JOURNAL: alternatefutures (Jim Schuler)

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  • Reviews and Photoshop 2001-09-20 01:16:16 In my spare time I've been going through the "Most Under Rated" video section and writing reviews for whatever I can download. Amazing how many broken links there are. I've stopped using Phade's link to download them for fear of helping solidify their hold on the charts and instead I just write the URL manually. I've basically hit all of them with the exception of probably the last three at the bottom of the list. Wish someone would rate MMIMH... that's over 540 attempted downloads now (not including the small version) and the reason it's not on the big list is no one has rated it yet. How's that for Catch 22? Yeah, I could rate my own vid to get it up there, but I see that as cheating. Besides, if you think about it, it would be one less actual review my vid would probably recieve. So, I wait for someone's generosity.

    Now, onto what I've been up to with my next vid. I have digitized all the footage I'll be using from Gunsmith Cats and Tenamonya Voyagers. Actually, I think it's all I'll be using. Depending on how things work out I may go back to GSC, but the scenes I'm interested in now are just too short. I've got one of the GSC scenes ready for compositing. It's bascially a pan shot of Rally pasted together, scaled (parts of it), repainted, with the background removed and saved as a single photoshop file, but what a pan shot it is! There is some motion in the begining of the actual clip that I'm debating if it's worth the effort to include. I'm going to be starting on Photon next. I have another idea for a good composite shot from there. Unfortuneately, as I re-watch the series I realise that there wasn't quite as much useable footage as I had hoped. Maybe I'll come up on some gems as I get furthur into it, but if memory serves me right I don't think so. Finding good spots for the Tenamonya footage may prove to be tricky too. Although what I have is good, one of the clips is too long for my tastes, but I don't see anyway of cutting it down and speeding it up would just be bad.

    I'm starting to see a serious flaw in my plans now. Compositing shots is using up footage like you wouldn't believe. Stuff that might have lasted for fifteen seconds instead gets shrunk to five, and it will only get worse as I move along. Meaning: I really need to get me more series! 
  • Upgrades and stuff 2001-09-16 00:35:13 Looks like I'll have another 20 gig HD coming into my possession in a few weeks! Yippee! Of course, this really doesn't change my plans on how I'm going to make the video, but it does give me a lot more breathing room. I'll be able to keep a lot of spare footage around on my computer until it's done, so that's nice. Originally the source footage would be deleted as it became altered and combined, replaced by the resulting product. This plan can be scrapped.

    In other news I'm going to see if I can work out a schedual here to run a ftp server off my computer. It'll only be available late at night and on the weekends, however. The good part is that it would be yet another possible way to pick up higher quality versions of my future vids. Unfortuneately I'm only on a DSL line, so while one or two people could get a decent download rate, any more would simply go too slow, thus I'm still not sure if it would be worth the effort.

    Now, back to my future project. I'm going to be playing around with photoshop a bit and see if I can get some of my planned effects to work correctly. It'll be a long and ardious process of trial and error, but if successful will make my "Garbage" video a thing to remember. There are still some scenes which I have no idea how I could pull off, and others that look to be extreamly tedious, but that won't stop me from trying. Hell, my PM countdown was extreamly tedious, but worth all of it's ten seconds of glory :) 
  • Quality Control 2001-09-15 01:34:19 I started testing the feasibility of cleaning up every frame of DVD footage. Well, that's not really what I'm testing. I don't have that large of a hard drive (only 20 gigs :) ) so I need to save space, and if you've seen the list of source footage then you know my computer can't possibly hold it all. So, I'm taking the vob files into premier, extracting whatever scenes I want and saving those clips as film strip files (basically a big bitmap with tags to tell premiere where to find each frame). Since I have that, I'm importing them into photoshop and despeckling/sharpening the images (one gets rid of the blockness and the other restores the lines lost in the despeckling process, for those without photoshop). Then, I throw the filmstrip file back into premiere and save it as a huffyuv compressed avi. So, I'm going to end up with a bunch of small, high quality clips. Doing the math it looks like each second of video will take up a little more than 10 megs. The music selection is a little more than 3 and a half minutes (probably will be cut down from that as it gets a little repetitive) so this should give me plenty of room (2-3 gigs). Now, notice everything here is going into photoshop first... which means expect me to have a lot of fun there beyond just despeckling/sharpening. If you've seen the "Marionette Inside My Head" video you have witnessed the tip of the iceberg. Now... I just need to get more source material and I can get serious. 
  • First entry and future project notes. 2001-09-11 03:03:09 First of all, thank you for thinking so much of me as to take a few minutes out of your day to read what I'm thinking about as if it were of some kind of importance :) Don't know how many of these I'm going to write, but...

    The good news for my next project is I have made leaps and bounds in my understanding of how to use Flash 5. So I have yet another software program in my arsenal to bring to bear on this project. Before now, for those of you who haven't been paying attention, I only used Premiere and Photoshop for my videos. The opening for ODC used two other programs: Rhino 3D and Bryce 3D, but these seem of little use in terms of altering actual anime footage. With Flash I should be able to make some pretty interesting transitions and animated collaiges.

    I have about five ideas bouncing around in my head right now, all of them are good. However, each of these will require lots of time and effort. Yup, effect heavy. You'll notice me moving more into the effects area in my future projects. I want to do these videos to learn, to see what I can do, and perhaps to make some of you drool. Relax, my videos will be more than just footage with a bunch of nifty effects thrown in just for the hell of it. The key to using effects is to be able to control them and use them responsibly. Therefore, I will need loads of criticism on my videos (hint: review Marrionette Inside My Head)

    Anyway, my biggest obstacle is footage. Once I complete my Outlaw Star collection, I'll be all set to make an award winning Drama video :) Before that, however, I'm going to focus on another video that uses a varied selection of series. The music is going to come from the group "Garbage" and it promises to be extreamly fun and, although requiring lots of editing, very easy. Again, I need some more footage for this. Basically it's very shallow and I just want series with hot, strong chicks. As I said, it's going to be designed to make you drool and keep you entertained. Currently the anime that I have, in my possesion, that fit the criteria are Gunsmith Cats, Jubei-Chan, Photon, Saber Marionette J, Slayers Perfect and Project A-Ko. Depending on what else I can get a hold of I might also have to throw in Moldiver and Outlaw Star as well. I recently ordered Tenamonya Voyagers, so I'll see what that's like. I'm looking to get ahold of some Tenchi, Shamanic Princess, Oh! My Goddess (it's the official release title now, so you can all stop saying "Ah!"), Armitage III and Burn Up W. Anyone who e-mails me suggesting Neon Genesis: Evangelion will be mail bombed (just kidding).

    Well, you made it through my first journal entry! I hope you actually found this informative and have some vauge idea as to what my next project is about. When it actually gets underway and is definately going to be completed the entry will go up and I'll write down some of the specifics. I hope to have a new video completed in time for Anime Central 2002.

    Now, the plug for my website:

    http://alternatefutures.tripod.com/

    Anime music videos, wallpapers, reviews, and more stuff.

    Thank you and good night. 
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