JOURNAL: Arigatomina

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  • RE: QC person 2006-07-20 22:22:03 This is to the person who linked me to a song recently - the comedic song. I don't know who you are! You didn't sign your qcs, so I can't respond to you any other way than this. >.<

    Did you have an anime character in mind for the narrator? I have some in mind that would fit, but they aren't well known enough. It would be kinda pointless if I don't use a character you like. If we can't communicate I'd probably end up making something you hate despite the song.

    So...QC person, if you read this, please contact me so we can discuss details. You can PM me on the forum, or use email: arigatoumina@hotmail.com

    I really doubt you wanna wait till my next video to qc me again. ^_^; 
  • export errors, lack thereof 2006-07-19 13:08:22 So I'm experimenting with a song in Premiere 6.0, right? I finish the test vid and go to export it and Premiere locks up. Now, it was locking up from the very first time I tried using the 'radial blur' effect. I'm used to it now. I got to the point where I saved the project file after every keyframe because I never knew when it was going to lock up and when it was just going to auto-close itself. Well, this is the first time I've had export problems. No error, no auto-close. I just happened to come back to my comp in time to realize it had been stuck on frame 7248 for a really long time and said there were 45 minutes left to export. Yeah, right.

    So here's the thing. I'm used to having to cut my timeline into pieces and paste them back together in vdub. I used wmm for years. I don't even bother trying to produce a full video with that - I automatically cut it into pieces because I know the pieces will produce where the full vid probably won't. I didn't expect to get that with Premiere. It's easier to cut a premiere timeline into pieces with its nice 'workspace' bar, so I did manage to export the video in 8 parts. And patching it together in vdub was rote - been doing it for years, with wmm, after all. But I don't get why premiere did that. I don't know computers, but I've been told mine has some nice processing power to it. Stats - 2600+ (2.133GHz) AMD Athlon XP processor; 512 MB DDR SDRAM memory (*with up to 64MB shared video memory), 32MB DDR SDRAM Integrated ProSavage DDR KM266 graphics with 32MB shared video memory, and so much harddrive space I've alloted 4gigs to virtual memory (from my wmm days).

    It shouldn't be a memory problem. I want to say it's because the timeline got too complicated. That's what gave me troubles with wmm. But I've seen some of the crazy complicated effects other people do in their premiere vids. Mine should be downright simple to export compared to that. Should be. But it's not?

    I got cocky. Toward the end I didn't feel like exporting and reimporting to cut down on the video tracks (like I did to get around the radial blurs locking the project up every four minutes). I needed more tracks, so I just added another one. In retrospect it would have saved time to go the long route and export every two tracks, reinport them, and then add on. Go figure. The long way is the quick way and here I thought I'd left behind my days of working around crappy ass programs. ;p

    Anyway, vid's done. I think I'll announce it. It's not a real video - I mean, I did it mostly for the layout so I can replace the anime but keep the same outline for the song. It would be nice to get a little feedback on the editing before I try again with a more familiar anime like YYH or IY (I'm thinking YYH, just for the hell of it). But I sort of don't want to even list the video here. If the second try turns out well, it would look bad to have two videos in a row with the same song. Meh. I learned a few tricks with the experiment, and I like the results. I'm really looking forward to trying this project again with a different anime. I actually like the editing - a rare thing for me. I'm all about the scene choices from the anime. But give me free reign to be as gaudy as I like, with the promise of getting to do scene choices for a different anime on the next run for the song, and it's really enjoyable.

    Makes me wish I knew what I was doing with premiere. I don't think I'll get projects like this very often because my imagination is sorely limited by my unfamiliarity with the program I'm using. I was looking at what I could do with premiere, not what program I could scrounge up to make do what I imagined. It's too weird working backward like that.

    I think I need after effects for what I was imagining. I just couldn't get premier to do it, and this time I don't think it's my fault. I've seen too many vids by people using premiere and after effects - I can't tell what they did in which program so I assumed most of it could be done in premiere. Foolish of me. ^.^ 
  • movies - Dawn vs Shaun (of the Dead) 2006-07-08 16:58:37 So I was watching Dawn of the Dead the other day and decided to break down and rent the spoof in the previews, 'Shaun of the Dead.' I'm an avid fan of living dead movies. I'm always on the look out for one that handles the disaster in a realistic manner. None of them do, of course, but the hope keeps me looking. There are key things that make a living dead movie more realistic than the others, things that are, sadly enough, only found in the comedic movies.

    Reanimated corpses would not be fast or coordinated.

    I've only found two living dead movies that match this, excluding the very old black and white films (which I can barely remember since I was too young when I first saw them). One of them is Return of the Living Dead. At least, I think that's the one. It involves some two canisters in the bottom of a shop with corpses and the 'virus' - they get opened and infect all the dead bodies in the vicinity. Then when one of the reanimated corpses is burned, the smoke causes a rain that reanimates anything it lands on. That one had a few way too fast zombies, but others were more slow and swaying and technically not that dangerous. Shaun of the Living Dead has the slow corpses as well. If I ignore the comedy intents, that movie probably has the best depiction of zombies I've seen in any of these movies. Slow, uncoordinated, less intelligent than animals (due to the reanimated braincells being damaged from the initial death).

    There should be a reason for the canibalism.

    Return of the Living Dead had a good reason, but they had to push to get it - making the zombies capable of speech in order to explain things. The brain eating zombies did it to quell the pain that comes from having a decomposing brain. Really poor explanation, doesn't stand up in any court, but still - any explanation is better than no plausible explanation. The zombies in Dawn of the Dead were rabid hateful things bent on feeding with the instincts and speed of predators. They were rather like the bloodlust victims in...I think it's "Three Weeks After" or some similar title. That's the one where the 'infected' spray blood from the mouth to infect normal people, so there's no actual need for physical contact to pass on the science-gone-wrong plague. Their reason for biting is more a rage, a need to pass on the infliction. Shallow. Doesn't hold up.

    Pure hunger is the most basic explanation, but even there most zombie movies go wrong. With an intelligence less than animals, instincts or not, they wouldn't hunt after they've fed. You can get around the "zombies don't eat each other" if you assume there's something wrong with the taste of reanimated flesh. But if that were the case, and the feeding is necessary for the 'reanimated' version of living, they'd starve to death within two weeks or less after the living food sources have been removed. Most zombie movies have huge legions of zombies hoarding a small source of food, usually five people at most. If the living were that hard to find, the zombies would be dropping off so quickly those in hiding would survive quite easily. They'd starve even quicker considering one bite and the food source is contaminated. And if there's something wrong with the taste of dead (reanimated or not) flesh, they wouldn't eat after the body functions die. They'd starve quickly no matter how you look at it.

    So you have to assume it's not food that sustains them. Food didn't bring them back, after all, so there's no reason to think it's necessary for their continued reanimation. That would mean the feeding is more like an instinct to mate - supposedly a need for continued survival that doesn't disappear even if the region is overpopulated to begin with. Normal humans have this, despite their intelligence, so there's no reason to think animalistic zombies wouldn't retain it as well. In that case, they'd feed when they see food, bite when they have the chance to pass their status on, and wander around aimlessly in the interim. This doesn't work with the fast hateful and rabid hunter zombies, which, in my opinion, makes it all the more plausible.

    So far I think Shaun of the Dead is the only movie to portay the zombie status the way I'd portray it. Listless, slow, uncoordinated, feeding when the oportunity presents itself, lacking the bloodlust to infect for the sake of infecting (or some inexplicable rage). It's really sad that only the spoof comedy shows get things right.

    Then there is the world view and the aftermath. Very few movies bother with the aftermath. To me, the 'after' is the best part of the entire concept. The broader the scope, the better the disaster.

    These movies always focus on the small handful of surivors, following them until they meet their inevitable death at the very end of the show. There might be a few news reports to hint at some bumbled pandemic, but it's never about the plague. It's about the guy and the girl and the idiot and the asshole, bickering, popping heads, having sexual tension or outright sex, watching the expendable members of the little group meet gruesome ends, and then - in many cases - running across some military faction that can't use guns to pop heads nearly as well as the seemingly incompitent five could all by their lonesome. There's never enough bullets because the zombies are more intelligent than the living, faster than a car, and always ready to eat the heroes when they inevitably decide to leave their sanctuary and get themselves killed for no reason.

    They all die so there's no need to think about an aftermath. The movies don't focus on the world, so it doesn't matter how unreasonable the supposed downfall of mankind is while the little group struggles to survive in their stocked apartment, mall, or military compound. If humans somehow manage to wait the carnage out, all you get is a flyby - oh, there are planes in the air! There must be survivors! Let's make a big sign! Really, really sad. Compared to alien invasion movies, zombie movies have absolutely no pretense at realistic aftermaths. It's all about the carnage, not the story.

    A few movies handle the innitial outbreak while it's still in the controlable stage. Bomb the infected town (even though that inadvertently burns up the corpses, spreads the ash, and makes the zombie-creating rain fall on an even larger region, thus promising an even larger outbreak to come). Form elite squads to take out the zombies in a 'one bullet per head, eventually they're all really dead' manner (until one of the infected comes back to the compound, turns rabidly undead, and infects the entire group, thus destroying humanity's last hope of survival). The whole 'barricade yourself inside and wait them out' strategy never works. Or, if it does work, it doen't sell in movies so you never see any of it or what happens when the waiters eventually get bored and peek outside.

    Shaun of the Dead had a blatantly comedic aftermath, but still, sad as it is, it's one of the best I've seen as far as realism goes.

    The plague would be controllable, there would be survivors, and things would go back to as normal as ever afterward. Because even the fakely 'faster than cars and more rabid than rabid dog' zombies are always killable by a few carefully aimed bullets or a nice controlled explosion and/or fire. Their bodies are till flesh and bone, incapable of ramming their way through solid doors and a simple padlock, let alone metal miliatary compounds. A few slices and jabs will cut them up just like any soft human body. A normal swing with a blunt object will bash in heads just like it does with any living person. Their teeth are just as blunt as humans - no zombie movie I've seen makes the teeth and fingernails suddenly dangerous weapons. Zombies never carry weapons, either, because even though they're smarter than the living and faster than cars, they only need their fingers and teeth to kill. So how in the world would they not be defeatable? In mass groups they'd cause problems, but there's no excuse for running from a one-on-one conflict. The living in these movies don't have the whole "but I might kill him if I swing that hard" problem. If it's just a matter of damaging the brain (no more than a single small hole through the head and most zombies go down), a strike with any blunt object would be enough to 'kill' them.

    Altogether, I'm continually disapointed by zombie movies. There's so much potential that just isn't ever taken seriously enough to be used. There's a novel called "Skeletons" that comes close to what I'd expect from a *good* living dead story. In it, a space 'cloud' passing by the earth turns the dead into skeletons that are, except for being skeletons, as alive as the living. It's a crazy concept, and it really begs the question of who is better off, the inflicted or the not. But what I like best about it is that it take an outrageous idea and approaches it in a realistic and enthralling manner. Why don't zombie movies do the same? Why are there no zombie novels that approach the concept the way "Skeletons" does? Is it too difficult to imagine a written contribution to the genre that isn't all about the small group of non-survivors and their petty bickering before the inevitable fanservicy carnage and the 'everyone dies' ending?

    I must be the only person who'd be interested in reading a realistic zombie novel. It certainly explains why I'd watch and enjoy an outrageously blatant comedy movie like Shaun of the Dead and walk away wishing the author of the script would do a novel version of the story. Preferably a version that focused less on the little group of survivors and more on what's happening in the rest of the world and the eventual aftermath.

    And here is where I wish I were a published author. I could write it myself instead of searching in vain for anything that might possibly match what I imagine. I'll never find it in the movie genre, but I'll keep looking regardless. 
  • false advertising 2006-07-06 15:57:41 How do you take a bland anime where an eye-blink is the major movement in a five minute scene and make it look cool in a video? That's where effects come in, right? I think that's my next project. Creating motion out of stationary scenes.

    It would be much easier if Premiere 6.0 had normal zoom in/out options like wmm did. I can't make sense of the motion settings at all. Any zoom I attempt comes out either as a stationary zoom, or one that shows black space around the clip from zooming out too far. I end up having to export the zoom, edit out the overzoomed frames, and reimport it for use in the video proper. No way am I supposed to need to do that. This is premiere, after all, not wmm. And why is it I get a stationary zoom when I'm aiming for one with motion, but when I *want* a stationary zoom-in on a scene, it moves instead?

    I'm having the same issue with transitions - I can't do partial transitions without editing the full clip in vdub and reimporting the part I want to use. I thought that sort of work around was only necessary in Showbiz.

    I'm having a heck of a time trying to use Premiere's motion settings. There should be an effect to shake a frame, right? I've seen it in lots of videos, preferably with a little fast-blur or ghosting mixed in. I can't seem to find a "packaged" effect for that. So are they using the motion settings to move the scene themselves? And if so, do they have to edit out the black edges in vdub the way I do when I try it? I find that hard to believe.

    I hate using complicated programs. I just know I'm missing very simple and obvious (to everyone but me) steps and thus making tricks into huge ordeals. And then there's Premiere itself causing me headaches.

    I was doing some fast pans in my last vid and using a horizontal blur to make it looks moother. Well, I replaced some clips and went to redo the effect settings. Only the settings wouldn't keep. I'd drag the bar over to 18.6 and the second I clicked a clip on the timeline, the effect would go back to zero. It took me an hour before I realized Premiere had just decided its effects weren't in the mood to work - that it was the program and not me. As soon as I reset my computer, the effects worked normally again. Great. I don't even know when it's the program and when it's me. That makes it even harder to figure out how to do what I want to do.

    It's sad, really. I can fake a fast, slightly blurred pan with a combination of PhotoImp and Vdub, but I spend an hour trying to do the same thing with Premiere's "packaged" effect before I find out the effect isn't going to work till I restart my comp. I thought trading up on the foodchain would make those contrived things easier, since they're all packaged in Premiere (and not fubbed together with programs not intended to be used for such things). It's gotta be me. I'm just not made for programs that make things easy. I'm too used to the simplest things being very difficult. Trying to do the difficult things is thus nearly impossible for me.

    This will be a fun project. I'll probably give up ten seconds into the song. ;p 
  • new vid! 2006-07-01 23:40:35 http://www.animemusicvideos.org/members/members_videoinfo.php?v=121792

    It's only been like four months. ^_^;; Yeah, I wasn't working on this video that long. I was ripping footage for it, but the editing didn't take nearly as long as the gathering and clean-up. It's a bishonen vid, but there's no outright yaoi in it. It's more playful eyecandy than that. Very fun making.

    Hopefully my other fun vid ideas will be as enjoyable to edit. I may have to get more footage, though. It's hard using anime that's still coming out. >.> 
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