Velvet Acid Christ "Pretty Toy" to Descendants of

Freeptop · Post by **Freeptop** » Fri Mar 24, 2006 2:02 am

I finally uploaded the AMV I submitted to YaoiCon 2005: "Portrait of a Serial Killer", which uses footage from Descendants of Darkness/Yami No Matsuei, with the music being "Pretty Toy" by Velvet Acid Christ.

This is a character profile of a serial killer. Don't expect happy images.

http://www.animemusicvideos.org/members ... hp?v=88851

Orwell · Post by **Orwell** » Fri Mar 24, 2006 5:13 am

Freeptop wrote:There's only so many times you can really deal with watching lots of blood and gore, while listening to a creepy song about a serial killer...

I completely agree, I'd put the bare minimum at 4, though I think 5 is good, why else would the good online doctor give you 5 choices.

While waiting for a half dead connection to give out as I torture it with the stress of two torrents and this download, I would recommend using AVI for your org uploads, preferably H.264 though to reach a larger audience a divx compatible xvid encode would work. For your mpeg encodes, I found scintilla's guide very useful.

Infact after seeing it I hope you will really consider that and re-upload. Did the audio suffer as much as the video, or is it just hard at least for me to understand what he's saying.

Unless the original substance on the arm around 1:44 is in its original color, I would suggest using either effects or photoshop to recolor it back to its original color. Considering its appearance, one might even make it a white in accordance with the opening phrase, he is after a serial killer and rapist who gets off on screams.

Hmm, I saw the suffering, but, I didn't feel it. Between your goal for the video, a character profile of a serial killer, and the song, the video didn't really meat [sic] my expectations. Towards the end I would actually say it improved some, this is a song where beat sync is something that you could more or less let go of, and just focus on internal sync, all the while keeping the actual shots on the profiled character. For being a character profile, and after reading through the lyrics, I saw the goal, but, I felt like there should have been more focus on the actual serial killer, whom I'm assuming is the guy that speaks in the beginning? How did his pretty toys, whose suffering we see, arrive by his hand at these fates? Did they even? Did the serial killer drive the girl to kill herself? what happened? I would almost call this a character profile of insanity resulting from those faced with a serial killer, if we try to retain the genre title. Repeated watchings lead me to think that the dolls could have been left out entirely, a serial killers dolls are his victims.

I hope that came out as constructive criticism, I still rather enjoyed it for what it was, even gave me an idea as to how I want to shape the shadow and even background to some degree in a video I'm working on.

I wonder how what it says about me that I spent probably over an hour reviewing a video about a serial killer.

Freeptop · Post by **Freeptop** » Fri Mar 24, 2006 8:25 pm

Thanks for the criticism. I appreciate it, and I do think it came off as constructive.

In terms of AVI - I did that with my first vid, and ended up with people who couldn't watch it, so I decided to try MPEG1, since just about anyone can watch that. Guess that choice didn't work out too well...

As for your other suggestions, I can see what you're saying. As I wrote in the description, this was done in about 5 days... and I usually take about 3 months to do an AMV. Unfortunately, the rush job shows. It probably makes more sense to those familiar with the character and the series, which shouldn't be required viewing before watching an AMV. I'll pay more attention to that for future vids.

Finally, in terms of the music - er, that's just what the vocals sound like with Velvet Acid Christ

Freeptop · Post by **Freeptop** » Fri Mar 24, 2006 8:27 pm

Orwell wrote:Unless the original substance on the arm around 1:44 is in its original color, I would suggest using either effects or photoshop to recolor it back to its original color. Considering its appearance, one might even make it a white in accordance with the opening phrase, he is after a serial killer and rapist who gets off on screams.

On last note - this was actually the original color from the show. In the future, though, I'll consider editing it to match the other clips. Thanks again!