New Naruto AMV! (Rock Lee)

Gimpyfish · Post by **Gimpyfish** » Sun Oct 01, 2006 5:13 am

I've been editing video's for a long time, but haven't made an anime music video yet, I've edited/created commercials, drama pieces, video game combo videos, and other videos, but this is my first jump into anime.

I explained a lot in the video description there but I'll give a bit of backstory beyond that here I guess.

I've been editing since my senior year in high school (I'm a sophomore in college now) and have loved it since the first time I did it. Back then I made policy reinforcment videos with my friends that we would broadcast through the halls at my high school. Those videos became very popular with my school and launched me into video editing. I went to University of Hawaii after that and really needed to edit something so I learned the (uuuughhhhhhh) TERRIBLE program windows movie maker, after having only worked with premier in the past, I released a few combo videos for Super Smash Bros Melee, my most popular/well made one being "Boozer Cute" (almost all of those videos feature exclusively my own Bowser gameplay).
After only a single semester of schooling at UH I knew it wasn't right for me so I transfered back home to a local community college (Shoreline Community College) and have been taking lots and lots of cinematography classes. In those classes I got to work on editing lots of drama pieces, PSAs, and other commercial spots.
Over this last summer I decided to start my AMV (not to long ago), but never really sat down to get it done. Finally one day I just worked on it until I was satisfied, I think the video came out really well, and I would appreciate comments on it.

Man I hate it when people ramble on forums, I almost never read it, so I'll be surprised if you see this message at all. Please reply, I'd like to get some comments on this video.

The video is called "This is How a Man Should Be!!" and is completely done by myself with no outside source used (other than dattebayo's torrent files to get all the vids)

http://www.animemusicvideos.org/members ... p?v=129916

Thanks to everyone who posts here and watches my video!

Lick · Post by **Lick** » Sun Oct 01, 2006 6:06 am

Ok positive first, then negative.

This was obviously meant as an action video and it did have a certain degree of pacing, the video quality was ok and the beginning had promise.

Now the bad bits. First, subtitles, these need to be removed, look in the guides to find out how to do this. Second, avoid having mouths move if you're not lipsyncing. Third, don't use WMV it's frowned upon. Fourth, there are beyond too many Naruto action vids out there and unless it's something special, don't do them. These are standard things that are just rookie mistakes.

The biggest fault however lies in the editing, something that is just really a matter of effort. You either edited very subtle within entire fight scenes and if so, did this poorly, missing nearly all the major changes in music and not on the frame. Or you just stuck whole fight sequences in there with a short romance bit in between, which is just not editing. I don't know which because I haven't seen the anime, but it is obvious you didn't do that much editing. If you have premiere use the arrow keys to hear drum beats and where changes in music start and end. I'm sure you already know this, but it's worth saying.

Really look out for these things in the future and I hope your next ones improves on this one.

Gimpyfish · Post by **Gimpyfish** » Sun Oct 01, 2006 6:24 am

"First, subtitles, these need to be removed, look in the guides to find out how to do this."

i was thinking about removing subtitles, but the parts with sakura (when its saying pleased to meet you take my hand) i wanted those to be readable, as well as when they say hes a master of the drunken fist, I thought about taking out the other subtitles but thought it would look funny switching back and forth all over the place.

so i was aware of this 'problem' and it was my choice to leave them in, I may do it differently in the future, I'm not really sure.

"Second, avoid having mouths move if you're not lipsyncing."
i dont exactly know how to avoid the mouths moving, people talk in anime dont they? lol, i only had the mouths moving really when it was somewhat important what they were saying anyways you know?

"Third, don't use WMV it's frowned upon."
This I was aware of, but didn't have the time to change it, this is being used as an assignemt of sorts too

"Fourth, there are beyond too many Naruto action vids out there and unless it's something special, don't do them. These are standard things that are just rookie mistakes."
That would be a stupid reason to NOT make ANY kind of artform.
I can't let that fact stop my own urges/creative wants, I wanted to do the vid, so I did, haha its not meant to be the best anime music video ever, and no action video ever will be anyways lol

"The biggest fault however lies in the editing, something that is just really a matter of effort. You either edited very subtle within entire fight scenes and if so, did this poorly, missing nearly all the major changes in music and not on the frame. Or you just stuck whole fight sequences in there with a short romance bit in between, which is just not editing. I don't know which because I haven't seen the anime, but it is obvious you didn't do that much editing. If you have premiere use the arrow keys to hear drum beats and where changes in music start and end. I'm sure you already know this, but it's worth saying. "

I edited this video a TON. the fight scenes dont look like I had them in any way, the romance is placed in there to go along with the music, i changed the pacing of the clips in most of the fight scenes... even his ura renge (the last move you see him use) was edited down... the fact that you haven't seen the anime says a lot for that last comment I think, you dont know how the fights should look, and thus they didn't look any different to you. That means I've accomplished what I wanted I guess, as I wanted it to look like thats what the fights looked like. Kimmimaru was cut down a ton, and looks like one continuous piece, even though its not even close to looking like that in the anime. As far as editing on the music went, I did so at major points in the music, I didn't do much "on the sound" editing WITHIN the fight scenes, but I did it where it looked good.

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU for commenting!

I'm not being arrogant and "defending myself" or anything like that btw, I REALLY appreciate comments like these, that actually say what they liked and didn't like and what they felt, PLEASE continue to post comments! ^_^

x_rex30 · Post by **x_rex30** » Sun Oct 01, 2006 6:29 am

"Fourth, there are beyond too many Naruto action vids out there and unless it's something special, don't do them. These are standard things that are just rookie mistakes."
That would be a stupid reason to NOT make ANY kind of artform.
I can't let that fact stop my own urges/creative wants, I wanted to do the vid, so I did, haha its not meant to be the best anime music video ever, and no action video ever will be anyways lol

I agree with this. Don't follow this advice of Lick. It's biased and racist.

Willen · Post by **Willen** » Sun Oct 01, 2006 7:13 am

And don't let the opinion of some people dissuade you from using Windows Movie Maker. Sure, it has it's faults and limitations, but ultimately it's not the editing software that makes a the AMV it's the person moving the mouse around. There are MANY good AMVs here that are made with nothing but WMM (and maybe a bit of AviSynth/VirtualDub(Mod)). Telling someone, "don't use WMV it's frowned upon" is being pretty close-minded. Who is frowning on using WMM? Not me.

I'll break my policy on "no naruto AMVs" to download this and give it a watch.

Lick · Post by **Lick** » Sun Oct 01, 2006 7:47 am

You made some interesting counter-points especially on the fourth and I was too hasty in saying that you didn't do much editing. I apologize for that.

Now my counter, what I was trying to say in the fourth is that it takes away from the originality and if you want to keep that in, then don't do them.

Moving mouths just don't look right if they aren't actually saying something, this is a general consensus. If you wish to keep them in, I advice you to lipsync to the music and sometimes you can even add the audiofiles if it fits.

I did say that you did one of two things and obviously you did the first, I also said it had pacing in the positive comments but you still didn't always edit on the beat. There were things I thought were off, but to be honest I didn't go as far as to put it into premiere. Also you did miss some major things you could have hit (1:17 and 1:32).

All of this was said to help you make an excellent action amv, to help you improve, it may have been said in a too harsh tone and this was not meant. I was also too fast in posting a comment and didn't give myself enough time to order my thoughts

x_rex30 is right to say I'm biased against Naruto amv's, but that is only because there are hundreds of bad ones and the creators of reasonable ones like yours get stuck in making Naruto (as with DBZ), without improving and never getting noticed, which is a waste.

Where he gets the idea that I'm racist, I don't know. Especially seeing I have no knowledge of your race and these comments didn't entail anything that had referance to you as a person. Hopefully you take what you can from this milder, more thought out advice and improve your skills, in other anime aswell.

Willen · Post by **Willen** » Sun Oct 01, 2006 8:27 am

Ok, I watched it. Some specific points:

1. Subtitles = bad. If you really need to have some in, then those are OK (but I still recommend against using them). But the rest HAVE to go. Subtitles are very distracting when watching a video when the focus should be on the video and not the dialog, especially if one is used to watching anime that way (fansubs or DVDs). I had to force myself to not read the subtitles when watching this. I probably should have covered up the bottom of the screen since it would have gotten rid of problem #2...

2. DivX logo = bad. Not only is it a dead giveaway that you used downloaded anime for footage, it is also distracting. Since this is a common beginner's mistake I see this quite often. It is very easy to remove so it should never appear, but sadly, this is not the case. How do you get rid of it? There are 3 possible ways: 1 - Disable the DivX logo option, 2 - Uninstall DivX and use XviD instead, or 3 - Don't use fansubs or raws and use DVDs instead. Of course, option 3 might be impossible to do for very new shows, or very expensive if the only DVDs are Japan R2s.

3. 720 x 480 = incorrect resolution/wrong aspect ratio. While this is not a killer, it does annoy me. Proper resolutions for internet video distribution is 640 x 480 pixels (or similar) for 4:3 aspect ratio sources and 640 x 352 pixels (or similar, e.g. 848 x 480) for 16:9 aspect ratio (widescreen) sources. While 720 x 480 is a viable resolution for DVDs, unless properly flagged as 16:9 or 4:3 (which is a waste of bits for online distro), it is not the way to encode video meant for playback on a computer. Since your video used the Naruto TV series which is a 4:3 aspect ratio source, it should be 640 x 480 pixel resolution to maintain proper 4:3 DAR.

4. Picture quality = so so. Using DVDs here would greatly help, but considering that some of the episodes aren't even available except on expensive Japan R2 DVDs, I'll cut you some slack.

5. Beat sync = mediocre. Since this is mainly an action video (or a video with some action scenes), syncing to the beat should be better. Admittedly, WMM doesn't give you much help here.

6. Scene selection = good. Although you did mix up the Lee footage, it would have been nice to have a more varied set of clips.

7. Concept = good. I like the Foo Fighters song and the pairing with Lee is somewhat fitting.

8. Editing = good. Considering that you used WMM, I didn't see any obvious problems with the editing itself. No stray frames, no use of tacky transitions, and good lyric sync (matching scenes to the song lyrics). As for Lick's comment about not editing the fight scenes (enough), since he's never seen the original sequences, you are right defending your editing. It's like someone comparing a person's painting to the Mona Lisa when he's never even seen the Mona Lisa. I know that some of the scenes are cut down a lot and resequenced (more than what I did in one part of my Rock Fully MAD video). And you did manage to hit a few beats here and there.

Final grade = decent, 2.5/5.

If you haven't already done so, I'd recommend to you to read the guides, especially EADFAG since it goes into the more technical aspects of video and audio which may be useful for you to know considering the field you are studying.

Willen · Post by **Willen** » Sun Oct 01, 2006 8:35 am

Lick wrote:x_rex30 is right to say I'm biased against Naruto amv's, but that is only because there are hundreds of bad ones and the creators of reasonable ones like yours get stuck in making Naruto (as with DBZ), without improving and never getting noticed, which is a waste.

Haha, if you didn't post your comment, I wouldn't have watched this AMV and broken my "No Naruto AMV" restriction.

Lick wrote:Where he (x_rex30) gets the idea that I'm racist, I don't know.

He's just like that. Random off-topic comment. Expect more (maybe).

devilmaykickass · Post by **devilmaykickass** » Sun Oct 01, 2006 9:18 am

Subtitles = me not watching.

x_rex30 · Post by **x_rex30** » Sun Oct 01, 2006 10:35 am

Willen wrote:
Lick wrote:x_rex30 is right to say I'm biased against Naruto amv's, but that is only because there are hundreds of bad ones and the creators of reasonable ones like yours get stuck in making Naruto (as with DBZ), without improving and never getting noticed, which is a waste.
Haha, if you didn't post your comment, I wouldn't have watched this AMV and broken my "No Naruto AMV" restriction.

Lick wrote:Where he (x_rex30) gets the idea that I'm racist, I don't know.
He's just like that. Random off-topic comment. Expect more (maybe).

The racist part was to make you think 'WTF' or for you to get offended on something that makes no sense. If I found out you got offended by me saying that I would of laughed. Also since what you wrote is something I consider wrong and misleading, I wrote 'racist' because it is wrong and misleading as well. It's just some sort of satire that is just meant to be silly.

Also one thing to know about how I write, I write what I mean a lot and then mix it in with something completely opposite of what I believe, satire if you will, that sounds like I'm being serious. Like I did with the racist thing. A good example is this post. Even some very smart people thought I was serious about what I said.

http://www.animemusicvideos.org/phpBB/v ... 140#891140

look for some of the comments were Naruto fans get offended.

Anyways I've been off topic in two posts now without actually watching the video. I'll check your video out since there is slight spam in this. I'll tell you what I think of it later if I get around to it. Maybe later today or sometime tomorrow.