That said, I was so impressed with the quality of cosplay that I may even do it myself one day. No idea what character i'd do, though.

There's a lot more, but overall, I had a blast. Finally, an announcement:

Third Lens Open Productions will do something for O--

::runs to website, checks deadline, realizes that I'd only have about a week after school ends to make the video I have in mind, which will definately take >1 week::

Okay, Third Lens Open Productions will not do something for Otakon. But we've got plans. Big ones.

If other posters spur my memory, then I'm sure I'll post some more stuff here. In the meantime, I want to thank everyone who was there for making my first 'con experience an amazing one.

-DOKool
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Postby Lonley Driver » Sun Apr 20, 2003 7:18 pm

I had a great time at Anime Boston too and I got to meet some of the people behind the AMVs. I wish I knew there was a clubhouse, I would have stopped by and introduced myself to some more people.

I thought the AMV panel was good, but it was a little unorganized, and it definitely could have been longer. I thought the most interesting part was the demo of AE and how Ashyukun did his Star Wars trailer. I've been on the fence as to whether or not to buy a copy for myself.

As for the winners, though I was dissapointed I didn't win, I thought the right videos got the right awards, and I wasn't surprised by the results. It would be fun to see the runner ups though. Anyway, overall I thought the whole con was a lot of fun.

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Postby mckeed » Sun Apr 20, 2003 9:08 pm

Well.....i was kinda bummed when i got the email that my video went into the finals that it was easter weekend....damn familily holidays. Now i'm even more pissed that it won best drama. That video was one of those things i had to make when i saw Saikano.

The Artist is Blessed Union of Souls btw. How was the rest of the drama category? What was the general reaction to the video? Did ppl like my the added audio from the series?
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Postby spike8986 » Mon Apr 21, 2003 12:21 am

I had a pretty fun time at the dance and makeing a total ass out of myself. Half you people dun know who i was but i was wearing a darkguyverstudios shirt and i made the hugest ass out of myself EVER! but i did have made fun. Which is all the really matter.

i thought the amv contest was bullcrap. People won with vids that i seen better Dbz linkin park vids to. No offense to anyone.
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Postby TaranT » Mon Apr 21, 2003 3:06 am

dokool wrote:...(except for Mirage, which will need more After Effects mastery) ...

Sorry, I don't use After Effects :) . Mirage was done entirely with an old version (v2.0) of Video Vegas.

AB sounds like it was good time. Used to live in Cambridge myself. Springtime on the banks of the Charles was always the best.

And Fight! sounds completely outrageous...downloading now.

I've updated the contests lists with the AB contest results (see below).
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beh

Postby Freako » Mon Apr 21, 2003 5:01 am

beh ..... AB was pretty good for what it was .... an overcrowded con. Waiting in line for the dealer room??? Needless to say, after 2 hours in registration , I skipped out on buying anything. so ill go down my list i guess


-13 years old??? (damn i feel like a pervert now)
-Line for a crowded, armpit smellling dealer room? NOT a good idea.
-too many video rooms, not enough AMV overflow. (the great thing about otakon is that you could basically find some AMVs to watch no matter what time of the day it was)
- Tristen Citrine needs to leave her husband and come live with me. (damn baby)
-13 years old ?????
-the hotel staff looked like they were deer in the headlights of a Mack truck. (someone double booked a wedding in the lobby for saturday, LOL ... needless to say .. things did not go well.)
- did I mention 2 hours to register (in the dumbest set-up I have ever seen, -wait in line-get badge-go back further to a new line to get it laminated.) wouldn't be so bad if they had put the lamination center AFTER the registration entry.
- 13 ??????????????????????????????????????????
- after an event starts ...... you can leave .... but can't come back in ???? WTF kind of a rule is that ?? (what if i have to pee?)
- VIP seating in the balcony , WHEN THERE IS NO ONE SITTING UP THERE!!!
- no video taping the AMV contest ?? F U
- 13 ???????? 13 ?????? 13 ??????
-no offense to anyone who entered the AMV contest ..... but i only watched like 7 vids ... most were unwatchable.. (who the hell thought that an 8 minute video set to the score from "the Goonies" would be good? ... well guess what ? YOU WERE WRONG.)
-Voltron still kicks ass.
- Tristine !!!! Email ME !!!!
- seriously though .............................. 13?



con approval rating : B
Not bad for a first year con .... but definately a long way to go. Im not gonna give props to the AB staff, because im sure they are getting all sorts of praise now . Instead Im going to give MAD props to the staff of Hotel, who (despite the lack of tipping) managed to keep things moving relatively smooth. We probably won't see you next year .( Im betting they will not be allowed back). BUt Thank you.


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Postby Red Wolf » Mon Apr 21, 2003 6:37 am

TaranT wrote:I've updated the contests lists with the AB contest results (see below).


Dude, I didn't even know that site existed. That would have been real useful to me last year. It is safely bookmarked now :D
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Re: beh

Postby dokool » Mon Apr 21, 2003 9:00 am

Freako wrote:-13 years old??? (damn i feel like a pervert now)


Yes, 13.

Freako wrote:-the hotel staff looked like they were deer in the headlights of a Mack truck. (someone double booked a wedding in the lobby for saturday, LOL ... needless to say .. things did not go well.)


The final total for registered people was over 3,800. They were expecting 2,000. I loved the deer-in-the-headlights look of the hotel staff and the non-AB patrons more, though

Freako wrote:VIP seating in the balcony , WHEN THERE IS NO ONE SITTING UP THERE!!!
- no video taping the AMV contest ?? F U


Yeah, the "press seating" was woefully underused. And due to the gray legal area of AMVs, not taping the contest is COMPLETELY understandable.

Freako wrote:-no offense to anyone who entered the AMV contest ..... but i only watched like 7 vids ... most were unwatchable.. (who the hell thought that an 8 minute video set to the score from "the Goonies" would be good? ... well guess what ? YOU WERE WRONG.)


I counted 4 false endings. I think eventually the audience wanted so much to believe it was over each time, which is why they clapped. The One Piece videos both used thte same cuts, which is kinda why it got old fast.
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Postby Ashyukun » Mon Apr 21, 2003 10:36 am

:shock: OK, assuming we're all thinking of the same girl- and I didn't see a whole lot of Yunas all told, the one who probably couldn't bend over for fear of her top violating public decency laws, was THIRTEEN? Damn. I find it extremely frightening and wrong that a girl less than half my age (and I"m not that old) dresses that skimpily and looks that good. I'm beginning to think Minor cosplayers should have to wear special tags or something- I seem to remember someone saying that one of the Mai cosplayers (wearing an extremely accurate representation of the costume...) from Katsu was only 15.

As for the rest of the con, I thought it went extremely well. Admittedly, I did not have to deal with the whole registration problem- I was tech staff. The con just simply was not wholly prepared for the nearly 4,000 people that came. The coordinators just didn't expect that big of a turnout for a first-year convention. The had the attendance stats for the other large cons on hand at the 'gripe' session... AX didn't get 3,800 people until their sixth year. For as many people as were there and as much as was going on, I thought it went extremely well.

There are almost always lines for dealers rooms... there's not much you can do about that. Just like lines for everything else. As much as lines suck, they beat mob scenes rushing the doors.

I missed the whole wedding thing- OUCH. Of course, if I'd ended up with that happening for my wedding I likely would have badgered the hotel staff to get the con to comp my wife and I badges for the day, pull my wife's hair up into Odango and stick a crescent moon-shaped sticker on her forehead and cosplay as King Endemion and Queen Serenity.

I'll keep my mouth shut about the actual tech running of the main AMV contest showing- largely because, well, I was the one running things for it :wink: Major props to Pat for the AMV DVDs the contest was run off of. They were quite cool.

Overall, I enjoyed the contest, and could not wholly argue with the winners. Especially not Tom's "Fight!". It was seriously wrong and thus extremely funny and good. :) As for the apparent 'popularity' of the winning videos- you have to remember, this was and audience vote based contest. People- especially those not really skilled at the nuances of editing and AMVs as we are- will be more likely to vote for what they like over what may be better edited. It's the nature of people. And to an extent, I think we're guilty of it as well. I know Dan is a big Eva fan, so it's not a real surprise he really liked the Eva/Excaliber video (which is not me saying I didn't- I did). Conversely, this contest was the first I'd seen a single frame of One Piece. Even the long song aside, I had a hard time getting into either one, because what was going on was pretty much lost on me. Of course, I've not seen "She the Ultimate Weapon" either- but that video I did pretty much get.

I was very pleased with how the panel went. I would have loved more time, and assuming we do it again next year, I may ask for it. But I think we still managed to go over a good amount in the time we had. I had a lot of fun running the panel, and hope I didn't hog too much of the time talking myself.

As for there not being AMVs running all the time- maybe next year, if/when there is more room. I would be willing to put serious money on the con not being in the same hotel next year as well- not because of them not wanting us back- but because it wasn't big enough. Registration closed down at noon on Saturday because we had reached the capacity of people that fire codes would allow us to have. Next year I am sure it will be someplace with a lot more space.

There were actually AMVs shown in one of the video rooms yesterday afternoon, as there was a problem with one of the DVDs and I got asked to drag my laptop in and play random AMVs for the remaining 2 hours or so until the room was supposed to close. It drew in far more people than had been watching the DVD that had been playing. I am sure next year there will be a few DVDs of AMVs on hand to use as filler and possibly more AMV showings in rooms.

Next to finally, we were told after closing ceremonies that CNN did a segment on Anime Boston on Saturday night, and most of us didn't even know they were there...

Finally. Thirteen??? Damn.
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Postby sherlock hemlock » Mon Apr 21, 2003 2:02 pm

Heya everyone,

Well here's my thoughts on Anime Boston. Sure yeah signup lines sucked. I came in on thursday to pick up my pre-registration, took about an hour and a half to two hours. Bleck. Glad I got it out of the way though.

AMV wise, I did vote the FIGHT video as best comedy (where can I download that btw ;) ) but I would have rather seen somthing else win for best of show. It seems kinda anticlimactic for one video to win 2 categories. The Lain video was a shoe in for best of class as there were only 2 possible candidates. The one piece vids dissapointed me, as I'm in love with the series. The bigest dissapointment was the Eva to Chop Suey one. When I heard the song I instantly felt that it was like the Shinji Theme, but I expected the video to play more on the interpersonal psycological aspects of Eva... So the person made a video of Evas fighting. Sigh.... Also, having seen the Saikano series, while the saikano video was good, the series horrified me and the video just didn't stress the right things at the right times. I guess what I mean is that the video seemed like it was trying to emphasize that sometimes love isn't enough to make things work out and to survive, which could be applied to the themes of the series which was very emotionally powerful and sad. I felt like the video didn't do that aspect of the series justice enough.

The dealers room was well... Yes crowded but also not enough dealers. Mostly each dealer was offering completely different things, which sorta kills the shop around aspect of things, or when one dealer runs out of somthing, you might still have a chance to find it kinda thing.

Gaming wise I played some Soul Calibur 2. I dunno um... seemed kinda weak to me. I guess I'm just bad at it cause I hate to just write off anything soul calibur. I got in some good games of magic though and that was nice. ^_^

the cosplay show was a slow motion train wreck! The guy couldn't pronounce anything correctly, the acts weren't ready and most of the time when they were ready it was horribly cheezy and badly put togeather scit wise. Some of the costumes were inredible, but the jokes oh the jokes! honestly, most of the more impressive costumes were worn by people I saw walking around the convention who weren;t in the show. Although, seeing that beautifuly constructed Gundam thing not be able to get down the stairs... priceless.
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Postby RichLather » Mon Apr 21, 2003 2:25 pm

Note to self: competently edited videos set to Blue Gender are pretty likely to slip under most folks' radar. Use more popular stuff next time.
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Postby Kai Stromler » Mon Apr 21, 2003 2:34 pm

I stole a ballot from the second screening. I have it and was going to post the full ballot with commentary, but it was so long typing the goddamn post that my connection timed out, and I lost the thing when I tried to preview. It will be up eventually.

Other con stuff:
Meeting people was definitely cool. I'm in awe of Tom's Lain tat almost as much as his videos.
Thirty eight thousand holy crap. That's insane. If we're not filling the Hynes in five years it'll be solely the con staff's fault. Of course, this was the first major anime convention in New England ever, even though it's such a huge market, so high success wouldn't have been surprising....but not on this scale.
'Berto should have packed along a few CDs. He had the Grave of the Fireflies video with good video fidelity in the Novice finals, which was damn impressive for a first outing.
Yeah, the panel was a little disorganized, but we didn't hardly plan it at all with regards to taking questions, doing demos, etc, and we were pressed for time, so it was kind of inevitable.

Anyone who didn't nab a Shin Hats CD and wants one should PM or email me, I've got plenty left. Otherwise I'll pass 'em out at PortCon Maine if I end up going. Also someone took the bonus CD but did not claim their prize -- if they're reading this they have until the end of the month to email or PM me with the serial number from that CD, or they forfeit.

Rich: I read that more as a new-school/old-school conflict. I was gonna write more on that with the ballot post, but like I said the connection died.

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Postby RichLather » Mon Apr 21, 2003 6:18 pm

Old school/new school conflict? I can't wait to see the elaboration on that.

Both the source video and the song are a year or two old. I was listening to the Bad Religion song on the way to ACen last year, and that's when I got the Blue Gender DVD too.
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Postby Kai Stromler » Mon Apr 21, 2003 8:25 pm

Correction to last post: that should be thirty-eight HUNDRED, not thousand. I'm just an idiot.


And now, without further ado, the Big Goddamned AniBo Ballot Post:

Warning: this post is excessively long and may contain harsh criticism of AMVs that you either made, or thought were kinda good. These are only Kai's opinions, and they pertain only to the video and not to the creator unless specifically indicated. And anyways, Kai is just some death metal psychopath, so you don't really have to take him seriously.

1. Rurouni Kenshin OAV - Crawling In The Dark
by: Seth T. Hay
video: Rurouni Kenshin OAV
music: Crawling In The Dark [Hoobastank]

This video won Best Novice, even though it needed intro texting to set itself up, which isn't often a good sign. It wasn't my choice in this caption, but it was very well put together and both technically and stylistically sound.
This creator had a surprisingly good DBZ/Disturbed video in the overflow, which would have both made the finals cut and been a serious contender for Best Action if he'd cut the song before the last two "movements". If it had ended at that point, I would have been like "Damn, that video ruled!", but when it kept going, everyone in the showing was like, "ugh, when is this getting over". The motion and lip synch were top-notch throughout, and the plotting, at least for the first "movement", was definitely superior to the vid he had in the finals.

2. Zoro's Promise
by: Grover [Cousin and I Productions]
video: One Piece
music: In The End [Linkin Park]

This was the better of the two One Piece vids in the contest, almost solely in terms of focus and plotting. Unfortunately, the video looked pretty washed-out colorwise, and the music was Linkin Park, which definitely worked against it. This one was pretty decent, but hampered as described.

3. Final Fantasy Heroes
by: Jonathan Howard
video: Final Fantasy VII
music: Hero of the Day [Metallica]

This guy had two FF videos in the finals, and they were both pretty uneven. There were some parts in this video that were very good, and even a few plain jawdropping, but most of it was plagued with desperately slow cutting. Yes, the barn blew up on the riff-hit. That doesn't mean you have to show it still burning for the next five seconds.

4. Life @ War
by: E-Productions
video: Grave of the Fireflies
music: Hey Man Nice Shot [Filter]

There's nothing wrong with using anti-conventional anime/music combinations. I do it all the time, probably more often than I should. But to have success at an audience-judged contest, the video has to be absolutely perfect to break the barriers that most people have about what kinds of music certain anime goes with. This video did not do that. The video fidelity was pretty bad and seriously pixel-blocked, and the theme wasn't consistent or consistently represented through the video. There were some hyper-accelerated parts that were pretty cool, but there was little videography to sustain the video all the way through, and a bunch of hits were plain lost to slow cutting. It may have been a good idea, but it just wasn't well-executed enough.

5. Evangelion - Excalibur
by: Cecille Chiffre
video: Neon Genesis Evangelion
music: Excalibur [Bassic], The Four Seasons [Vivaldi]

This video was primarily cool for its innovative and well-done audio remix, especially accompanied as it was by extremely precise cutting. Beyond that, though, it was just another random-destruction-drama Eva video, with a few places showing why the remastered version is so desperately needed.

6. Don't Walk Away
by: Tom The Fish
video: FLCL
music: Rough Boys [Pete Townshend]

This was a good, fast, funny video made to Tom's usual exacting standards. Unfortunately it was completely overshadowed by his other vid, but it's still well worth watching.

7. The Blossom's Lament
by: Lady Brick
video: Sailor Moon R: The Movie
music: Iris [Goo Goo Dolls]

I hate Sailor Moon. And I really despise modern Goo Goo Dolls (sellout bastards). But I liked this video. It was just a good, old-fashioned shoujo drama vid, everything that an old-school AMV should be. The video fidelity was a little kicked, and the plotting was pretty much your basic do-the-movie-in-five-minutes, but it never came off as lame or trite. The motion synch and cutting were quite good throughout.

8. Rocket Man
by: David Appelman
video: Outlaw Star
music: Rocket Man [Elton John]

Even if the concept got a little thin (how many clips can you show a spaceship just flying around in, really) after a while, this video hung together very well as a whole. If I knew Outlaw Star at all, I might have liked it better, but with AMV you're really not supposed to assume that the audience is bringing any knowledge of your video source to the table anyways. As it was, it was a pretty good drama video, if one of many (maybe *too* many) in this contest.

9. Dreams
by: Maverick [Cousin and I Productions]
video: One Piece
music: The Goonies Theme [Dave Grusin]

Yes. The Interminable One Piece Video. Actually, if you could get over the length factor, and the substantial repetition of clips from "Zoro's Promise" (not like the multiple Eva and Trigun videos in the finals didn't have a lot of clips in common either), this was actually a decent video. The creator did a good job in terms of motion synch, and following the transitions and changes in feel through the various movements. That "various movements" thing, though, is the kicker. The song clearly could have been edited to just include the first movement without much loss of overall feel, and the video would have been a Luffy focus and not had the repetition problems that the video actually submitted did. A few HK-DVD logos just made the beat-up video fidelity look that much more sketchy.

10. Ueber Depressing Video
by: mckeed
video: She, The Ultimate Weapon
music: I Believe [Blessid Union of Souls]

This won Best Drama, in spite of the closing text, which was unnecessary and made a significant minority of the audience laugh every time the video was shown. The Japanese audio bits were definitely essential. However, I just couldn't get into it. There were a few clips that didn't seem to make sense, or fit the concept, plus the usual issues with picture fidelity in digisubs (or in this case digiraws -- and that damn well better not become, like, a real word), and for me at least, the blocky, abstract visual stylistics of SaiKano seemed to be fighting the elegant, smooth feel of the music.
This video will be really cool if/when it gets remade from DVD source. This'll fix the color matting endemic to SaiKano encodes, and give a chance to disinclude the closing text. The shot of the ocean just surging up at Shuji in the last real cut in the video is an excellent visual to just end and fade to black on as is.

11. What If...
by: Maverick [Cousin and I Productions]
video: Cowboy Bebop
music: Somewhere Out There [Our Lady Peace]

I think that this was an attempt to cut Cowboy Bebop so that Spike and Faye ended up together, but the videography was so average, and the intent was unclear in places, and the fidelity was nothing special, so I have a very hard time remembering anything about the video at all. Just another drama vid.

12. Dream, Setsuko, Dream
by: Alberto Gonzalez
video: Grave of the Fireflies
music: Dream [Firehouse]

Every contest has somebody's stunning debut. This was AniBo's, right here. 'Berto is just starting out, but this video was still beautifully plotted, start to finish, and in impeccable fidelity. The only real issue was a lot of unsynched mouth motion, but when you're working from a single movie you sometimes have to take what you can get, and the final vid was still incredible. Start hunting for this one now, people.
The overall audience at AniBo was pretty young, so I don't know how many people were as pleasantly surprised as I was that a video with a Firehouse song was any good.

13. Final Fantasy Rhapsody
by: Jonathan Howard
video: Final Fantasy IX
music: Bohemian Rhapsody [Queen]

This was the better of this guy's two FF videos, mostly because it actually managed to hold together thematically and resolve pretty well. However, it was still held back by slow cutting and drastically slowed-down footage. These videos were passable; I hope some other FF videos are better than this standard, because there are so darn many of them.

14. Fight!
by: Tom The Fish
video: Hello Kitty
music: Mortal Kombat [Mortal Kombat OST]

Best Comedy, Best In Show. What more to say? Howsabout MORTAL KOMBAT! Just the idea of this juxtaposition would probably have been enough to win the hearts of the audience, but all the creators in attendance definitely appreciated the hard work that Tom put in to making a video this good out of what was obviously a drastic lack of suitable source. A few mouths might have been taped shut with AE or something after the characters finished their lines, but the reuses and loopings are concealed very well, and the video just kicks ass.

15. Father's Pawn
by: Neelick
video: Neon Genesis Evangelion
music: Chop Suey [System of a Down]

There's got to be a good version of this anime/song combo out there somewhere. This one was pretty well put together, but the video fidelity was complete crap, and being as it was an Eva Chop Suey video, it didn't stand a chance.
Maybe Neelick will remake this one once the Eva remaster series is out so we have a shot at a decent version of the combination.....or maybe someone else will remake theirs. Same diff.

16. Push It Kenshin
by: Love + Peace Productions
video: Rurouni Kenshin
music: Push It [Garbage]

I voted this video for Best Action, which it eventually won, with a lot of unease and doubt, because it's not really an action video, but more of an aggressive instead of weepy drama. It had the most action and most good points of any of the semi-action videos in the finals, and it's definitely very well put together (the combo of Kenshin's sweep into Saito's cerebellum over the synth break right at the end absolutely kills), so it's definitely deserving of the award.
There was a real lack of real action videos in this contest, even more than comedy. There were a bunch in the overflow, most of them pretty bad, but also Seth Hay's almost-great-before-it-killed-itself DBZ vid, my disqualified-for-gore Jin-Roh outing, and a fun Fatal Fury video using a song by the Kelly Family (mad respect to the Germanophile who put that one up) that really should have made the final cut. The lip and action synch were all on target, and the video hung together right to the end.

17. Fine Again
by: DOkool
video: Neon Genesis Evangelion; End of Evangelion
music: Fine Again [Seether]

This was a good video, but it definitely had an uphill battle for a few reasons. First, it was the eleventh pure drama video in the first 17, so it's quite possible that the audience was getting a little tired of drama. It should be pointed out that nothing from here to the end won more than experience class awards. Also, the contrast between the competently mastered End of Eva clips and the jumped-on-with-golf-cleats look of the TV series may have made an excellent case for the necessity of the Eva restoration project, but it can't have helped the video too much. It's still a good video, and worth tracking down, though.

18. Arjuna's Book of Days
by: *Lithe-Fider*
video: Earth Girl Arjuna
music: Book of Days [Enya]

At first I thought that the blurred, vaseline-lens look of this video was a really cool effect. Then it didn't stop, and I realized that the video probably had just been made with poor fidelity. The Japanese credits in a couple shots detracted from the video, and probably should have put it under the sanctions applied to videos with obvious subs. Another good idea that could have been instantiated a lot better than it was.

19. Searching
by: Grover [Cousin and I Productions]
video: Trigun
music: Superman [Five for Fighting]

This was probably the best of the four (!!) Cousin and I videos in the finals, though as a video (and Yet Another Drama Video) it's only a little above average. There's some really shameless lyric synch towards the start that made me think we had another MJ on our hands for a while (what the hell would that be, anyways? mexicanjunior junior?), but (un?)fortunately this trend was not sustained. Decent, but scratchy video fidelity as appears to be usual for this studio.

20. Anime Girls: Becoz' I Love You
by: Kayla Brink
video: various
music: Becoz' I Love You [Hitomi]

This video was amazing. It had everything: horrible pixellation, enough Japanese credits to make some in the audience suspect it was constructed entirely from downloaded OPs and EDs, and even a brief shot with an onscreen TV/VCR-type clock overlay. There were definitely worse videos in the overflow (the dreadful Drowning Pool/Eva and Britney Spears/DBZ ones come to mind), but there were a bunch of better ones as well. It's ok to fudge the numbers a little to make a more diverse contest, but just being the only dance video and the only video with jpop among the entries shouldn't have gotten this into the finals.

21. Oishii
by: Skyebox
video: Maho Tsukai Tai
music: Tasty [Ball In The House]

This video had a lot going for it. It was a slightly ecchi comedy video in a contest full of morbid drama, and the music was nothing like anything that the audience had yet heard. However, it was held back by lower video fidelity (looked like source was from older VHS captured at a smallish resolution)....and the fact that it had to compete against Tom. At some other contest, it might have had a chance at the comedy title.

22. I, Koshi Rikdo, do hereby give my permission to make Excel Saga into an anime music video
by: NeilPeartnoy
video: Excel Saga
music: Higher Ground [Red Hot Chili Peppers]

Greg (the creator) said it best on the panel: "At least it's timed well." The timing is impeccable, but the concept isn't always there, and there are a lot of unsynched moving mouths to distract. The video improves on rewatch, but his Lain video that was in the overflow is still better. Of course, since that was drama and this is comedy, the rest of the contest kind of dictated which made the finals.

23. Phemt
by: Maria Battaglia
video: Berserk
music: Bare Island [Hans Zimmer]

This video rocked me flat when it was on AWA Pro last fall. Nothing's changed. The setup and combination is perfectly nightmarish, and the videography fits the music like a glove. For now at least, this video pretty much app-kills "End of Berserk". If you haven't seen this for some reason, you're missing out.
Drama videos in Journeyman so far: 1/1

24. leave me cold
by: Kai Stromler
video: Black Jack
music: Five Finger Crawl [Danzig]

My video, so I can't really comment objectively, though it was about the bottom of the five videos in this experience caption. I definitely need to get a decent VCR from someplace that doesn't end in -mart, though; the audio levels were absolutely all over the place.
Drama videos in Journeyman so far: 2/2

25. You're Not Alone
by: James Hartwell
video: Now and Then, Here and There
music: Alone Down There [Modest Mouse]

At the "Behind the AMVs" panel, Pat (the contest coordinator) referred to this video as "the shootout in the kindergarden" due to the clips of kids shooting at one another, and made remarks as to how so much of Journeyman was so disturbing (viz these first three, plus the disqualified-for-gore ones Steve Pope and I had in overflow). I didn't find this too disturbing, just a damn good drama video. The grayscaled parts were really essential, and managed and integrated quite well.
Drama videos in Journeyman so far: 3/3

26. Missing
by: Maria Battaglia
video: Hoshi no Koe
music: Missing [Mami Ishizuka]

This was a very nice combination of light, soft video and a spare, beautiful instrumental piano track, for a nice romantic-tragic effect as opposed to the more twisted and dark stylings of the better part of the rest of the experience caption. This should have worked in its favor, but just wasn't enough in any case.
Drama videos in Journeyman so far: 4/4

27. The Pain of Memory (remaster)
by: Steve Pope
video: Trigun
music: When I Grow Up [Garbage]

Steve was robbed. This was a good video, and probably would have won this caption even if all the other videos didn't end in evil and/or despair (which this did not), but his Eels/Hakkenden video in the overflow was better by miles and would have won Best Drama in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, it included a brief cut of the back of a severed head. And so into the overflow....even though like my Jin-Roh video it was in obvious violation of the rules about "family-friendly" source and technically shouldn't have been shown at all. Moral victory for us!
Drama videos in Journeyman so far: 5/5

Tom really should have been in Journeyman as well, so this experience level wasn't as monolithic as it appears. However, it's a good way of showing how drama-dominated this contest was: 19 of 29 videos in the finals were pure drama, and most of the "action" videos in the finals had a major rather than minor dramatic component.

28. Yuji's Defense
by: RichLather
video: Blue Gender
music: The Defense [Bad Religion]

29. Mirage
by: TaranT
video: Serial Experiments: Lain
music: Mirage of Hope [Hemstock & Jennings] (some remix)


These were the only two Masters entries, and there couldn't be a more perfect contrast of the old-school and new-school styles, with some slightly unsettling indications for the future. In the red corner we have a video looking captured, even though it's from DVD (probably went to analog between Rich's house and the convention), using a title animated by hand. Its music track is vocal rock (ok, punk/hardcore, but I'm trying to be general here), and it is heavily focused on plot and pixel changes created by the original animators. In the blue corner we have a video ripped from DVDs of a show made without a single painted cel. The music track is non-vocal techno, and the emphasis is on feeling, atmosphere, and pixel changes created by the video editor. From a creator's perspective, one can see that these two videos were created with approximately equal effort and equal competence. Picking which is better, for anyone with experience and insight, is deadly tough. So you have a great old-school video up against a great new-school video, and for whatever reason, the audience picks the new-school video.

I like old-school stuff, and given all the great work that's been done with them, it'd be a shame to let those old-school kind of styles just fade out. But audiences like shiny things, and familiar things. TaranT's video was great, and there's no knock to be made against it, but its victory here shouldn't be the signal for the final die-off of old-school AMV or anything.

What's even weirder is that the two sources used in these two videos are from the same year, 1999. Just goes to show variety across the anime industry, which a few people still tend to think of as monolithic, and especially the effect that an AMV creator can have on a final product.

Other highlights from the overflow:
There was a Lain video that I didn't catch any information about focusing on the spiky nanomech-drug thing that was really cool, and also two more good ones that I haven't mentioned above, both comedy. One was Hand Maid May to a really bizarre song from Veggie Tales that would definitely have gotten into the finals, and maybe given Tom a fight if the creator had made it with the readily available DVD source instead of Internet encodes. Most of it was just Nanbara weirdness, but a lot of the lip synch (and there was a LOT of it) was done very well, and there was a ton of really surprising lyric synch as well. The other was a treatment of MXPX's cover of Aqua's "Barbie Girl" using Eva that was probably pushed down because the video quality was flat horrible, like third-gen-EP-fansub-level. However, this is a punk band doing an irreverent, balls-out cover of a crappy disco song. You can *do* lo-fi video on something like that and have it read as intentional (which it probably wasn't), and besides, the lipsynch was good and the overall video was pretty hilarious.

Unrelated: more people need more interesting titles. In this contest we have "Best. Title. Evar." (#22), but also more than a few that really suck. You can't get much less imaginative than #1.

--K
Shin Hatsubai is a Premiere-free studio. Insomni-Ack is habitually worthless.
Death... is Just The Beginning | so essentially it works like bacon
Coelem - Tenebral Presence single now freely available
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Kai Stromler
 
Joined: 12 Jul 2002
Location: back in the USSA

Postby dokool » Mon Apr 21, 2003 8:45 pm

Kai Stromler wrote:
15. Father's Pawn
by: Neelick
video: Neon Genesis Evangelion
music: Chop Suey [System of a Down]

There's got to be a good version of this anime/song combo out there somewhere. This one was pretty well put together, but the video fidelity was complete crap, and being as it was an Eva Chop Suey video, it didn't stand a chance.
Maybe Neelick will remake this one once the Eva remaster series is out so we have a shot at a decent version of the combination.....or maybe someone else will remake theirs. Same diff.


Yes, there IS a good version of this anime/song combo out there: Final Genesis by Ikasu. He doesn't get enough props for this one.

Kai Stromler wrote:
17. Fine Again
by: DOKool
video: Neon Genesis Evangelion; End of Evangelion
music: Fine Again [Seether]

This was a good video, but it definitely had an uphill battle for a few reasons. First, it was the eleventh pure drama video in the first 17, so it's quite possible that the audience was getting a little tired of drama. It should be pointed out that nothing from here to the end won more than experience class awards. Also, the contrast between the competently mastered End of Eva clips and the jumped-on-with-golf-cleats look of the TV series may have made an excellent case for the necessity of the Eva restoration project, but it can't have helped the video too much. It's still a good video, and worth tracking down, though.

[/quote]

When I saw my position on the ballot, I nearly cried, not just because I was 17th, but because I was a mere two videos AFTER another Evangelion vid. As far as the audience "getting a little tired of drama", Fine Again recieved 7 Drama votes (all from me and family/friends) and 8 Action votes (and I have no idea where the hell they came from). Yes, the video quality of the Eva TV series definately worked against me, which is why it will be quite refreshing to see my next vid. Thanks for the thumbs-up, though.

Oh, and in a stunning turn of events, Third Lens Open Productions <i>will</i> be making an attempt to send something to Otakon this year. Be afraid. Be <u>very</u> afraid.

-DOKool
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dokool
Sir Gaijin Smash
 
Joined: 31 Jul 2002
Location: Tokyo, Japan

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