main menu

• Members Main Page
• Search for AMVs
• Forum
• How-To Guides
• Site FAQ
• About us
• Login

Information

• Member: DriftRoot
• Title: Sephiration Anxiety
• Premiered: 2007-09-10
• Categories:
  • Drama
  • Character Profile
• Song:
  • Genesis That's All
• Anime:
  • Final Fantasy (VII): Advent Children (movie)
• Comments: Comments as seen on 2007-09-10 10:04:07:
  
  Software used:
  Premiere Pro
  Photoshop
  VirtualDubMod and various other AMVapp tools
  After Effects, Illustrator (bumpers only)
  
  Let me get something out of the way first: this AMV was made for only one reason, the scene where Cloud crash lands on Kadaj, Sephiroth materializes and Cloud thinks “Oh %*#@!!” The idea was born the split second the song woke me up one morning after a long week of struggling to rip decent Advent Children footage (for an entirely different project, which was put on hold for several months thanks to that incident). Although originally I planned for “Sephiration Anxiety” to be a satire/parody, not dramatic at all, some accidents along the way transformed the AMV into its current state.
  
  Still with me? Great, now I’m going to mention a few things that I think make it worth watching:
  
  1. I’ve yet to find another standalone AMV that uses this song, which is a shame, because it’s a ton of fun to work with.
  2. This is not a rehash of Cloud and Sephiroth’s fight, yet one or the other is in almost every scene, so chances are pretty good you haven’t seen their relationship presented this way before.
  3. This AMV was meant to be. J/k, but if I was more superstitious, I’d maybe think so. Several incredible coincidences helped me take this project in a direction I never intended and a flakier person would probably swear it was destiny. I don’t want to fling spoilage about, but 99% of the Omnislash sequence was mistakenly dropped onto the timeline exactly where it remains to this day. I never meant to use it, I was just trying to get it out of the way for something else. In point of fact, it was very hard to resist rehashing the fight once I found out that the Kadaj/Cloud/Sephiroth footage and my music synched almost perfectly across the board. (I’m not kidding - it’s so perfect it’s scary. Try it yourself if you don’t believe me!). Same thing with Aerith – I never planned on HER being there, but she just kind of sat down and made herself comfortable.
  
  I could get into how well the lyrics fit Cloud and Sephiroth’s overall relationship, but I won’t, because that’s making this AMV a lot more pretentious than I ever intended. This was just a fun project done solely for my own enjoyment and if the lyrics wound up working nicely…great!
  That said, my biggest regret is that the song had to be so brutally shortened – it’s actually a love song and two big blocks of the lyrics (But I love you more than I wanted to/ There's no point in trying to pretend/ There's been no-one who makes me feel like you do/Say we'll be together ‘til the end.) had to be cut for this reason. Cloud and Sephiroth are not into yaoi, I’m thinking. This slicing and dicing severely limited the time I had to present their confrontation. Trust me, I would have loved to work in more of the fight scenes and some other visual commentary on what Cloud’s fighting for, but there just wasn’t space. I also didn’t want the AMV to degenerate into a bunch of random - if cool - fight scenes.
  
  Best memory of making this AMV: discovering that what was in my head could be translated onto the screen. I didn’t really have to compromise on any of the big scenes – I was able to do what I wanted to do.
  Worst memory: it’s a tie between that wretched flame sequence (trying to get Sephiroth’s hair to swing the right way at just the right moment while juggling how far he got from the “camera,” where the flames were and when/how the three black fades made logical progression to full black) and the part I wasted many hours on for naught - where Sephiroth smirks at Cloud after materializing. There was never enough footage to do this scene properly and, in the last week of this project, I decided on a cop-out that negated all my previous work.
  
  One last thing, I suppose I should also state that this is my first (finished) AMV. And no, I’m not going to mention how long I worked on this project because it’s embarrassing.
  
  Lyrics:
  Just as I thought it was going alright,
  I find out that I'm wrong when I thought I was right
  It’s always the same, it's just a shame, that's all.
  
  I could say day, you'd say night,
  Tell me it's black when I know that it's white.
  It’s always the same, it's just a shame, that's all.
  
  I could leave, but I won't go, though my heart might tell me so.
  I can't feel a thing from my head down to my toes.
  So why does it always seem to be,
  Me looking at you, you looking at me?
  It’s always the same, it's just a shame, that's all.
  
  Turning me on, turning me off,
  Making me feel like I want too much.
  Living with you is just putting me through it all of the time.
  Running around staying out all night,
  Taking it all instead of taking one bite.
  Living with you is just putting me through it all of the time.
  
  I could leave but I won't go,
  it'd be easier I know.
  I can't feel a thing from my head down to my toes.
  But why does it always seem to be,
  Me looking at you, you looking at me?
  It’s always the same, just a shame, that's all.