JOURNAL: Soul Bro Ryu (A. Maximillian Russell)

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  • Miscellaneous 2003-08-13 18:01:10 If I had the time, I'd finish my AFO saga, but since I'm on break at the job, that'll have to wait. Just wanted to put in some thoughts on the videos I'm working on.

    "Madness" - Despite the fact of owning all of Nadesico on DVD, I'm still hesistant to work on this one and it stays forever in pre-production because of my inexperience to make it fantastic. I'm still debating wither I should make it a straightforward video, stick with my basic formula of beat-cuts, lip-synching, and lyric matching, or should I do that an venture into more effects this time around. I'm not too experienced on using effects in Premiere but when I finsh with my current video, I'm really considering a crash course on them. All I have to find is a resource online that can give me more insight on how to use them.

    "Grooveline" - I know this will be an easy video to do, but since I only have the first 8 eps of "OVERMAN King Gainer" on DVD, I've been reluctant to start this one until I get at least half the series. Still working on a them for this video besides "Trains" and action.

    "Across the Board" - The video I'm currently working on, and the one I don't have listed. It's to "Hikaru no Go" and to the songs "Start of Something" (The Free Association), "Above the Rock" (Ray Bryant), and "Gossip" (Cyril Neville), which are all reprised by David Holmes (famous for scoring Ocean's Eleven and other Soderburgh movies). "Start of Something" is only the first 20 seconds of the track, where it fades into "Above the Rock" which is a kick-ass jazz song that's drum & piano heavy. Plus it has one of the rythym sections that you probably heard sampled a lot during the golden age of Hip-Hop (1987-1994) that is just ageless.

    I'm retarded about HikaGo and I think the show is pure genious, but making a video to it is really tough. There's not too much in the way of action until you get to the Go games - and there's plenty of those. In this video, I'm merging a lot of shots so there's plenty of transparent overlays in the background while action is going on in the foreground. I'm calling it an experiment of sorts, and after I premiere it, hopefully I get a little insight on if what I did was overkill or if I actually did it well. I guess time will tell.

    I should have it done before the end of the month...I hope. ^_^ 
  • Anime Festival Orl- Part Five, Already... 2003-08-09 01:05:45 "Action" was the next category that kicked things off when festivities finally resumed, about 7 minutes later. Out of them my favorite was easily "Together" by Marlex to "Vandread". In production, it was the one packaged better than all the others, and that's probably why it won Best Editing of the show. My "Credit is Due" video to "Mobile Suit Gundam" was in the mix too, but even I knew it paled in comparison to "Together". I do know this: "Credit is Due" didn't get one peep out of most of the girls there, but to my surprise, a good deal of the fellas liked it, and during the recap made some noise.

    I guess good Hip-Hop does have a place in AMV contests. ^_^

    BTW, best Action went to "Chateau" from Matrix Reloaded which was done to Asuka's fight for survival from "The End of Evangelion", Really good song, and the video was enjoyable, but my only complaint about it is that there should have been more beat manipulation to the scenes in the video. Then again, with the footage the creator was limited to, doing that would have made things really difficult.

    Finally, the course swung around to "Comedy", and I couldn't think of a better video to kick things off than ZennMora's "Ninja of the Night", which of course, was about Naruto. Honestly, I think Naruto itself was an underground sensation at this con, and I was caught off guard that a video based on this show was even in the contest.

    Nick and I were floored by this video, and even more so since we're big fans of the show and have breen keeping up with it via BitTorrent. It stole the show, and got the LOUDEST pop out of all the vids that night. It was all well deserved, and I knew the videos that followed it were going to be hard pressed to compare to it. Fate, can be a bitch sometimes, and she sure was to me this weekend, when my entry for "Comedy" came up next.

    "Ninja of the Night" was a hard act to follow, and I'll be damned if "Somebody to Love" wasn't the next one up to bat. Unlike all my other entries that played between the two competitions, this one was globally liked by most of the audience and I remember them really enjoying several scenes of it:

    - Kintaro lip-synching the chourus, especially the Speed-line shot with his fist clenched.
    - The "He works hard" chorus with the Kids
    - Kintaro as an Angel
    - The Bike-Ride sequence
    - A Kid Puking
    - Kintaro's Drop off the unfinished bridge emphasised to the dip in the song

    I probably missed others but I was really caught up in the moment of actually having an AMV on screen that the people avtually enjoyed as a whole. Still, I think "Ninja of the Night" was far better, but I was happy that most folks dug what I made as an ode' to Golden Boy.

    I didn't think I won anything, but still stuck around to see who did run away with the honors. To my suprise, I actually won Best Concept for an AMV, and I walked all the way from the back of the room to get my plaque. That event capped off the weekend, and made amends for the "public scrutiny" I got the night before.

    (To be continued...) 
  • Anime Festival Orlando 4 (Part Four - Goddamn there's a Pt. 4?) 2003-08-09 00:34:05 Saturday.

    Struck out with the chicks that were attending. I'm not sure what it is, well besides the fact that I'm a big guy. I guess otaku chicks are thrown off to meet a brother who's into this kind of stuff too, and just get a weird vibe altogether, not being interested or even intimidated.

    Then again, a great deal of the girls that are at cons (especially those in cosplay) are a LOT younger than me. Those that are my age tend to be already taken or seriously NOT interested. And then there's the wild card factor.

    Lesbians.

    Talking to them are the shit, I gotta say, and to be honest they conversate more at cons than single hetero chicks do. Of course, it's a conversation that's going nowhere, but fuck it. It's better than not talking period.

    And there's a lot of that going on at cons.

    I haven't been to to many cons, but for Christ's sakes, the next one I go to better have a mixer, or else I'm bringing a keg and having one in my hotel room.

    Ahem...I'll get back on track. I hit a lot of panels that day along with Nick, while Shoji dealt with some unresolved releationship issues with his girl, Rebecca; Anime Voice Acting 101, Doug Smith, Wendee Lee, Chris Patton, and others. They were all digable, not to mention Wendee and Chris both commended me on the questions I asked them.

    Went to go play in the Capcom Vs. SNK 2 tournament in the game room in the afternoon, and got torn out of the frame with the quickness in the first round. The day got better though, when I had Buck & The Game Room staff pop in Nick's copy of Naruto for the GameCube. A crowd amassed and we all played for at least an hour before my friend and I departed for Popeye's for lunch/dinner.

    I missed the fuck out of Cosplay, and I couldn't be happier. I don't dislike cosplayers in the slightest, but I only can take it in small doses. I sat through the cosplay contest at AFO3 and swore to myself I'd never torture myself again, unless I was forced to go with my woman or somthing. Nick and I got back just right before the AMV contest contest started (between 9 & 10pm), and our timing couldn't be better. His girlfriend couldn't make it to AFO4 so she asked him to film some of the vids for her since that's one of her favorite parts of going to a convention.

    I had two vids in this competition too, but neither of them were in the "Drama" category which came up first. The majority of the vids were in this vein and for the most part were enjoyable. To me the stand out ones were the one for "Wings of Honnemeise" (or something like that), FujinTsuwamono's "Escaflowne", and of course the winner, "Western Timepiece" by Tutterbutter. The "Drama" category had a slow start, and I feel really sorry for the cat that made the "Lain" video that got interrupted at the very beginning when the lights came on, but it progressed very well.

    I also feel sorry for Legionair, who had worked so hard to make this contest run smoothly. Big ups go to him for giving us all a venue to show off our work, especially since it was my first time competing in anything period. If it wasn't for this contest, I think I'd still be without opinions on any of my videos not to mention I'd never had the memories of how it feels to have your works on a big screen in front of hundreds of folks. It's like attending a screening to a flick you've made. I really wish Legionair would reconsider and run next years contest, and despite the things that went wrong, he really deserves a second shot. I'm not sure who David Violence is, but I know he's pretty famous and chances are he'll be in charge of the AMV contest at AFO5. I can only hope he as likable and a cool cat like Jason was while running things this year.

    After "Drama" ended, the contest was interrupted for an explaination of an incident that happened during the cosplay skit competition. Something that included under-age drinking or some shit most of us didn't give a fuck about and an explaination that could have waited 'till the following morning, at the Costume contest. It threw the whole vibe out of order during the AMV contest, and folks even left during the intermission, missing out on both the next two categories. 
  • Anime Festival Orlando 4 (Part Three) 2003-08-08 23:49:55 As I type this it was a week ago at the exact same time - Midnight. I was wating in line with my friends and several other AMV creators waiting for the hammer to drop. And everyone was in the mood for PORN. Yeah, buddy!

    Honestly, I don't blame them. It was Friday night and the stroke of the witching hour, and not only that but after the Adult AMV comp, there drunken anime debate followed starring most of the guests that were headlining at the con. My videos were purely at the wrong venue and were going to be lambased from jump, and I was gonna have to take my beating like a man and get through this.

    Finally they hearded us into the auditorium and it felt like an eternity for the competition to start, nut I knew it was only me. My other friend that was there, Nick, was trying his best to get my spirits up, but I had the worst case of contained panic I'd ever experienced in my life. God bless him, though, but I knew what I was in for.

    Taking a step back, I made "Bernie's Lament" a couple o' months ago, and because my froend Shoji has a High-Definition TV with a modified X-Box, I like to preview my vids on his TV to see how they come out in encoded in XviD after I'm through compressing them. When I showed him that video, he tore it apart - commenting on it like MST3000, and making fun of the possible "man-boy" action that could be easily taking out of context when it comes to Bernie and Al.

    Anyone who's seen 0080, knows that no NAMBLA-type shit goes on, but show my vid to someone who hasn't seen the anime, and it becomes one big goof-fest. That's how I knew what I was in for after the mood was set for this comp, with audience seriously down for some booty-tastic action.

    Needless to say, when the videos began, I felt I was at a roast where folks attended and didn't know the clueless bastard they were roasting. Remember that picture of Will Ferrel's "Frank" from "Old School" at his wedding (during the "Toast" scene) or later on when they showed the "Mitch-Palooza" flyer with Luke Wilson looking bewildered. That was the look on my face when the reel began an "Bernie's Lament" was first.

    Talk about getting first bullet in a game of Russian Roulette. The groan from the audience was overwhelming since the last thing folks were in the mood to see was Gundam. Period.

    Again, I don't blame them. The video played in it's entirety. All Five minutes and Twenty-Five seconds of it. As proud as I was when I completed the video when I finished it months ago, I was just as uncomfortable showing it off to a crowd who couldn't wait for it to end. Nothing beats the "And nobody better clap for that!" quote when it did finish - which I think came from one of the guests (Chris Patton, I guess-timate, but I'm not sure).

    Next was a video to "Colorful", and sadly I don't remember the song it was to, but it sure hit the mark more with the audience than the video that preceded it. And it showed more ass too ^_^

    Enter the Dragon. The showstopper was next, and I'll be damned if it didn't blow everything out of the water. "Moneyshot" was the video to beat out of the four - and not just for the obvious. The editing and timing were spot on...no pun intended. The choice of song was perfect, although I had never heard it before seeing this ("Relax" - Frankie Goes to Hollywood) and set the stage for all the action on screen. And honestly, who could beat the content. Anyone with the cojones to make a video to a series as controversial as "Bible Black" better have to skill to back it up - and Mexican Junior did indeed.

    I already knew "Moneyshot" would win over the crowd before the show had started, but then again, one dosen't have to be a newtype to see that coming. After that video ended to a standing ovation, the competition rided out to my other entry, "Love", which got a mixed reaction from the crowd, who had already got the T,A & Penetray fix they wanted from the superior vid.

    I breathed a sigh of relief when it was all over, while Brandy Tutterbutter went on stage to accept the award for best Adult/Hentai AMV in place of her boyfriend, Mexican Junior. "Moneyshot" should also get the the signifigance of being played a record three times that night also - a second time by crowd request and a third when Steve Bennett showed up towards the end of the Drunken Anime Debate and the guests were demanding another replay to show him what he missed.

    In the end, I'm glad I stuck it through and stayed during the whole ordeal of getting anonimously picked apart by a crowd of AMV viewers. I'm a firm believer in what dosen't kill you makes you stronger, and if that shit didn't I'm not sure what else will.

    Fun for all. 
  • Anime Festival Orlando 4 (Part Deux) 2003-08-08 17:55:22 Can't believe it's been a week since the con started.

    Fast forwarding to later that night, when the Adult/Hentai AMV contest started, I was in a state of panic. Not thinking through on my entries for that contest, I sent in my "Bernie's Lament" (Gundam 0080) & "Love" (Video Girl Ai) videos in (ironically, two of the videos not up for download here at this site). I assumed that there would have been plenty of entries for this contest since the content was no holds barred, but I couldn't be any more wrong.

    There were four entries, and mine took up 50% percent. Then I found out that one of the other entries was a well produced video to Bible Black called "Moneyshot". I knew then that there was no hope.

    What's really funny were the friends that I invited to the AMV party. Shoji Ramuro was one of them, and when we had heard that one of the 4 vids was hentai at it's finest, he was quick to quote:

    "You've already lost this Adam, but if that shit's to Bible Black - YOU...ARE...FUCKED."

    If I can count on anything in life, it's irony.

    (To be continued...) 
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