-
still something left to save
2010-01-13 13:00:34
SH114:
- Source rip: complete
- Music: complete
- Precleaning: complete
- Storyboard/planning: rough
- Clipping: 3/17
- Edit: none
- Postproc: none
- Export: none
I'm not certain that any more work will get done till the weekend; tonight looks possible but dicey, and then work/social/deathmetal/class commitments run roughshod over everything till Sunday morning. Regardless, progress is still being made, even if cutting each VOB takes less long due to the ED/preview/OP inclusion body in the middles of them. I'm probably ready to go right now on source, but there's enough good stuff in the remaining 2 1/2 DVDs to make keeping on worthwhile.
However, getting stuck in like this really reinforces, I think, why you see AMV makers getting sick of anime and quitting. Paging through frame by frame without sound and largely without continuity really lays bare the limitations of the source; this one is an I.G with an obvious actual budget, but with shockingly bad model fidelity and plain underdrawn art in way, way, too many cuts. Having a large source volume lets me get out of having to use any of it, but the inescapable feeling is that too much of this title is just garbage. And when you cross off the popular shows because you want to work with something different, and the interesting less-popular shows because the animation quality is garbage, what's left?
For the moment, though, I'm soldiering on here with the objective of making this look like it was animated far a lot more money than it actually was by taking all the high-prod-value shots where the characters look like they do in the OP and a bunch of the stellar backgrounds and punching it down to five and a half minutes. Still working on an effects design --hope I won't need to use much in that regard, but it never hurts to go in with a plan when you need to rub some extra production value on a cut rather than just going hunting in the transition bin.
--Kai out
-
against the famine and the crown
2010-01-12 13:11:08
SH114:
- Source rip: complete
- Music: complete
- Precleaning: complete
- Storyboard/planning: rough
- Clipping: 2/17
- Edit: none
- Postproc: none
- Export: none
Currently, I probably have the necessary 100% overage necessary to make the video. This is good, and brings back memories of the old days, when it was sufficient to cut up a single tape, avoiding anything with subs on it, and make a video out of the remains, but isn't going to affect the reality that to do this video right, the other 15 VOBs still need to get cut. This starts to become more important as I look at my calendar of shows, class, and other commitments, and realize that I'm rapidly running out of January. This one is looking at a yet-unposted probable-early-March submission deadline, but I want it done and dusted as far in advance as possible in case I get sick, break something in a hand again, get stuck deathmarching something for work, or some combination of the above. This week is also not looking especially clipping-time friendly, which is probably going to lead to more pressure.
The good news is that the print isn't needing any cleaning up, and that the prod schedule for the first half of the year has really firmed up. The idea that was competing with the current SH114 for the AniBo slot is going to be doable after all, and probably going to AWA. Unfortunately due to fresh-kill restrictions, the next one published is probably going to be SH116, something called "Causality" at present that will be too experimental to do other than direct-to-.org. Metal bands on 3 of the four; new equipment almost definitely required for SH115. Does it feel like the transfer window yet?
If so, it should; hazy scribbled crap that means nothing to anyone until there is some actual product out there. We'll see what actually changes this week, or if the schedule ends up getting pushed around.
--Kai out
-
swats f-16s from the sky
2010-01-06 14:48:49
SH114:
- Source rip: complete
- Music: complete
- Precleaning: complete
- Storyboard/planning: rough
- Clipping: 1/17
- Edit: none
- Postproc: none
- Export: none
Over New Year's, I managed to get the source watched and a bare-bones concept sketched out to account for it, and after a whole lot of doing nothing sat down and cut the first VOB last night. This is, surprisingly, a little harder going timewise than the K-On cut, but this may be down to the cut itself being more rewarding. Source gain is pretty good, even though I'm trying to be more selective and a lot of this title is unsuited for the video I'm trying to compose. Still, one down, 16 to go, and most of what I cut for this one and don't use can probably be easily brought out to 16:9 for a later project that may or may not even get under way this year.
I also sat down and watched several movies acquired for that project in order to get them off the ledge in front of my TV and onto the shelf where the other 15 DVDs involved are currently stacked. Most looked fairly promising, but Steamboy, not so much. We'll see when I actually get to cutting on said project, though; some of this may have been the inherent problems of a radicalized Celtic supporter watching the movie on an Old Firm weekend. An American arms concern with an Irish name in 1866 is, at least implicitly, a bunch of Fenians, and it is very hard to buy into Fenians as potential villains at any time, but when you're in the middle of working yourself into a green-and-white froth of hatred against all things Union-flag-waving, it becomes completely impossible. Otomo is trying to make a point about (as always) nuclear weapons and the role of science in politics by playing a turn in the middle of the film, but it doesn't work if you don't buy the Foundation as black-and-white "bad guys" from the start.
There's a bigger rant following on this on the extremely false analogy between the Steam Ball and the principles behind the Bomb that tends to kind of undermine the entire point of the film, but that's not really relevant here and will be self-apparent to anyone who's both seen the movie and read Richard Rhodes' books on the development of nuclear weapons. The real point is that I should be able to get a decent amount of oppressed proletariat and some naval ships out of this one, making cutting it worthwhile. Regardless, due to the way that things are shaping up right now, that video is unlikely to have a target anytime before AWA2011, nor start work at all before the end of this year. In due time, though; the trap and consolation of treating AMV as an industrial process.
Built into that estimate already is the ironic reality that yay, I got off my butt and did something on the current video, but I immediately take another five-day break as a result of (hopefully) Razormaze tonight, other commitments Thursday, Tyr Friday, and a friend's birthday party Saturday. Yes, treat AMV like a job; makes it easier to realize that the world's not going to end if you take off from it once in a while.
--Kai out
-
once a railroad
2009-12-31 11:36:23
As mentioned yesterday, it's year-end, and I'm at work all day, so, stats. More infos can be found over at http://insomni-ack.blogspot.com/2009/12/shin-hatsubai-2009-org-stats-now-with.html. These are the top 10 SH videos by volume over the past year.
The Man From Gomu-Gomu ---------------- 75
Knee Deep In Disease --------------------- 48
fryste -------------------------------------- 45
weiß nix wie ich sagn soll ------------------- 43
Zero Zero J-Gei Shakedown ---------------- 40
D I S A R M -------------------------------- 37
Sakigake!! Takino Tomo! ------------------ 36
SH100: Looking Back, Looking Suspicious - 31
Ryoma-sama e love Ian -------------------- 31
Sing Loud Sing Proud For Your Scene! ------ 30
Not a lot of surprises here; the three SH videos released at year-end take the #2 to #4 spots. If these three are discarded, these are the next in line:
the Wolverine Blues -- demo 4 --- 24
no taste at all -------------------- 23
heroes --------------------------- 22
The fact that SH098 comes in at #10 is a little weird, though. There might be remarks to be made about staying power for stuff like SH043 (#6) and SH020 (#10*), except that these are pretty low numbers and in the realm of statistical noise. A different list is the top 10 SH videos by volume, which is probably the most immediate and concrete effect that most editors have on the .org:
The Man From Gomu-Gomu ----- 3758.1
Knee Deep In Disease ---------- 2355.2
weiß nix wie ich sagn soll -------- 2160.6
D I S A R M --------------------- 1822.7
the Wolverine Blues -- demo 4 -- 1443.8
Sakigake!! Takino Tomo! ------- 1392.6
Zero Zero J-Gei Shakedown ----- 1372.2
heroes -------------------------- 1300.5
and so it ends ------------------- 1300.5
Revolt -------------------------- 1157.1
(Numbers in MB because I had to reformat the data dump for a graph.) Eight of these, of course, get onto the top 10 by volume, but there's an obvious outlier at the bottom of this table. Even downloaded only, on average, once a month, SH031 makes this list by virtue of weighing in just under the limit. These things happen when you make nine-minute videos. The total SH bandwidth footprint comes to about 48.1 GB, but this includes an anomalously high January, September, and October as the remasters sat in the new-downloads list. A 1 vpm pace in the future suggests about 35-40 GB yearly, trickling up slowly as the catalog grows.
Oddly, every single SH video on local was downloaded at least three times this year, including stuff like SH105 that was not remastered, and stuff like SH108 that appeals to exactly no one.
SH114:
- Source rip: complete
- Music: complete
- Precleaning: complete
- Storyboard/planning: none
- Clipping: 0/17
- Edit: none
- Postproc: none
- Export: none
Yes, the quotes went backward and changed shape. There's a simple reason for this -- SH114 is cancelled. Actually, that's incorrect; the idea previously slated as SH114 is cancelled, and the idea that was going to be SH115 has moved up one slot.
The reasons are numerous. The basic stuff that I could go to if I was lazy would be the technical stuff already moaned about in this space: difficulty of managing aspect ratios between the main source and the drop-ins, difficulty of frame-by-frame painting out logos, inconsistent quality (of source, and of jokes), but the real reason is something deeper that only manifested itself when I took a look outside the box to see about doing the same song with a different series.
Far too much of this video depended on knowing Composted (and also K-On, really, making it doubly impenetrable) for it to be successful, relative to the amount of work I was willing to put in. (Since the video is cancelled, it does no harm to note that SH114 until yesterday was supposed to set K-On! and some drop-ins from Yaiba to Composted's "Land On A Cock".) I was going to avoid closeups of pastries, but still paste Rich's face over Mugi's in the final card because her job in K-On! is to hook up the baked goods, and his job in Composted was to smash them on his forehead. Similarly Mike/Ricchan, Mark/Yui, Anthony/Mio, and Elliot/Azusa. The jokes are all there, but while the fit is good, Composted are not well-known enough to make it obvious, I wasn't going to go around shopping the band members' faces out of random RTTP shots onto the anime in the video itself, and the video was going to be too weird and stupid to make people go "wait, why the hell are these random scruffy dudes' faces pasted over the K-On! girls in the credits, I need to find out more about this Composted". "Weird and stupid", the band would probably agree, is kind of what Composted aims for, but this video would not have done enough to forge the link between "weird and stupid" and "goodness" needed to get the band some more visibility.
This song may re-emerge in the future in another SH video, and this one may even finish at some point as an INSO number, but it's not getting done next month, or with this concept and a SH number at all. Someone with more patience might do a self-assembling HMV out of this song, but I don't have that kind of patience, and really, doing a hentai video is the obvious course of action for a song that mainly consists of the words "land-on-a COCK". If someone else is capable of making a video, though, I don't have to; there's enough videos on the to-do list that for various reasons, will never get made at all unless I knuckle under and do the work. The ones of those that I want to see are the ones that turn into live projects.
The current SH114 is one of those. The anime is underused, the band criminally so, and if I don't end up saying anything new with the video, it'll at least be different. All the source processing went in last night; over the weekend, after I deal with any hangover and hardware-rebuild problems (my home internet machine is on its last legs), I need to watch the source again and see what exactly I need to do with it. Editing to start in the new year, maybe with new gear. Old doors close, new doors open.
--Kai out
-
sun goes down on tallahasse
2009-12-30 10:09:02
SH114:
- Source rip: complete
- Music: complete
- Precleaning: none
- Storyboard/planning: rough
- Clipping: 9/13 | complete
- Edit: none
- Postproc: none
- Export: none
At this point, nine eps into a 13-episode main cut, there is literally nothing to write home about. I continue to get decent but not stellar source. The video continues to look doable. Logos suck due to the work involved removing or cutting around them. Time remains consistent and I continue to fret about not having enough coverage, or having to do too much work to fix things. All things wind down, appropriate enough for the end of the year where I'm effectively running my department at work by my lonesome.
Tomorrow, since I don't get to go home early, EOY stats, and no video work due to drinking. SH114 wraps probably around the end of next week, and then I need to do a feasibility check on SH115 before kicking into that.
--Kai out
JOURNAL: Kai Stromler (Kai Stromler)
Current server time: Dec 24, 2025 05:43:44