- This video was edited and composited with Cinelerra 1.2 (or somewhere around there) and CinePaint (some version). I am pretty sure that it is one of the most technically involved AMVs created using a Linux-based editing system. Granted, that's a hell of a lot of qualifiers, but one of my main motivations for making AMVs was to demonstrate the possibilities of free software.
- There is a lot of sloppy luminance/chroma keying in this video. I never fixed it because I was running into ACen 2004 deadlines and never wanted to work on this video again after that.
- The video is structured in four sections: Hitomi, Van, their meeting, and their separation. Scene repetition marks the transition between the sections.
- The video was edited to loop -- the starting sequence is the ending sequence, sped up. I thought it was a fun way to tie in the "forever" bit. Some video players can seamlessly loop videos: if yours is one of them, try playing this video in a loop.
- This video played first at ACen 2004's AMV contest because its title started with "a".
- There is a lot of object removal throughout the entire video. A lot of it isn't really obvious unless you've seen the movie. (God forbid you have; it's only palatable if you play it in the background. In my opinion.)
- There is some footage from the TV series present. It was zoomed and cropped to fit 4:3 material into a 16:9 presentation. Luckily, the visual elements I wanted were in the center of the frame.
- The idea for this video came about after Anime Expo 2003, where I saw Yuki Kajiura and her troupe perform live. They played vanity, and I remember enjoying it.* I purchased her debut solo CD about a week afterwards. When I originally heard fiction I connected it not to the Escaflowne movie proper, but to the overall category of things that fall into "Escaflowne". I can't remember how I decided to use the movie, but the emo factor ended up working out.
- The kiss scene was inspired by talks with dwchang, who told me that he thought it was a good thing that Van and Hitomi never kissed in the TV series or the movie. (They actually don't.) I decided to try to piss him off by mixing six or seven frames of Van and Hitomi together to make a "kiss" shot; I think the final layer count for that shot ended up in the 60-70 range.** (Most of those layers were variations.) It wasn't a good composite at all -- I knew nothing of human facial structure at the time. But it did the job.
- This video was the second time I had tried to use Blender in a video production. (The first time was my DDR3 track.) The weird rotating, floating screens were produced that way. They look pretty damn hokey now, but hindsight is 20/20, etc.
* I'm a little less interested in Yuki Kajiura's work now. It all seems to follow the same "operatic techno" pattern.
** Spite and contrariness are powerful motivators for me. If someone says that something can't be done, or is "magic", I try to figure it out. If someone tells me they hate something, I'll try to do it.