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soon to become a victim of what you live to create
2002-07-26 14:44:43
brief entry: at long last. Video is hammering along damn nifty; if there weren't that many good clips in eps 5 and 6, at least I got Alucard turning amorphous and doing the "thousand-eyes" technique -- damn killer. No nightmares this time around. The real weird part is that I can't even imagin what this anime looks like in color anymore. I'm just in full-on grayscale mode; if it doesn't look good like that, I don't need to think about it.
Both comp discs are out; Red Wolf should have his volume on or about today. Got a request? Mail me and we can set up a trade or whatever. Probably going to catch another show this weekend as well as do a hell of a lot of video work; hopefully I can get out to the Palladium next weekend for Arch Enemy/Nile next weekend. Maybe record some more Grimlock if I can get the time.
Current video: Death, "Zombie Ritual" to Hellsing. Progress check: 52% complete. Expected catalog number: #45. I won't be using any Hypocrisy footage on this one after all; Nuclear Blast did a pretty poor digital transfer, and the damn thing won't crop to the dimensions I need it at.
--Kai out -
taste the zombie's drug........
2002-07-25 12:47:36
".....now you want more...."
The current video is working almost too well. I had a cool (because I'm metal and can handle such things) if incredibly disgusting nightmare last night, mostly about working on the video. Stuff like a guy spitting blood weakly through decayed teeth, more and more blood as his flesh started to decay, until eventually his head split on the jaw line. Teeth biting into my hand, like I was holding this living dead head as it decayed. I think I threw up blood into the trash can in my room after that (in the dream, not when I woke up, though I wasn't that clear on what was real and what wasn't at the time -- dreaming about zombies and editing this kind of video). Damn cool if morbid. It's not too often that you're working on a video and think, about the same clip in quick succession, "this'll work so cool" and "I need to throw up".
This is gonna be real good, but may not be suitable for competition -- like #30 without the sex. Every so often, though, I really have to do an ultrabrutal video, or I'd be just another source hacker. The period on this seems to be about once every 15 videos; #12 was bloodsoaked and #14 was twisted, then #30 was just absolute sickness made AMV, and now here it is #45, and there's sickening murderous violence going on. The function seems to be unilaterally increasing, so I wouldn't be surprised if this one turns out more extreme than #30. Shocked, yes, because that vid was substantially more murderous than any other AMV I'm aware of, but not really surprised.
I think I may have another case of metal poisoning like I had back freshman year. It's a little-known fact that it is entirely possible to be _too_ metal, at which point you start doing all kinds of unsocial stuff like chopping pieces out of yourself and setting them on fire to find out what burning human flesh smells like, wearing corpsepaint in public, drinking beef blood, and planning to set churches on fire. It's a good thing the video is going to lock up this weekend, so I can make some time to watch a little Marmalade Boy and get myself back in equilibrium again. I've been doing nothing but listening to metal at work, busting my ass on an impossible software problem, editing a grayscaled video to some dead-brutal death metal, and thrashing metal with the local scene on weekends. I need some shoujo bad to get my sanity back in shape before I look for the new volumes of Hellsing and Berserk (this last a very metal anime if ever there was one).
Before I forget:
http://www.onewaydown.net
Go there, download the MP3s, watch the live-videos, and hit the links page to find stuff about My Pet Demon and Dissention.
Current video: Death, "Zombie Ritual" to Hellsing. Progress check: 33% complete. Expected catalog number: #45.
--Kai out.
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the dynamics of spatial progression
2002-07-24 15:50:28
I may have to retract my opinions from yesterday that I had not made a good choice in the combination for the video under current production. I've got about 90 seconds (of 272 total) at 100% overage, with only two of 14 and a half episodes completely chopped. At this rate, I'll get about 21 minutes of source in total, and maybe I won't have to use Bible Black at all. I'll still use live (non-animated, not from a live performance) Hypocrisy, though, because IMHO (tho it will sound stupid) AMVs lean too much towards the "anime" portion.
I want to have the people at Ohayocon grilling me to make sure I didn't steal and enter some band's official video in their contest. If I was re-making #30 (BLOOD REIGN), I'd do it this way with the goal of getting Peter pissed at me for making Nuclear Blast breathe down his neck for putting other people's stuff in an official video without permission. This storytelling crap can go chew; my aim is to make a good Music Video.
Hopefully, I'll get enough good source to do that on the current production. The chief obstacle now is making sure that all pieces of the production/rendering setup are in place when they need to be; race conditions in SH Jitsu don't make messed-up computations, they make days of delay and inaction. Probably going to see MPD live again this weekend; hopefully their opening bands are in the vein of OWD, not downcast.
Current video: Death, "Zombie Ritual" to Hellsing. Progress check: 22% complete. Expected catalog number: #45.
Con news: changed the entry for video #28 so people can see it's going to MTAC. Either Phade changed the db lately, or I'm just stupid. That's going to be the first real public showing of a SH video, and it's happening in about 2 weeks.
--Kai out -
without judgement what would we do
2002-07-23 15:55:08
"we would be forced to look/at ourselves immersed in lost time"....
Well, I didn't get as much done as I thought I'd be able to yesterday, but I'm satisfied with progress so far anyways. Shin Hatsubai Jitsu gets strained as the episode count increases, but without all 13 eps and the two outside sources I'm planning to bring in, it's going to be damn hard for me to get all the necessary overage to make the vid snap along in the editing process. At heart, I'm beginning to suspect that early Death is not the world's best match for Hellsing in toto, and that my Iced Earth idea (waiting for DVD source, since there'd be a duplication of effort involved anyway) is a much better fit.
Been reading random other people's journals again, and there's a lot of burnout and rage out there, mostly at the glut of stuff available in terms of AMVs nowadays. People turning away from the real hardships of this hobby because there's too many people who suck at it now; a lot of people in crisis about whether they really want to keep doing it now that getting visibility is so much harder and the costs in time and system upgrades to produces something successful have skyrocketed so. A lot of nostalgia for the old days, before cracked copies of Premiere could get just anybody into a contest.
I'm sorry that obviously talented people are thinking about packing it in, and sorry that the current scene has pushed them into such a position, but as long as these videos have to be shown in public, good, honest, AMV craft is never going to truly die out. There is definitely going to be a winnowing period and a loss of outside recogition as the lamers kill their golden goose, but when this is over, people will still have the need to make good videos, and there will still be fora to show them in. There will still be people who can appreciate the craft of a good video, and still people to knock back on their heels with your genius of combination.
Of course, the other avenue is to proactively change the way AMVs are perceived at the convention (and, indirectly, at the online) level. A lot of people are focusing too much on digital trickery and not enough on the real craft of AMV making, which is entirely in:
a) selecting the correct combination of anime and music
and
b) performing scene selection and synchronization to vindicate the correctness of the choice in a).
Everything else is so much digital spackle. We need to get back to valuing these basics, because you can't fake experience and inspiration [a)], and no amount of filtering can substitute for talent and dedication [b)]. Let the detrius sink to the bottom and the cream rise to the top.
Other stuff: finished Spring Snow -- excellent of course -- and now need to get the second volume, started the Tale of Genji -- an excellent time killer -- with few plans to finish anytime in the near future.
Current video: Death, "Zombie Ritual" to Hellsing. Progress check: 13% complete. Expected catalog number: #45.
--Kai out -
when a pain in the neck is a positive
2002-07-22 09:17:03
Well, a productive weekend. I finished the Ippo video (getting first on Game Over in the process, it's in the db now), I got a good start on Spring Snow, I got my AWA entry out the door, and I caught One Way Down and My Pet Demon Saturday night. I'd pimp the links if I remembered where their bandsites were at, or if I suspected that a great many people would care about the North Shore metal scene.
Wherever you are, though, it never hurts to get out and do some thrashing to support local music. MPD was pretty loose (I've seen them better, the screwups were probably from going on so late), but OWD was absolutely awesome. Non-doom/stoner death metal is a rare find these days, and OWD does it damn well. If I can get a CD, I may eventually do a video with them. There was this other band on the bill called downcast, which is like the fallout from Dystopian Abyss, but their vocalist was horrible and pissed off the people organizing the show. The venue just fucking emptied after they turned on their smoke machine (this is one of the rules: "If your band has a light show and a smoke machine, you suck"). Cool hanging with the bands on the sidewalk scaring tourists, though.
The more Mishima I read the more I like the guy. I find it pretty ironic that even after writing about ritual suicide the way he did in "Patriotism", he was still able to kill himself the way he did. But really, looking at his whole life, it's understandable; the guy was in complete control of himself and his destiny every step of the way. If he knew within himself that he'd never be able to top the Sea of Fertility tetraology, then he really didn't have any reason to continue living. I don't know that I'd do the same if I made the best video that I ever would and knew it, or recorded the best Grimlock material that I'd ever write; by this logic, Chuck should have killed himself after _Symbolic_, but we're all glad that he didn't, even if _Sound of Perseverance_ doesn't overtop it.
I'm really looking forward to the rest of the Sea of Fertility. Of course, since my fucking capture card is still on the blink and I only have two more vids planned that don't involve capturing footage, I'm gonna have a lot of time for reading in the near future. Gods damn Adobe Premiere. It's like malaria; once you get it, it never really goes away, but worse, because malaria doesn't mess up certain aspects of your life all the time. Installing that dysfunctional piece of overrated shite was the worst mistake I made in my entire career. Well, maybe the second worst, after thinking video #34 could turn into something reasonable.
Current video: Death, "Zombie Ritual" to Hellsing. Progress check: 8% complete. Expected catalog number: #45.
Grimlock news: The Rapid Charlie tribute has been pushed back to a planned releasedate of 8/22/03, the second anniversary of Andy Bell's passing. This give me more time to record and get production gear going, as I've had some more setbacks on that front.
Con news: Like I said, I'm hopefully going to be in the Pro contest at AWA; vids used are #32 and #28, double-dipping from AFO and MTAC respectively. That's five cons entered, three more on the slate.
--Kai out
JOURNAL: Kai Stromler (Kai Stromler)
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