Cowboy Bebop [Wild is the Wind (Live) — Nina Simone]

[yearzero]

I have been working on an AMV for a little while now and just finished it up recently, I thought now would be a good time to post since the Netflix adaptation is coming out this week. I had been listening to Nina Simone's album "Wild is the Wind" a lot over the last couple of years and that song in particular had some of the deep sentiments of longing and chance that run through Cowboy Bebop and made me think they would be a good fit.

I had done a test of this AMV about a year or so ago, but hadn't re-watched the show in it's entirety at that point (only up to episode 5) so my initial trial had taken the fall from the church window by Spike and hoped to intercut that with shots from all points of the show and I had done a rough test of this with the limited episodes I had on hand. I only mention this because I ended up using that whole sequence 2:26 - 3:58 without any of my own edits (except for a change in the shot before the church window exploding). I made all the cuts to the shots on my timeline with the intention of moving them around but it just fit too well for me to mess with, just thought y'all would enjoy that info.

[CrackTheSky]

Bizarrely, seasons and I were talking about you only a few days before you posted this video, wondering if you'd ever come back. Good timing!

As for the video, I like it, although there are elements I wish had been done maybe a little differently -- for example, there seems to be a discontinuity in the chronology of your scene selection where Spike and Vicious are fighting in the first half of the video, the grenade goes off (implying Vicious dies) and then you show them fighting again near the end of the video; the cuts to the title screens at random points throughout the video also kind of interrupted the flow and mood when they popped up. Overall I just kind of wish the video had more structure and a clearer narrative thread running through it.

That said, I still enjoyed this one a lot. The mood is spot-on, and while it can feel jumpy and random in terms of scene selection, you clearly hit on the themes of loss and longing (as you mentioned) that run through the music. I also appreciate the choice to edit to a song like this; jazz rarely gets the AMV treatment so I'm always happy when people use it in their videos, and I think you did the song justice overall. Good work!

[Megamom]

Bro Nina Simone is my god and your AMV is my gospel 🥰