main menu

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

Information

• Member: DriftRoot
• Title: 'Bustin
• Premiered: 2008-02-25
• Categories:
  • Comedy
  • Other
  • Parody
  • Fun
• Song:
  • Ray Parker Jr. Ghostbusters
• Anime:
  • Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII (PSP)
  • Final Fantasy (VII): Advent Children (movie)
  • Final Fantasy 7 (VII): Dirge of Cerberus (PS2)
• Participation:
  • Anime Boston 2008, AB 2008 AMV Contest (2008-03-21)
  • Sakura-Con 2008, Sakura-Con AMV/OVA Contest (2008-03-28)
  • Tekkoshocon VI, Tekkoshocon VI AMV Contest (2008-04-11)
  • Anime Central 2008, Anime Central 2008 AMV Contest (2008-05-16)
  • Anime Expo 2008, Anime Expo 2008 - Anime Music Video Contest (2008-07-03)
• Comments: Comments as seen on 2008-02-23 20:28:20:
  
  Yes, this is a 100%, no-holds-barred fun, comedy Advent Children AMV. It doesn't even fit into any other categories, except maybe "other," which I suppose one could define as things that make you go "huh?!" 'Bustin is intended to be a hands-down, in-your-face FUN Advent Children AMV, that's it - not an action flick, not a soap opera, not a badly lip-synced collection of one-liners that passes as a comedy AMV because people can get away with that in this AMV Hell world we live in - just a FUN Advent Children AMV. The Internet could certainly use more of them...
  
  ...but I digress. If this is about as far as you're going to read, then I need to quickly state that I managed to accomplish everything that I wanted with this AMV, whether it was a certain joke, a certain scene or a certain effect that, often, seemed an impossibility. It took a very long time and a lot of work, but I managed to pull it off. And that's all I really care about with this AMV: that I was able to take my idea and turn it into reality.
  
  So how did I come up with this idea? Well, all I've ever wanted to do with Advent Children is turn it upside down, give it a good shake and see what falls out. Not many people do this, not many people even think it's worth doing, but I am determined to prove that, while AC has a very bad reputation for inspiring cookie-cutter AMVs, it doesn’t have to be that way. AC is NOT an AMV wasteland. Yes, its action/drama angle has been exhaustively covered in a rather narrow way, but its potential in other genres is rarely exploited. What this means is that there is still a lot of mileage to be gotten out of the footage if we can just get past how seriously it takes itself. In fact, as I hope 'Bustin illustrates, this very seriousness makes a fantastic springboard for all kinds of humorous scenarios, because it’s quite outrageous to manhandle such material in the first place.
  
  Ok, so I turned it upside and shook it. What happened then? Why Ghostbusters? ‘Bustin was one of several Advent Children shorts I had slated for an AC AMV compilation (using 1980's pop songs) when it got the green light as a standalone project because I felt I could sustain the damage and a coherent storyline for the entire song. I sat down to work with a handful of memories about the corny, self-deprecating humor found in the original Ghostbusters film, but it wasn’t until after I watched the movie again – some 20 hours of editing later - that I learned how closely I had duplicated some of its classic scenes. I was quite pleased about this because they provide a nice bunch of tie-ins with the movie for those that recognize them. The biggest surprise for me, though, was the movie's use of journalistic imagery - I'd gone into this project intending to do the exact same thing on a much bigger scale, but hadn't consciously been aware that Ghostbusters had set precedent. As you can imagine, I was more than pleased about this - I was overjoyed: more tie-ins!
  
  Because my concept depended heavily upon getting the most laughs out of AC that I possibly could, when it came down to a choice between making an action scene and making a funny scene, I deferred to the latter. It's extremely easy to be sucked into AC's allure and I had to restrain myself more than a few times when I got too hyped about making things look cool because, 9 times out of 10, it was at the expense of comedy. Fortunately, I got a freer pass to use AC's natural inclinations as the AMV progressed, because the Ghostbusters movie itself becomes more involved, more serious as it goes along - the plot falls into place one chunk of cheese at a time until things come down to the wire and you're cheering the guys on when they turn into bonifide heroes.
  
  And speaking of cheese...I tried to be cheddar-like with my editing not because I'm a fan of such things, but because it's part of the Ghostbusters experience. I suppose you could say the concept forced my hand in the editing department, which is what a concept should do. This AMV is actually not very representative the kind of editing I like or typically would choose to do, which partly explains why it took me so long. (What's in the credits was my little stab at instant self-gratification, as far as that goes, and my train of thought was basically "To hell with 'Bustin, I'm going to throw together something that's FUN to work on.)
  
  So how long DID this take me? I'm darn slow, I can work on a 5 second scene for 20-30 hours without batting an eye and without winding up with anything decent. This AMV took me four months and a little over 200 hours to make: about 160 hours pure video editing and about 60 for pre-/post-editing and graphic design. Taking into account my above statement about 5 second scenes, let me say that there were four or five scenes of this length that took me about that many hours, so if you figure that I spent over 100 hours on a whopping one minute of footage that contains little or no effects whatsoever, that's pretty crazy. But it also makes the time I spent on the other 3 minutes of the AMV not so terribly bad (for me).
  
  Despite the many hours I spent creating great-looking graphics, it's an unfortunate fact that, no matter how crisp and clean they looked prior to compression, there was no way to keep them that way in the MP4. Red in particular took a real dive (I belatedly learned that that color does not render well...somebody needs to fix that, pronto). I also added some deliberate noise to the footage during one scene, but it was almost completely wiped out in the compression process...very annoying.
  
  Lyrics? We need lyrics? Oh all right, this song is a poster child for bad grammar...
  If there's something strange in your neighborhood
  Who you gonna call?
  Ghostbusters!
  If there's something weird and it don't look good
  Who you gonna call?
  Ghostbusters!
  
  I ain't afraid of no ghost
  I ain't afraid of no ghost
  
  If you're seeing things running through your head
  Who can you call?
  Ghostbusters!
  
  An invisible man sleeping in your bed
  Oh, who you gonna call?
  Ghostbusters!
  
  I ain't afraid of no ghost
  I ain't afraid of no ghost
  
  Who you gonna call?
  Ghostbusters!
  
  If you're all alone, pick up the phone
  And call
  Ghostbusters!
  
  I ain't afraid of no ghost
  I hear it likes the girls
  I ain't afraid of no ghost
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
  
  Who you gonna call?
  Ghostbusters!
  
  If you've had a dose of a freaky ghost
  You'd better call
  Ghostbusters!
  
  Let me tell you something
  Bustin' makes me feel good
  
  I ain't afraid of no ghost
  I ain't afraid of no ghost
  
  Don't get caught alone, oh no
  
  Ghostbusters!
  
  When it comes through your door
  Unless you just want some more
  I think you better call
  Ghostbusters!
  
  Who you gonna call
  Ghostbusters!....]
  
  Bustin Fun Facts:
  - The dates which appear on the funny sauce are accurate - to a point. They represent the month and day on which that particular graphic was originally created.
  
  - I did have permission to use the nicknames of the two individuals who "appear" in this AMV.
  
  - USA Today makes a number of very prominent appearances in the first Ghostbusters movie. It really amused me to see bright blue things appear in the original Advent Children footage during the downtown attack scene.
  
  - The Ghostbusters symbol is not consistently left- or right-facing even on movie memorabilia.
  
  - "Inquirer" is properly spelled "Enquirer" so no, that was not a mistake on my part.
  
  - I have no idea what TNN stands for. I ripped off the Dirge of Cerberus FMV, if you're wondering why it looks so very familiar.
  
  - Credit for "We TOLD you not to cross the Lifestream" goes to Amo-Chan. It's pretty funny that I totally missed this joke myself, given that I was desperate to work in something about "don't cross the streams," but there ya go. :)