Video Information

Information

  • Member: Kusoyaro
  • Studio: Kusoyaro Productions
  • Title: Melatonin
  • Premiered: 2003-08-13
  • Categories:
  • Song:
    • Spiritualized Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space
  • Anime:
  • Participation:
  • Comments: The video was borne purely out of love for the song. I wanted to make something both deeply moving, yet also simply comforting. The song accomplishes both perfectly, so I wanted the video to be an accurate visual accompaniment to the music. I'd never tried editing to such a repetitive song before, so this was an interesting experience. I did it in a marathon 2 weeks, the fastest I've completed an AMV in years (unless you count a short, silly video I did in a day).

    The idea was to make it visually rich and full of effects and layers, but without being gawdy and flashy. Feathered masks to blur out the edges of clips seemed like a good way to get multiple clips onscreen. It also "softened" the effect of having too many things to look at at once. Editing the video was mostly a nightmare of motion, zoom, and transparency settings. Mostly, I tried to get the background scenes in first, and worked on the smaller clips afterwards. There is no overarching scheme I used to decide what went into the background and what went into the small, feathered clips -- sometimes they were meant to contrast, sometimes they were two different scenes that are similar or connected in some way, sometimes there are parallel threads of action/plot onscreen together, etc.

    There is not much story or arc in this video, though it hopefully picks up in intensity near the end. I suppose, if the video is about anything, it's about being stuck in that mindset that love is everything, that love conquers all, and then losing that love and not being able to move on and face reality. In that sense, I guess, it can be seen as a character profile of Shuji, though a fair bit of it applies to Chise as well. Cheesy and trite perhaps, but my goal was to make a mood video, not to tell a story or express a moral.

    In general, I like the way the video turned out, though I don't like the fact that it lulls a bit near the middle...but in my own defense, the song does the same. For a repetitive song that starts out slow, levels out slow, and then doesn't really pick up until near the end, I think I did the best I could. The star backgrounds I used occasionally ("drawn" in Photoshop and "animated" in Premiere) were partly there for lack of anything interesting to do with the footage.

    The title refers to a hormone produced by the human body that helps regulate sleep. It can also be taken in pill form as a natural sleeping pill. So the title's sort of a self-deprecating joke, and sort of not. That's all I'll say. I just know I'm asking for it when I have "title" text in the video (from the woman's spoken words at the beginning) that is different from the actual title of the video :P

    Lyrics - they're kind of hard to understand in the song, and every internet site has a different version (the liner notes have no lyrics), but this is the version I've cobbled together from what I think is right from all the internet versions:

    Ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space

    All I want in life's a little bit of love
    To take the pain away
    Getting strong today
    A giant step each day
    All I want in life's a little bit of love
    To take the pain away
    Getting strong today
    A giant step each day
    I've been told
    Only fools rush in
    Only fools rush in
    But I don't believe
    I don't believe
    I could still fall in love with you

    I will love you till I die
    And I will love you all the time
    So please put your sweet hand in mine
    And float in space and drift in time
    All my time until I die
    We'll float in space, just you and I
    And I will love you till I die
    And I will love you all the time
    So please put your sweet hand in mine
    And float in space and drift in time
    All my time until I die
    We'll float in space, just you and I

    Baby I love you to death
    I guess that's what you get
    And I don't know where we are all going to
    Life don't get stranger than this
    It is what it is
    And I don't know where we are all going to

    I will love you till I die
    And I will love you all the time
    Everything happens today
    And we're out here in space
    And I don't know where we are all going to
    Baby I love you to death
    I guess that's what you get
    And I don't know where we are all going to



    The video will go online after it debuts at AWA in late September (and after I pay off my overdue pledges :P)

Opinions (13)

  • Orig
  • Visual
  • Sound
  • Synch
  • Lip
  • Effects
  • Effort
  • Re-View
  • Overall
  • 8.82
  • 9.36
  • 9.64
  • 9.36
  • 9.00
  • 9.45
  • 8.45
  • 9.36

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