JOURNAL: Kai Stromler (Kai Stromler)

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  • fall on your knees today 2003-06-02 12:31:35
    ....and pray this ain't true.

    MATT BARLOW OUT OF ICED EARTH WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK??

    Rage, pain, shock, and sorrow. I can barely think straight. Sure, he's not getting kicked out, but going to finish a degree and do LE admin for the Department of Homeland Security, but still.....Iced Earth without Matt ain't Iced Earth as it is, was, and should be.

    Maiden without Bruce. Priest without Halford. Sabbath without Ozzy. Now IE without Matt. At least Jon has the sense to put the band on hold until he finds the right guy, which might be when Matt decides to come back, and not long before. Anyone he can find is just going to be imitating Matt, not doing anything original, because there AIN'T original else that can improve the Iced Earth Sound.

    Of course, I'm still going to build up my voice and work towards sending Jon a tape ASAP. I can do the tone he needs, if not all of the range, and certainly not at the level of execution (40-date tours on no sleep) that is required yet.

    My day sucks now. I wish I had an angry video to work on, but mournful (#77) and darkness-obsessed (#78) will have to do.

    --Kai


     
  • pictureperfect lives 2003-06-02 11:15:53
    Pretty much good news all the way around this weekend, except for the inch and a half of rain that made doing nearly anything outside all but impossible. I'm going to get through two big hurdles by this time next week, and then I'm in the clear for the future.

    Friday was cool at club, though I could have left a little earlier, since I had already seen Slayers Perfect and had very little interest in seeing it again. Gunparade March managed to avoid being stale, warmed-over Gundam shite by having a sense of humor. "So they're what they call 'tres bien'?" "No, that's *'lesbian'*." It's a tremendously funny pun in Japanese, trust me.

    Saturday I finalized and mixed down #75, and then went down to Meg's to meet Adrianna, a cool person even though she fights epee (j/k). We got acquainted with Meg's guinea pigs and saw about half of Lola Rennt (which I despite my German major have STILL not seen through) before Meg's mom and grandma started getting after her for hanging around with an old man. Then we dropped Adrianna off at a friend's a few towns over, and got some time to ourselves. In the course of which Meg discovered that "What's on the outside/Is not always all that is real", despite my best efforts to keep that "secret face" locked off. Fortunately, she survived, and seems to like that side of me as well, which is probably a good thing. I can keep my dark/evil/psycho side under control pretty well, but in a really long-term relationship she'd eventually have to confront this side, the source of my creative energy and physical endurance, and it's better that she gets to know this part of me now rather than after we've committed to something.

    Between one thing and another, I couldn't catch the train back, so Meg had to drive me home, which took a while and resulted in her being chewed out by her parental units. But time together is always time well spent.

    Sunday was great, as in 30 points of video progress. I took #76 from timing chart to mixdown and did the timing chart for #77, which I hope to draft tonight and finish/finalize/mix down tomorrow. It looks even better than #75, and I've still got metric tons of source left for the last two videos.

    Current videos: Bill O'Brien, "Old Shoes", Gamma Ray, "A While In Dreamland" and "Farewell", and Borknagar, "The View of Everlast", all to Haibane Renmei. Progress check: 100%, 100%, 80% and 76%. Expected catalog numbers: #75, #76, #77, #78. I don't have to do ADC for club, so I have a lot more time in the schedule. After I get through these, I can start on some of the new ideas that have bloated the to-do list out past 50 items again. Probably won't be entering Masters this year, but you never know.

    Random slag:
    trythil quoted me on the forums recently. Either he's a fan, or just a fan of my writing, or most likely just a fan of different perspectives, and I'm about as 'different' as perspectives come in AMV. This ofcourse means that I make enough of a nuisance of myself around here and at cons and such that a fair portion of people reading these forums recognize my handle -- or at least that trythil thinks this is true. It's a long way from BAS these days, but even as I'm going into my third year in this racket, I'm still just a bass player with a capture card.

    I'm making travel arrangements on a wing and a prayer here; I just hope the landlord I'm going out to see this weekend is amenable to showing me the flat on a Saturday night. If anyone reading this is in or about Ann Arbor (MI) and has some floor space to offer, drop me a line, so I can cancel my hotel reservation and save $50. I won't even need your floor all night -- my plane leaves from Detroit Wayne County at 6:45 Sunday, and I need to get my car back to the rental desk by 5 AM. If I'm still functional after I get back to Logan Sunday (before noon, likely), I may even have time to see Meg.

    Saw a n00b journal post (there have been a LOT of them lately, like they think people actually read these things) with a uid of 80-thousand-something. That's crazy. This login, created a year (to the day) after my original one, is 37370. I still have a valid pass on a sub-10K login(#6673). That's only a little more than 30,000 users' growth in a year; it isn't even eleven months since I rejoined, and we've already added 40,000 accounts. Most of those are in-and-out, but that's still substantial growth of this 'community'.

    I either got the release date wrong last time, or the Kid is just being mega-leet. I got the first volume of JoJo's Friday, and it kicks much ass. The 'prequel' OVAs are in kickass quality, with decent acting and hella cool fights that won't overwhelm the main battles with Dio when they come up in the 'original' OVAs. The only quibble is with STA's transfer; there are several sections in which the action is happening so much so fast that the picture gets pixel-blocked, which should just NOT be happening on a professional DVD. Also included were two wack tarot cards as seen in the series; hella cool. There may be a video with this series after the release is finished, but RYS has set the bar kind of high.

    Contest still open, though I should be pushing Hasshin! 3 towards distro soon.

    --Kai out

     
  • together we will fly 2003-05-30 09:48:06
    Summer is looking pretty cool. First In Flames and Soilwork at the end of June, then Iron Maiden in the middle of July, with a new CD to follow. And then there's new CDs from Arch Enemy and Nevermore around the start of August. It's going to be so cool: in at opening night of Maiden's first US tour in 3 years, along with the whole rest of the scene.

    Current videos: Bill O'Brien, "Old Shoes", Gamma Ray, "A While In Dreamland" and "Farewell", and Borknagar, "The View of Everlast", all to Haibane Renmei. Progress check: 95%, 76%, 76% and 76%. Expected catalog numbers: #75, #76, #77, #78. Tentative schedule is final assembly and mixdown of #75 Saturday, scheduled around hanging out with Meg and a few more people who are probably going to get after us to get married, followed by drafting, finishing/fx, finalization, and mixdown of #76 on Sunday. After that I'll have to see how much time I need to put into ADC to work out the rest of the schedule.

    Looking at the rough-draft of #75, all I can think of is "this would look SO COOL coming from DVD". And looking ahead, I can see that practically everything is or will be licensed; I mean really, Hana Yori Dango, Flame of Recca, and AzuDai have all been picked up, Shaman King is coming to Fox Kids, and somebody somewhere is going to be distributing One Piece in North America. So, for the forseeable future, all projects greenlighted in the SH production queue with digisub source are re-marked as postponed waaiting DVD release. There's just too many projects going from commercial source that can't take postponement to make the scratch-an-itch factor beat the quality bugbear.

    Of course, the hq versions of Project Haibane vids aren't going to look as chewed-on as the roughdraft, and the mixdowns are going to be nice and tight like the other recent releases. But that doesn't mean a sharp eye won't be able to catch pixel-blocking in a few places.

    Contest clarifications:
    There's actually some interest in this one, so I'm just making the rules a little more clear.
    level 1:
    I'm looking for a number here between 1 and 212. A wild guess might pay off. Five prizes being one copy of Hasshin! 3.
    level 2:
    I'm looking for a list in this caption of between 1 and 212 bands. Just names, they don't need to be in order. Three prizes, being one copy of Hasshin! 3 and one copy of fourSquare.
    level 3:
    To win this level, you need a list of at least 200 entries (I'll ignore 'n/a' or 'not a band reference' entries if you put them in) correctly matching a band to every entry date applicable. Only one prize, a SH or KK video made to your spec plus one copy of Hasshin! 3 and one copy of fourSquare.

    As I mentioned, level 3 is nearly impossible for several reasons, some of which make level 2 kind of tough, but level 1 should be doable. It don't hurt to try, and you might win something after all.

    --Kai out

     
  • what more when you're dead on arrival 2003-05-29 11:24:35
    Video #75 did indeed turn out cool. It's all drafted now, but not finished; I should be able to take care of what few effects it uses tonight and get a final version together in the imminent future.

    Current videos: Bill O'Brien, "Old Shoes", Gamma Ray, "A While In Dreamland" and "Farewell", and Borknagar, "The View of Everlast", all to Haibane Renmei. Progress check: 90%, 76%, 76% and 76%. Expected catalog numbers: #75, #76, #77, #78. The descriptor entries for the various component videos of Project Haibane won't go in until all four of them are done. That way I can spawn four instances of the db-entry editor, enter all the info, and submit them in rapid sequence so that these four vids have contiguous numbers in the master database. Much like with the vast part of the early catalog, but that was unintentional.

    With Recca being licensed, it's highly unlikely that I'll have to put out any more volumes of this series for club, so I can go over full-time on that score to A-D conversions (as well as ofcourse working on my own projects). MITAC has a huge pile of cassette tapes (111 unique albums' worth) of various anime soundtracks and drama discs and related material that nobody ever borrows any more. They also have a very small audio-CD library of similar material, and since I'm familiar with analog-digital conversion, I've decided to make myself useful by recording these tapes to CD and cleaning up the soundprint if necessary and possible. Of course, this is going to be a lot of work, but it's less than putting out a VHS release in terms of time, and probably in terms of effort. Just record, let Nero do auto-noise-reduction, cut the capture file into tracks, burn 'em, and write up a tracklist on graph paper for the insert. Not hard, and all you really need is a soundcard if the tape quality is good enough.

    Plus, of course, something that can play tapes in decent fidelity and output that sound via a standard headphone-type plug, which is the barrier here, I suspect.

    Club's probably going to be cool again tomorrow night, but I have a couple eps of Slayers that I have to watch beforehand to get completely up to speed, I think. Whatever. Project Haibane will be done by this time next week. (How the hell often have I said that?)

    --Kai out

     
  • i'll bring a new age of better ways 2003-05-28 10:56:38
    ....or maybe just an indecent amount of decent-but-nonexceptional AMVs over a two year span. That's right, Shin Hatsubai Productions turns two years old today, and there IS a contest. There just isn't much video progress.

    You know how it is, living in a house with people you can actually tolerate. I get home from work all gung-ho, do up the timing chart for #75, and go out to the kitchen to grab a drink before I start editing. Then suddenly my bro's making dessert and trolling for assistance on his book, and before long I'm just sitting around listening to Usurper, reading oddly punctuated drafts of an incomplete post-modern anti-heroic fantasy epic, eating ice cream, and talking about Iced Earth's career trajectory, and whether or not Metallica's _St. Anger_ is going to be worth buying.

    My assessment: hell no, especially since it streets the same day as Full Metal Panic 1, JoJo's 1, and Argent Soma 3. I'm so glad I have a birthday the Friday following so that someone else can buy me a few of these.

    Current videos: Bill O'Brien, "Old Shoes", Gamma Ray, "A While In Dreamland" and "Farewell", and Borknagar, "The View of Everlast", all to Haibane Renmei. Progress check: 80%, 76%, 76% and 76%. Expected catalog numbers: #75, #76, #77, #78. One timing chart, three cut-maps, and no editing. Tonight I draft #75 and hopefully talk to Meg about how cool it is.

    AAAnd now the contest. A few of the handful of readers I have may have noticed that the titles on these journal entries are often all messed up. The reason is that all but twelve titles, going all the way back to the first one, posted 7/19/02, are quotes from, or references to, some band or another. This is the material on which this multi-leveled contest is based, titles of Kai's journal posts 7/19/02 to 5/28/03.

    If you can determine (or guess, whichever) how many bands have been quoted or referenced in the titles of these journal posts, you win Hasshin! 3.
    If you can NAME all the bands quoted or referenced in the titles of the journals done over the indicated time period, you win not only Hasshin! 3 but also fourSquare, the two-CD set that's going to end up housing Project Haibane.
    If somehow you are able to correctly identify the band quoted or referenced in EVERY applicable journal post over the indicated timespan, I will do any video of your choosing (any source, any music) as an official SH or KK (if applicable) release, slotted immediately after the project under production when you're notified of your award. Plus Hasshin! 3 and fourSquare, but since this is all but impossible, I have a feeling that I could safely promise hand-delivered live wombats as the prize for this level.

    General rules: max of five winners at level 1, three at level 2, and one at level 3. You can only win at one level. Contest stays open until fourSquare goes out for DC distro or all prizes have been claimed.

    Omake hints:
    There have only been 212 journal entries, counting this one, so there can't be more bands than that.
    There are a lot of good lyrics databases out there.
    When in doubt, choose metal over non-metal bands.

    --Kai out

     
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