Within the Self

[devilmaykickass]

Well, I've never announced a video of mine, so here goes:

http://www.animemusicvideos.org/members ... hp?v=61317

Anime: Angel Sanctuary
Song: Natalie Imbruglia - Smoke


After 2 months, it's finished...

I made this video for a few different reasons, but the main two are:

1) I'm sick to death of nothing but Angel Sanctuary romance videos. (not to diss anyone who's made them)
2) I've been waiting for someone to do this, but it seems like no one ever will.

This video is basically a potrayal of Alexiel's view from within Setsuna. She can't come out by will, but does come out when Setsuna goes through certain situations. Alexiel watches from within and see's what's going on with Setsuna all the time. She haunts his dreams, and she reacts to Alexiel, and that which threaten's Setsuna's life. Basically, it's supposed to be Alexiel singing to Setsuna from within, but Setsuna refuses to hear her, because that's the kind of person he is.

Lyrical Analysis:

"My lullabye hung out to dry" - Setsuna's "lullabye" is refferencing Sara, the #1 thing in his life. She calms him, acts as a restraint on his violent behavior, and is the only person he really gives a damn about. Being "hung out to dry" is reffering to when the flyers and news was spread blatantly about his love for her, and the entire exploitation.

"What's up with that? It's over" - A certain curiousity as to why people can be so cruel and why they felt the need to do such. "It's over" reffers to his secret love for his sister no longer being a kept secret.

"Where are you dad? Mom's looking sad" - Refferencing to the fact that we never see Setsuna's dad, and the fact that Setsuna's mother is scared of him and basically hates him, thus giving a saddened look in his prescense.

"What's up with that? It's dark in here" - A curiousity to how and why his mother would hate him. "It's dark in here" is reffering to lonelyness from emotional abandonment from his mother and his father being absent from the scene altogether.

"Why? Bleeding is breathing, you're hiding underneath the smoke in the room" - A curiousity to why Setsuna takes what he gets rather than try to change anything. "Bleeding is breathing" is a refference to the fact that work is required for what you want. "Hiding underneath the smoke in the room" is smybolic of Setsuna's betrayal of how he really feels, hiding from facts, his problems, and himself.

"Try. Bleeding is believing. I used to." - Telling Setsuna to try working for a change, from Alexiel's wittness point of view.

"My mouth is dry. Forgot how to cry." - Refferening to Setsuna's denial of feelings, and acting the opposite way.

"What's up with that? You're hurting me." - Curiousity as to why Rosiel is heartless and relentless to Setsuna, when all he's trying to do is live.

"I'm running fast. Can't hide the past." - Reffering to when Setsuna's conciousness left and Alexiel came awake seeing his friend be slaughted by Rosiel, and recalling the past with him.

"What's up with that? You're pushing me." - Reffering to when Setsuna finds out who his friend actually is, and how it pushes him to anger and distruction.

"I saw you crawling to the door." - Reffering to Setsuna's increased oscricism.

"I saw you falling on the floor." - Refferencing when Alexiel finally wittnesses Setsuna's death by the hand of his friend, willingly, after she has left his body.

Technical Crap:

I really didn't think I was ever going to finish this, but I did, and I'm pretty happy with the result. I started on December 1st, finished Februrary 2. I did alot of stuff I've never done before in this video, and I did ALOT of tedious frame by frame editing. Also, EVERYTHING in this video is from the Angel Sanctuary DVD...everything. Some of it may not be recognizable because of heavy editing. Compression was a pain in the ass, because I'm on dialup, and it was damn near impossible to get it under 75MB without looking like complete crap. Mainly the scenes where the city is being distroyed and where it's raining were the problem. This was one of the rare occassions where MPEG actually gave a better result than anything else.

Hardware:

Angel Sanctuary DVD (American Release)
Compaq DVD Drive
Gateway Essential, 566MHZ, 190 RAM (yes, this is what I worked with, believe it or not)

Software:

Adobe Premiere 6.0
Adobe Photoshop 7.0
Express Rip
TMPEG


Oh, and all the following people helped me bigtime without knowing it. In no way could I have finished without them:

Absolut3 Destiny
AMV_4000
Aznfs
Bum
Voices_of_Ryan
Zarxax

Anyway, I really hope you enjoy it. You may not get certain parts of it unless you've seen the anime. This is also possibly the ultimate spoiler video, so keep that in mind aswell.[/url]