Introducing Classic Rock Productions

WesW · Post by **WesW** » Mon Feb 25, 2008 1:16 am

Hello, everyone. My name is Wes, and I have just posted the first of what I hope are many vids on the brand-new Classic Rock Productions page.
http://www.animemusicvideos.org/members ... _id=665869

My first vid, Tour of Duty, is a somber piece about the horrors of war, with a similarity to the current conflicts in Iraq and, especially, Afghanistan.
I realize that this vid isn't edited as tightly or quickly as a normal one around here, but it wasn't really intended for a typical AMV enthusiast. It was made with people in mind who might not know much about anime or amv's, but who could relate to the experiences of the characters. Therefore, I didn't want quick edits to overshadow the overall mood of the song and its lyrics. I also wanted to allow the tragedy which unfolds to fully develop at the pace of the song, and not worry so much about beat-synching and the like.
I personally think it's quite effective overall. I mean, if you don't get choked up when Grey (the woman) dies, then... I don't know.

WesW · Post by **WesW** » Thu Feb 28, 2008 11:10 am

Deleted, since it references old version of Butch and Sundance, which I removed from the post above.

Autraya · Post by **Autraya** » Thu Feb 28, 2008 7:48 pm

much typing there o.o and not your typical linkinballZ first video, seems like you thought allot about what you were going to make and what series would fit best (which is in itself a rarity for 'new' editors.) plus err "different" song choices.

did you use fansubs?
I suppose I'm asking "are there subtitles in the WMM vid?"

WesW · Post by **WesW** » Thu Feb 28, 2008 11:33 pm

Autraya wrote:much typing there o.o and not your typical linkinballZ first video, seems like you thought allot about what you were going to make and what series would fit best (which is in itself a rarity for 'new' editors.) plus err "different" song choices.

did you use fansubs?
I suppose I'm asking "are there subtitles in the WMM vid?"

Well, I'm 38 yrs. old, so I had better not be making Narutard vids.

And all my vids are from dvds.
(I do sometimes use downloads to find the scenes I want to use, since it's so much easier to use a media player to skim through the episodes and mark down the time. I would think that this would be a popular method, myself, since it saves you from having to rip entire eps just to find the few seconds you are looking for.)

Btw, do wmv's have some huge, awful rep around here? Is that why a few people have given my vids 1's and 2's?
Though I have downloaded over 600 vids from the Org over the last three years, I never got into the technical side of things before I sat down last week to start making my own vids.

As for song choices, I realize they aren't current top 40, but that's why I named my studio Classic Rock Prod. These are the songs I heard growing up, and they are the ones I have come to like the best as an adult. (Though I have really gotten into j-pop recently. Anyone here like Sachi Tainaka?)
I realize that most young people aren't too interested in listening to their parents' music, but for those willing to give them a chance, I think I have some great ideas, and you'll be seeing the anime you are familiar with paired with some of the greatest songs ever made, many of which you might never have heard before.

Right now, I am working on a vid featuring Bryan Adam's Summer of 69, set to Beck, and I have plenty more ideas that I have been hatching these last few years. Here are some:
Carry On My Wayward Son, Kansas, Wolf's Rain
Jumpin' Jack Flash, The Rolling Stones, Hellsing Ultimate
Time in a Bottle, Jim Croche, Chrono Crusade
Live and Let Die, Paul McCatrney, Cowboy Bebop (Spike)
Everytime I Think of You, The Babys, Ai Yori Aoshi
Paradise City, Guns-n-Roses, Black Lagoon
Conan the Barbarian soundtrack, Berserk (Barbarian Symphony)

Autraya · Post by **Autraya** » Fri Feb 29, 2008 7:57 pm

ok I've watched them both.

some comments:
1.)You need to deinterlace to find out how Read <a href=http://www.a-m-v.org/guides/avtech31/>ErMaC & AbsoluteDestiny's Friendly AMV Guides</a>
2.) the GITS video flowed much better than your FMP one with better internal sync
3.) the FMP vid needed more transitions fade in and out/crossfades esp considering the piano music at the begining, a softer approach makes it easier for the view instead of a jolting scene change,and scene changes didn't line up with the song, a good way i find to know when to change scene to close my eyes and hear the majour beats or ends of each verse and that's where it needs to change.
4.)lip flap, it looks like you are trying to lipsync but mouths are just moving too fast, i'm the first to admit that i such at lip sync, for these videos it's probably best not to.

about wmv: often this container indicates a WMM user who doesn't know what they are doing (although as more youtube people are getting vegas for me i'm starting to attribute it to that program too) WMM users traditionally make bad vids, now that's not to say that there aren't a few gems out there but they an infintesimal minority. So with the a-m-v.org horribly high standards on "what makes a good video" they will "generally" steer clear of WMM users and their vids. I think that many people are forgetting their roots :\ I used WMM for years until i got told about "Read <a href=http://www.a-m-v.org/guides/avtech31/>ErMaC & AbsoluteDestiny's Friendly AMV Guides</a>" and that was like a lightbulb going on ;D

anyway not a bad efort at all for a first video and by your second vid you are showing much improvement. If you want some more feedback you can head to the opinion exchange forum and see if there are any takers

WesW · Post by **WesW** » Sat Mar 01, 2008 11:47 pm

Thanks for all the advice. I agree with all of it, too.
I've found out how difficult it is to keep a naive perspective, meaning that of someone who hasn't seen the vid, after you have had the idea for so long, and have been working with the same scenes over and over.
For the MFP vid, it was just impossible not to have scenes with lip flap, though, since there were only three eps to work with on a 6-minute song (I actually cut out the first 50 seconds, which had the helicopter noise sloooooowly fading in.) I'm sure I could go back and tighten up some of the scene changes, but there were times when I felt that it was better to let the scene play out normally rather than make a cut which might interrupt the flow of the action. I may have done that too often.
There was no attempt at lip-synch in the FMP vid. There was a scene early in the GitS vid where I planned on using audio from the show, only to find that my ripping program had ripped the Japanese voice track. (I now know how to rip the English track, but I decided instead to insert subtitles that I think are quite funny, at least if you are old enough to know who Jessica Rabbit is.)
I have been working on the GitS vid almost non-stop since I posted it, making it tighter, but mostly studying the ErMac guide and trying to figure out how to deinterlace. It turns out that the show is a mixture of progressive and interlaced, and is apparently extremely difficult to work with. About all Ive done from morning 'till night the last couple of days is read and experiment with different programs and settings. Maybe I can find some stuff in the forums.

YouTube · Post by **Kionon** » Sun Mar 02, 2008 1:55 am

I realize that most young people aren't too interested in listening to their parents' music, but for those willing to give them a chance, I think I have some great ideas, and you'll be seeing the anime you are familiar with paired with some of the greatest songs ever made, many of which you might never have heard before.

Way to make someone 13 years your junior feel old. Rolling Stones, sure, but the idea of my parents listening to def leppard or Guns and Rose is just too funny to imagine (my father was born 1946, my mother was born in 1952). The majority of your music was way past their teenage years.

Not really relevant, I suppose, however somewhat amusing. I'm glad to see an older editor comes in a newbie. Also glad to see you using rather classic stuff. Surely isn't my tastes, which run more towards anti-new wave of the late eighties and early nineties, like The Smiths, The Cure, The Pixies... But I definitely have my favorites, and Paradise City is certainly one of them.

Autraya · Post by **Autraya** » Sun Mar 02, 2008 2:05 am

WesW wrote: but I decided instead to insert subtitles that I think are quite funny, at least if you are old enough to know who Jessica Rabbit is.)

I always wanted that red dress

Tono_Fyr · Post by **Tono_Fyr** » Sun Mar 02, 2008 4:05 am

All the stuff you've listed is Top Forty, it was just Top Forty in the eighties (and a bit in the seventies, like Kansas).

I'm not even twenty yet, and my CD collection includes stuff like Dio, Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Queensryche, 1980s Metallica, Judas Priest, Rush, Pink Floyd, and a Myriad of other "Old Bands". There's lots of new stuff I could list off that you never would have heard of but, y'know, that'd be a lot more off topic than I want to go.

Deinterlacing will be an issue until you find a way to just work with the straight .vob files that you get off of your DVDs. Trust me, I battled with it for a while.

As far attributing .wmv to Vegas, yeah, I've seen idiots do that, but that's just it, they're idiots. The only time I ever used WMV was for Previewing projects. The final can easily be pumped out as an uncompressed file, and then compressed using virtual dub.

I really want to get back into editing.... but that requires me getting back into anime, which is kind of tough.

WesW · Post by **WesW** » Sun Mar 02, 2008 5:05 am

Kionon wrote: Way to make someone 13 years your junior feel old. Rolling Stones, sure, but the idea of my parents listening to def leppard or Guns and Rose is just too funny to imagine (my father was born 1946, my mother was born in 1952). The majority of your music was way past their teenage years.

Not really relevant, I suppose, however somewhat amusing. I'm glad to see an older editor comes in a newbie. Also glad to see you using rather classic stuff. Surely isn't my tastes, which run more towards anti-new wave of the late eighties and early nineties, like The Smiths, The Cure, The Pixies... But I definitely have my favorites, and Paradise City is certainly one of them.

Both my parents were born in '45. I figure that the average downloader here is about 18, so I'm probably old enough to be the father of a lot of them. Their parents were probably born in the 50's or 60's, which would put 70's music right in their teen years. Stuff from the late 80's is iffy, but I don't plan on using many songs past the early 90's.
Growing up, most people label anything made before they were born as "classic", so I figure that any of the "Hair Rock" music would fit into that category.