Have We Lost Ourselves? :: (Trigun - Meant to Live)

[babaL00000]

Video: Have We Lost Ourselves? (Preview)
Category: Action, Drama, Serious
Anime: Trigun
Song: Meant to Live
Artist: Switchfoot
Creator: babaL00000

This is my first time submitting a video and even the first time asking anyone besides my friends and family to view one. I haven't created a video since 2005 but before that I created about 7 or so in a 5 year period. I consider myself to be sub-amateur, but I am still proud of what I've done and this has always been a hobby very close to my heart. I'm very impressed with what I have seen posted by others on the site so far so I guess I'm looking for constructive criticism and advice. I'll also take any compliments I can get as well! Please be gentle and I hope you enjoy it.

I hope to become an active member and sponsor of these forums and site. And maybe I can help with some web development at some point (I saw an "ad" for this earlier).

Thanks!
Fise (babaL00000)

PS - I no longer use the hotmail address shown in the video, so don't bother sending anything there.

[x_rex30]

I watched half the video and wanted to give it a chance but it seemed to repeat the same mistakes.

All I saw you trying to do was match beats and I guess you were trying to match mood but I didn't see it. I couldn't connect the footage to the audio.

Not that good mood sync and irrelevant non matching scenes.

Also the subs. I over look it mostly but others find it quite distracting.

You have a lot to learn but don't be discouraged.

2/5

Edit: OK I decided to finish it to see if you do something different. Some alright mood sync here and there and you matched some lyrics which made it more interesting. The part that says "eyes half open" and showing the guys eye didn't really work imo.

[babaL00000]

Hi x_rex30,
Wow, thanks for the quick response! And thanks for going back and finishing the rest of it.

You're right, I was indeed going for a lot of beat matching. That was one of the things I found enjoyable in AMVs at the time, and I tried to incorporate it in my own.
Matching mood is harder to explain. It's definitely an area I have plenty of room to improve upon. I don't recall everything exactly, but here's some points I was trying to hit back then:

There may be spoilers in here so I am going to do it this way..

Spoiler :

The general theme is the fact that man was originally intended to have Eden, but ends up with a world quite the opposite.
1. The falling apple reminds me of man's fall from grace (Adam and Eve's apple)
2. Wolfwood (a man of God no less!) immediately wastes the life of the little boy Beeb (who was under control of the Gung-Ho Gun Zazie), without looking for a way to save him first... something that happened frequently enough through the series but this particular example stuck with me emotionally. It really emphasized the contrast between Vash and Wolfwood.
3. Caine the Longshot doesn't even think about it. Suicide is the only choice. What kind of world leads a man to this?
4. The assassination of Legato... completely against the way Vash was meant to live.
5. Of course I had a section on Wolfwood's troubled childhood.
6. And of course a world where two brothers can end up as mortal enemies is a sad one indeed. (Insert reference to Cain and Abel as well as Romulus and Remus)
7. The part with Knives snatching the spider always really got me. Vash's belief was that we could indeed all live peacefully. Why was nature designed such that there must be a predator and a prey? Is this really the only way it could be? I remember I had to include the bit about the spider because it really spelled out that question which the series left in me.

Of course, my explanation's goal is not to make excuses for why I failed to emotionally connect the audio to the video but rather to encourage feedback as to some ideas of how I could have made those connections happen. I really wanted to take what hit me from the series and point that out to my viewers. I think one main issue I see is, maybe I don't match mood on a lyrical basis? I basically played clips in a disorderly fashion in attempt to really hit the theme home. In other words, I seemed to revisit parts of the plot that match the overall message of the song, and not the individual lyrics. Would you say this makes sense? Would you say there is a difference between "theme" and "mood" ? I guess I was looking to touch upon philosophy more than emotion? For ongoing mood I tried to match that based on the intensity of the instrumentation in the audio. I don't know if that was the right approach.

Haha yes! Subs in AMVs bother me too. Unfortunately I worked with what I had at the time and I tried to only include clips with subs when I felt I absolutely had to. But duly noted, thank you.

Thanks again and I look forward to more responses.

EDIT: Oh and I also wanted to mention that what I really enjoy about AMVs is how well the audio flows with the video. It's hard to describe I guess, it's at a very primitive level of why humans find certain things aesthetically pleasing. I know a video does this well when the next time I hear that song, be it years later, I imagine the video playing even then. How can I achieve this?!

[Knowname]

Yeah, very specific things like philosophy is typically lost on this crowd. Thanks for showing your enthusiasm though!

[babaL00000]

Hi Knowname,
That's good to know too, thanks!
And hey if you can't be enthusiastic about a hobby, why bother right?