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abusing a portion of light
2002-10-10 12:29:04
Because the last two eps weren't as rich as I thought they'd be (and because the song I'm using has virtually none of the complexities that the last one did), I'm a little further along with the current video than I expected. Barring major equipment screwups, it outght to be done by this time tomorrow. This'll give me time to work on remastering my back catalog and getting CDs together to send to Red Wolf for distro. The official word is $0.60 for a CD or 2 in a CD-envelope, but that doesn't even begin to apply to what I'll be sending.
This is the cost of productivity:
Shin Hatsubai Hasshin! [mixdowns or MPEG1]: at least 2 volumes
Shin Hatsubai Perfect Collection [MPEG2]: at least 4 volumes, maybe as many as 6
Shin Hatsubai Special [adults-only, hq and lq]: one volume
Kuroi Kenshi Ultimate Collection [KK vids, hq and lq]: at least one, maybe 2 volumes.
This stuff is going to be going out by the box. So much postage....but my principles DEMAND that I do this, even more because I know I'm never, even when I get a site up, going to be able to get more than one video hosted at a time. Hopefully, AD and Red Wolf won't kill me for 'spamming' the distro.
Current video: Dimension Zero, "Your Darkest Hour" to Samurai Deeper Kyo. Progress check: 85% complete. Expected catalog number: #55. Like I said, should be done soon. Tim hasn't got back to me about using his work in the intro to the next one, but if he doesn't, I'll just not do the intro...still waiting for him to get back with a request list tho....
Con news: yeah. Anime USA this weekend in VA. #44 is there. It's got big honkin pixels in some parts, and stoopid bakamx logos in others, so in a crowded field it aint gonna win anything. However! It may get some people interested in Game Over, which is ofcourse the reason that I let these things out to menace the public.
I should listen to some more black metal again. I already have a lot of ideas on the plate, but the True Northern Art needs a higher profile around here, and a better range. Or I could watch more anime and find the snowbound mountains I need for "At The Heart Of Winter". To enact Satan on earth; my humble quest. ;{]>
--Kai out
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there is no hope why don't you
2002-10-09 12:46:19
For the record, Tim Park won the reward mentioned in the last entry. So there is no more opportunity for any slowpoke Forbidden fans out there to get free stuff from me.
It appears that Samurai Deeper Kyo's production staff learned well the lessons of Hellsing: that as long as your concept is cool enough, and you have enough cool shots in each episode, you can throw all semblance of consistent production values in the garbage can. It's getting fucking ridiculous how poorly drawn and off-model the characters are getting in everything beyond closeups, and the amount of looping, reuse from past episodes, and camera pans over still frames is just annoying. And yet there were at one point 12 groups fansubbing this (and some doing a crappy job of it too -- it doesn't take more than a cursory knowledge of medieval Japanese history to know that "bakufu" should be translated, and as "Imperial government", instead of just left, as #anime-keep does in their episode 6).
Then again, there are nearly 1200 Dragonball Z videos. There's no accounting, anywhere, for anything.
Current video: Dimension Zero, "Your Darkest Hour" to Samurai Deeper Kyo. Progress check: 62% complete. Expected catalog number: #55. I'll rip through another ep tonight, the last I have tomorrow, and probably have the video done if not mixed down by the time I go into Cambridge Friday. After that? Pure insanity, maybe beyond bounds of human capability if Tim is feeling generous.
Just gotta fill out a form and send it to the feds, and that application is complete. The BLS slot I'm going for looks interesting, I might be able to start at GS-7 if I get the job, and this community's got a bunch of cool people down that mid-Atlantic way, but I really would rather be working in industry, doing controls or legacy support. Too bad the economy isn't going my way.
--Kai out
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walking the crooked straight line
2002-10-08 13:13:51
Yesterday, I got a bunch of the video done, and the Packers defeated the evil Chicago Bears. Bonus. Ofcourse, football put ANOTHER bite in my productivity as I slept too late having stayed up for the end of the game. Six months ago this would not have been a problem, but now that I'm out of school, I can't do that to my body anymore. I really need a job to help me remember that.
The Feds want me to finish applying for something, which is a good sign; if they didn't like what they saw so far, they'd chuck it and say the hell with this one. I should be prepping for the GRE, but I'm good at this sort of test and using past performance as an excuse to slack off. No news from Harris or the rest of the M-I-C.
Current video: Dimension Zero, "Your Darkest Hour" to Samurai Deeper Kyo. Progress check: 47% complete. Expected catalog number: #55. I'm about half an hour out from 50% done, at which point I will also be 50% through my usable source. I did some work on #56 yesterday afternoon as well, mostly just getting the pieces together for the intro.
The current vid reminds me a lot of #3, going way way back, as a no-letup ninja+NWOSDFM video. When I did #3 (in less than a day start-to-finish), there were some clips that I thought were really bad immediately afterward, though I hardly notice them in retrospect, and planned to do the video over, or at least fix those broken sections. Now, I'm substantially "remaking" that video, and just from the average clip length so far on the collected source, it looks like I'll pretty much have the freedom to do whatever I want and optimize the video on the first pass however I please.
It's a good thing that #56 will be shorter and looser, even if the intro is going to involve a ton of work; going as fast as #54 went and #55 will go really wears you out.
--Kai out.
also: if anyone can name me the band quoted in the title of this entry (over email please), there will be a reward forthcoming.
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feel the inevitable against your skin
2002-10-07 12:38:40
Feeling pretty confident about the current video; confident that it'll work AND that it'll be worthy of a KK number. Incase you haven't seen any of this series, think Hellsing meets Kenshin. The only problem that I can see so far is that I'm started to get addicted to speeding up footage. "Your Darkest Hour" IS a damn fast song, and there's almost no letup or variance in the pacing, but if I overdo it, I'm going to be doing myself out of source.
Good club showing; Vandread 1-3 b/w Armitage Dual Matrix, the latest installment (?) of one of the most confusingly plotted franchises out there. Also picked up this week's borrowings, including 8 bizarre episodes that will go into the next video, which like #47 I can't announce the music for. Not because anything is particularly unholy in combination with Kogepan, but because the music in itself is a hate farm. Man sieht spaeter.
Football, American and international, is putting a huge dent in my weekend editing capabilities. College all day Saturday, Patriots till I gave up on them, then Guadalajara-Necaxa till I got disgusted with Guadalajara's general sloppiness (and Necaxa's inability to capitalize on said broken or sloppy plays), then the Eagles Sunday, and ofcourse Packers-Bears tonight. It was almost all I could do to get my borrowings duped and one ep clipped; ofcourse ep 1 was quite rich, and took nearly 5 hours of effort, but that was almost expected from the start.
Current video: Dimension Zero, "Your Darkest Hour" to Samurai Deeper Kyo. Progress check: 35% complete. Expected catalog number: #55. A little more finishing work, and this'll be 38% done. I spend so little time per video compared to everyone else that it's not fair for me to complain about how tedious it is to finish a video made using the new technique, but I would REALLY, REALLY like to be able to work start-to-finish in MPEG2 in some kind of remotely timely manner, because I HATE doing the finishing work associated with VDub clipping. If I was using Premiere, I wouldn't have this problem; but if I was using Premiere, I couldn't do framerate manipulations or half my other tricks, and I'd be going so slow it'd drive me berserk.
Con news: mailed the CSUN package Saturday; #44 is at Anime USA at the end of this week. Should be looking around for more deadlines shortly.
--Kai out.
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your soul it will devour
2002-10-04 13:53:46
....and spit out the bones as YET ANOTHER VIDEO FINISHED AHEAD OF DEADLINE. I finished #54 last night, ironed out some problems this morning, and will shortly buckle down to trying to redo #46 the way it was originally intended, and following that (or following my giving up on that), I'll get rolling on #55, which unlike the one that just wrapped, WILL get a KK as well as SH number.
Speaking of that, when you talk about Dimension Zero, it's not NWOSDM, it's NWOSDFM: New Wave Of Swedish DEATH FUCKING METAL. Gods, if only In Flames still rocked like this! I guess that's why Jesper and Glenn got this band now, because they've still got that "blue fire burning low over corpses" inside.
I've actually been watching other people's AMVs again, something that I hadn't done in a long time, really. At first, before I started working, I watched all that I could from those I could identify as good, then after I had done 10 or so vids on my own, I mostly stopped. I had the Craft down, and I picked up points on Art from watching vids before I started doing any of my own, so I felt that continuing to watch the masters would put a cramp in the development of my own style. Even now, before I go into a new project, I watch the vids I'VE made most like it before those that other people have done.
Now, though, I feel that my style is pretty well developed (it better be after 16 months and 54 videos), and I'm not going to hurt myself by going back and watching my "masters" selection; some Caldwell, a lot of Maboroshi and RYS, the best of Otaku Vengeance, most of DokiDoki, and a few others that have stood out (incl. works by Jesmaster, TommyRude, Kestrel, and SSGWTMT). Experience is letting me see a lot more in these, like how HARD and PERFECT the lipsynch is in Caldwell's take on "Chantilly Lace" using Golden Boy, and the role closure plays in making the "beat-synched whacking" in DokiDoki's "Right Now Someone Is Reading This Title" look more dead-on than it is. So that's the input of the "masters" on Craft: make the hard look easy, and make the easy look like it was hard.
I also basically tied myself in my chair and MADE myself watch video #34 to the end. As it turns out, this is mainly a decent video, but there's more jawflap in this one vid than anything else I've ever done combined, and the edits are long and not always well-synched or well-cut. I didn't have enough source for real overage when I was making this, and so instead of making the end suck, and torpedoing the vid if it were ever shown anywhere, I made the part-just-past-the-beginning suck, so I can't resist turning the damn thing off.
The thing is, though, that this video (except for its degraded picture quality) is on a level with a small but significant percentage of the AWA Pro entries this year. For a lot of people #34 would be competable. For me it is crud. I don't know what this says about my mindset, or my standards, but I know it says this about my production pace: because I do 30+ videos per year, I can afford to just drop bad ones instead of sending them places.
Current video: Dimension Zero, "Your Darkest Hour" to Samurai Deeper Kyo. Progress check: 20% complete. Expected catalog number: #55. I have seen only one ep of this anime; I'm looking forward to checking out the other 7 that I have in the editing process.
Con news: compiled the CSUN entry; sending it tomorrow.
One more thing: does RahXephon's head really look like a moose with its wings extended, or have I just been up in the Maine woods too long?
--Kai out.
JOURNAL: Kai Stromler (Kai Stromler)
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