- Yay 2003-03-11 20:04:01 so, like, I have a new NOP email... and the DDR2 video's finally online... and I'm getting paid for work as well... why the hell did I have to screw up all the joy and watch INFINITE RYVIUS!! DAMMIT!! Gotta watch the ending quick or else I'm gonna go nuts! :P
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2003-01-27 13:34:00
1. What was the first record you owned?
Oh I totally remember this one... I took Sting's Fields of Gold 1984-1994 disc from a DJ friend of mine. I still have it. I love that CD to death.
2. Is there a song that reminds you most of your childhood?
Anything Yaz. Don't know Yaz? Probably the worst 80's electronica you could possibly find. My DAD would blast this thing when my family would go on long road trips. I've been mentally scarred ever since.
3. If you could spend a night with five musical artists who would they be?
Mmm... Sting, David Gilmour, Stewart Copeland, Bela Fleck and Victor Wooten. Jam session, anyone?
4. If your life was a movie, what would play over the following:
Opening credits: Mike Oldfield - Tubular Bells (Part 1)
Love scene: Bach - Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring or Soul Coughing - St. Louise is Watching (if I were in Sado-masochist mode)
Driving scene: Nick Drake - Pink Moon
Closing credits: Mike Oldfield - Tubular Bells (Part 2)
5. If applicable, name a song or concert that moved you to tears:
Sting - When We Dance. I'm such a dork.
6. Name one musical artist you'd like to see banished.
Oh... ANYONE on CD101.9 ("Cool" Jazz here in NYC. BAN IT! SEND IT TO HELL! KENNY G MUST DIE!)
7. Name a song you would rather never hear again.
Nirvana - You Know You're Right. There's a reason why it was never released, folks.
8. Name an album that is perfect all the way through.
One album? Fuck that! Try these! Radiohead - The Bends, OK Computer, Kid A. Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals, The Wall. Bela Fleck and the Flecktones - Outbound, Live Art. Phish - Billy Breathes, A Live One. Paul Simon - Still Crazy..., Graceland. The Police - Regatta De Blanc, Synchronicity. Sting - Ten Summoner's Tales. The Clash - London Calling. Led Zeppelin - I, II, III, IV, Houses of the Holy. Soul Coughing - El Oso. Need more?
9. Music you like that can be considered a guilty pleasure.
Anything ELO. They're so damn cheesy!
10. If your music collection were about to go up in flames, which 5 CDs would you save?
Any from question #8. Duh.
11. Is there a song that describes you or a situation you've been in so well that you could have written it?
Sting - When We Dance. Trust me, I nearly orgasmed when I was dancing with this one girl, too bad she was already taken.
12. Best music-related movie?
Hello? Run Lola Run? (Ok, ok, Lola Rennt)
13. What is your favorite all-time video?
It's a battle between Police - Every Breath You Take, Lucas - Lucas with the Lid Off and Madonna - Oh Father. All B&W. BRING B&W BACK! IT ROCKS!
14. Current favorite radio hit?
FUCK radio.
15. Do you sing or play any music instruments?
I sing terribly and privately, and I used to play violin and piano. I'm gearing up for bass and drums soon. -
Effects smorgesbourg (spellins is SOOOO wrong there)
2003-01-02 03:47:08
I actually posted this entry when no one had access to my DDR vid. Thanks to the new DVD arriving in homes everywhere, you might actually be interested in reading this. Take a peek:
So once again my conscience bugs me and I am forced to explain to you all the changes I made to the anime footage used in a project of mine. Which one is it this time, you may ask? This time it's DDR Project 2's Brilliant2U featuring the girls of Gainax. This is gonna be one long post, folks, I did a hell of a lot of stuff for this one.
Programs used: Adobe After Effects, Illustrator, Photoshop, Premiere, Final Cut Pro, Illusion and Cool Edit Pro (just for timing).
For some background, the video is NOT a Gainax tribute, but a display of the backward feminism the studio usually equips their main female lead characters with. Yes folks, this video has a PLOT. Scary, I know. Just look at the pretty colors.
0:00 - That's the starry sky from Daicon IV. Take that background, put some transparency in there to get rid of the black, rotate it at a wild speed, up the contrast, and put some hue in there for barely noticable color and there you go. That was all Premiere effects. Probably the last time I try that again...
0:02 - The white flashes that go off from here on are splashes of the word GAINAX. Grey word on white background courtesy of Futura font and Adobe Illustrator
0:02 - the wheel thingy with the screens on it... yeah, that's Illustrator again. You can't see it in the MPEG, but the wheel has "GIRLS OF GAINAX" inscribed on it. The screens have each section of the video playing on it for each Gainax show. This was the last and most painstaking part of this video. Since After Effects does not import Illustrator files at variable resolutions (even though it should), I had to make a seperate composition at 2000+/3000+ pixels. This is to compensate for the size of the TV screens that the videos would play on in full resolution. Not doing this would have made them terribly pixelized on close-up.
As the wheel approaches, those flashes are more Gainax splash screens, and then followed by a frame of the show logo. Daicon, Eva, KareKano, FLCL, Mahoro and Abeno in that order.
0:17 - Ahh, finally, Daicon footage. That's divx source. It actually looks decent in the DV version since I color corrected it and applied some blur to get the obvious lossless look to it. I'm no expert at this yet so I can't say it looks perfect. For this section, though, it was good enough.
0:21 - Another edit I am very proud of. Simply repeated the bunny girl punching and flipped her around, then edited it so it looked like two punches. This is a hell of a lot more seamless than the "Numb" edit with Asuka's head rising. Practice makes perfect, folks.
0:25 - If it ain't obvious, Premiere hue effects.
0:31 - *sticks tongue out* Yeah I used Eva footage. And it's ripped from DVD. In fact, Eva, KareKano, and FLCL were all ripped from DVD, the rest was divx. Can ya tell? Totally upped contrast on all of them, too.
0:34 - I'm sorry, I can't not do lip sync with Eva footage. It just begs to be done. Especially since in this scene the lyrics of Brilliant2U are "Let's go, here we go." and in the series, Asuka says, "Here we go." and Shinji says, "Jump?" Ain't that almost perfect? Nate and I pondered leaving the subtitles in.
On every jump, the Eva doesn't just jump, it crashes. I put some Earthquake filter in there to make the jumps better. Also white flashes for effect.
0:38 - Freaky red stuff. That's the aged film filter in After Effects (start groaning), but wait! I didn't use that crappy sepia color, I used red in the beginning! It later changes to sepia to keep it different every time I fade back to that scene. I love the editing here.
0:42 - Color emboss and contrast to make edges hard.
0:45 - No effects whatsoever for Kare Kano. Just color correction. Why? Look at it, man. Does it really need anything?
0:58 - Color flashes, frame by frame checking and color-changing in After Effects.
1:02 - After a lot of contrast stuff I used the video look filter in AE for one scene in between Haruko and her ukelele. Also color emboss there to emphasize the red eye. Green HATES red, and so do I.
1:04 - scrolling DDR arrows on their tongues ;).
1:04 - Haruko turns her head and what does she say? Mm... I won't tell you, but I think a certain Jhonen is involved.
1:10 - Thanks Gainax for adding letterbox to your newest shows... why dammit why!?!?! The letterbox is a pain in the ass to deal with, and instead of enlarging everything (which I did contemplate), I instead just put those color borders in. This, again, is also cleaned up divx footage. Mahoro is a boring series to edit, and dark too. Not good enough for a dance video, so this had the most f*cking done to it. I made those DDR arrows in Illustrator, by the way. E-mail me if you want my AI file.
1:13 - From here on out, Mahoro footage is posterized. Also more color emboss and Leave Color filters in AE.
1:17 - Now this is all color emboss and Find Edges filter, which has awesome results.
1:21 - The jiggling Mahoro here? Premiere movement effects, plus a HUGE zoom, and upped contrast. I wanted this scene in there (it was, like, one of the only 10 shots in that series I used and I captured 120+.) so I had to mess it up somehow.
1:22 - Dance Break made in Illustrator.
1:23 - The actual dance break is my masterpiece. It's Ilustrator, After Effects, Premiere AND Final Cut Pro. It was also the easiest thing to do if you knew what you wanted it to look like. Prepare for a lot of text:
The DDR arrows, as mentioned earlier, were done in Illustrator. Nate showed me DDRfreak.com which had the real steps to B2U there so I made another illustrator document to make the greyish guides, and yet another document to spread the arrows apart and face them the right way. Also a fourth set to make the white arrows of the black background. In AE, did a little child-parent grouping with all the Illustrator docs and made the up-scrolling arrows masks of a rainbow gradient layer (three seperate layers since AE only allows 127 masks per layer). Discolored arrows, signalizing half-steps, had 180 degree hue changes overlayed.
Now the giant white arrow was first done in premiere using giant TIF images of the arrows in different positions. They were all two frames long (one frame for half-steps) and were positioned correctly. The movie of that sequence was then slowed down to fit the music, then saved again. Brought that into AE, color keyed the black out, added bevel to it and lighting effects for shadows, then did some javascript Motion Math (cmpaud.mm) so that whatever level the sound was at, the arrow would horizontally stretch to. Bass beats always get the best stretch, as you can see.
The Waveforms on top and bottom-right are courtesy of AE. Their changing hue is more hue/saturation effects. Shadow on them, too.
The backgrounds are two circling movies of DDR arrows with layer blending options on (I think multiply mode) with hue effects. Behind them is an edited piece of background using the scenes with the most movement from Gainax series. Terribly muddled in the MPEG, barely noticable in the DV version, but still a good moving background not intrusive enough to stop you from dancing to the arrows.
Lastly, the extreme color change is all courtesy of beat by beat matching and setting each change in color by hand.
1:37 - Each name is made in Illustrator. It's animated in AE. Mahoro's name actually has a radio buzz effect in there for a split-second. The rest is just fumbling with settings in AE. The arrows that scroll over them are the same arrows in the dance break, but not rotated. Just red and overlayed. Red has a HUGE significance in this video, and a lot of Gainax's work has a fascination with red as well.
1:49 - This part was fun. The static on the TV is AE again, the wheel is zoomed in this time around, and the flashes are DDR arrows, but you can notice that without me telling you. The word screens are Illustrator documents. Font used here? Clarendon. I had to sketch this entire alphabet by hand for a type class here at SVA, took me five hours to do. Why did I mention this? I dunno, sentimental value, I guess. The Maniac is AE's text filter with earthquake.
2:00 - This is just screwed up. Apparently the background comes in more, the arrows don't have that much background to it, I purposefully made this the hardest thing to dance to. If you pulled it off, I am extremely impressed. The wonderful godsend of a particle program, Illusion, comes in to play here with tiny black and white spots coming towards you like stars. Not noticable no matter where you look for it. Don't even try.
And that's it! Almost all of it. Took me around two months to do, and I loved it. Hope you like it. - 2002-12-27 01:45:39 I need to shave. Very badly...
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DDR2 DVD's out? And other matters.
2002-12-24 01:07:43
Where the hell is my roommate with the mail key when I need him?
Also, Beck - We Live Again. I love Beck now. This song is wonderful.
Oh, and TommyRude liked my DDR contribution. Cool. I got a 500meg DV version of it people seem to love downloading from Direct Connect, even though the 40 meg version is right next to it. Whatever. I have a T3 so I guess it's not that big a deal.
JOURNAL: gambitt (Jeff Heller)
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