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We Belong
2005-10-03 09:14:33
For a video that took us a good 2 years to finally just spit out in a "well, we give up" manner, it certainly has accumulated the most opinions in the shortest amount of time as opposed to our other videos. It's probably a sign that we really should do some more upbeat videos to compliment our drama/thematic ones. I've gotten an idea and a song already- but it will be multiple sources as far as the anime. We're trying to narrow it down to several choices by the end of this month, so that we can go about getting our sources.
It turns out there is one more Region 2 disc we need to order. It was kind of frustrating- I could put in an order for it today, pay $64 for it, and get it by Saturday. Or, I could wait about 4 months for the American release of this DVD episode, and pay only $30. I really wanted to get this video out last month, so we're already delayed. The idea of delaying it until sometime next year is pretty much a no-can-do, as we are already immersed in 17 different in-production, unfinished AMVs at the moment. Any we can afford to push and get finished and off this HD would be best. We've just got too much going at once. It's mainly this "Ghost" video and the Nightwish Inu Yasha video we've been concentrating on getting done first, simply because out of all the projects, they are the farthest along. Also, they are two of the largest. Our "Violinist of Hameln" was taking up some 20+ GIGs of space, and the Nightwish Inu Yasha video has already expanded to 15 GIGs, with the ghost video following close behind.
It's really early in the morning, but given the fact I sleep odd hours anyway, due to the fact I work a changing Swing Shift at the casino ( 6pm-2am, 8pm-4am, 9pm-5am ) I can never sleep decently on my days off. So I'm going to load the ghost video into Premiere and do some more of the edit-changes Robert and I discussed, and then call him and find out what time he is coming over. LIT already left for work, so it won't be later until the evening when he gets a chance to look over it and see what he thinks. Better get going- the computer room is an absolute mess O_ox -
Mr. Mailman
2005-10-01 14:58:23
The mailman arrived today, bringing more of my expensive Region 2 DVDs with him. Ugh, this is costing a lot. $54 a DVD that has only 3 episodes on it is a lot. And to think I used to whine and moan about how places like Suncoast and other DVD/Video outlets sell their Inu Yasha DVDs for $29, for only 3 episodes.
Well, if anything, that means more work will get done this week on the Inu Yasha ghost AMV, since tonight is my "Friday" and then I have my days off. Will probably drag Robert over in a couple of days to look at some of the scene rewrites and some of the stuff I changed in the video since the last time we got together to work on it.
Finally got an idea that we are going ahead with for a Ruruouni Kenshin video. The style of the song and the very lyrics alone call for both the tv series AND the OVA series, but I hate mixing the two together, because they are both so different in style, I always think the footage looks funny coupled together in other videos. So we decided to use only the tv series, plus the "lost episode" that has Kenshin's son, Kenji in it as a child, and Kenshin with all his hair cut off ( bleh! ), for the parts of the song that refer to the future Kenshin is trying to create.
Anyway, it's a massive project- and we'll probably end up shaving off parts of the song itself, since it's so long and some parts are so repetitive. It's turning out to be a pretty complicated project, anyway. Might as well cut down on the problems. -
It's been ages since I used this thing...
2005-09-27 02:32:00
....but I also grew tired of LJ too, and let that go stagnant for a long time. I guess it's my nature.
Although, I must say, I barely read anyone's journals on The Org, anyway, simply because of the godawful grammar and spelling. And most people are typing in their *first language*. The internet has spent the past several years murdering the art of language. It's made people ridiculously lazy- you can't tell me that 80% of The Org is just plain stupid and that's why they can't correctly spell more than 3 words consecutively. Lazy keystrokes. Too lazy to use spell check, or proofread before hitting "enter".
What's funny is I'll make an ass out of myself as a hypocrite when I mispell something in this journal entry somewhere, and let it slide. Or miss it completely. Then you can all jump my ass.
I recently downloaded a "Rurouni Kenshin" video everyone was screaming love and adoration for all over the forums, and it was in the Recommended section. On top of that, it had over a dozen opinions, averaging it out well over a "9" overall score. I guess you can't always trust the masses- because I downloaded and thought it was awful. Not only was it incredibly boring...but the worst....THE ABSOLUTE WORST is that the video was a "story", with text all in it. HORRIBLE, MISPELLED, MANGLED GRAMMAR TEXT. Seriously, after about a minute I had to turn it off. I was shocked that this video was so highly decorated by the viewers, but in my opinion...it was a disaster.
Now I understand that the person who made this video...English wasn't their first language. But for God's sakes, there are people all over this website that speak English as a first language that could have beta-ed the video, or helped with translation or SOMETHING. And yeah, I would get reamed by "Otaku" for being a stupid ugly American if I were to try and write Japanese or another foreign language into one of my videos and mispelled something, or improperly used the grammar or took a saying/meaning out of context. But someone else can make a video with mangled English and get applauded with insane enthusiasm all over the forums. And what I still don't get..is even if there was no mangled English blotting out the images on the screen- the video still isn't good. It's dull. It's boring. Nothing happens. It goes nowhere. There is absolutely no sync whatsoever.
Sometimes I just don't understand the general public ( a certain percentage of, not all, AMV Viewers ) who wet themselves with adoration over fan-service videos, or videos with awful, terrible editing, stolen footage and "DIVX" and "Adult Swim" watermarks all over it...and will turn their noses up to videos of a different vein- those rare gems out there from lesser known creators, who dared to try something bold and different, and because it's not of the "norm", well, apparently it's crap, and is either flogged for it's vagrant deviation from "the norm", or is ignored altogether.
Oh crap, did I just mention "stolen footage"? Don't even get me started on that. Really, I don't want to go off on my tirade. Yesterday alone I downloaded 2 videos with 80% stolen footage from our videos. One of the most obvious ones was stolen from "The Other Side of Time"- and the reason why it was so obvious is because for that video, we purposely reversed ( horizontally flipped ) about 50% of the footage, in order to comply with Animation and Film's "Rule of 180 Degrees". So whenever I see "snowy present" footage from the first Inu Yasha movie that is reversed from the way it appeared in the actual film, I know it's from our video. Yeah, well, the joke's on you, thieves. I know what you've done, you know what you've done. Besides, that's one of our older videos, so the compression isn't that good, and the export wasn't clean enough to retain the original appearance of the HuffyYUV files it was originally made in. So if you would get off your lazy asses and rip the footage from the DVDs for yourselves, you would get higher quality footage anyway. And all the characters *would* be facing the right way. I flipped the footage, dumb dingbats. Unless you did your BA in Animation and Film like ourselves, you wouldn't know a thing about "180 Rule Compliance". Actually, any person willing to learn would know about this rule. But would lazy thieves know? Bleh.
( comical, I was reading in a 'suspected thief' s journal that they would be good from now on and make their own videos, collecting their own footage when......they found the time. There ya go. Lazy. Most of them are too lazy to read guides, buy books, or take classes to learn even the basics. They would rather cut corners by stealing other people's hard work, and sit back and take the credit for them. Hell, that's the easiest part. "Look! I got all 10's! And it only took me 20 minutes to cobble together scenes and special effects from other people's videos and toss some song in there!!! This is schweet! I could keep this up forever!" )
Enough of that. Robert was supposed to come over tonight and work with me on some final exports of our most current "Inu Yasha" music video. It was originally slated for release this month, but waiting on expensive Region 2 DVDs to arrive from Japan pushed back the dates. So now we're planning ( hoping and crossing our fingers for ) an October release, which would be appropiate, I guess, with Halloween coming and all. It's supposed to be a "spooky" vid, about being haunted by the love of a forlorn ghost. I'm sure you can guess who gets to play the role of The Ghost :P
We're just financially killing ourselves to complete this video. The original song was 6+ minutes long, so we edited out a small segment that we thought wouldn't be missed. We don't like using fansub footage, and we don't want to use bootlegs either. So for all the scenes that exist in episodes that have not been released on American DVD, we've had to special order directly from Japan. The bad part is, there are only 2-3 episodes per DVD, and each DVD costs $52. And that is not including the EMS shipping charges, the foreign currency charges, and blah blah blah. Also, the Japanese really do not package these DVDs at all. Each DVD disc itself has a printed image from the manga on it, but as far as inserts, all you get is this recycled paper ad for other DVDs. There aren't even any pictures on it. If you're lucky and you get a First Press edition of the DVD, you get a card inside the DVD package. But the card is just the cover art from the front of the DVD, anyway. Oooooooohhhhhh. Sooooooo worth the $52.
But I guess it's worth it to have clean footage.
Argh..damn Robert having to suddenly call the night off. Because we seriously needed to rewrite a scene in the other IY AMV that is currently in production. It's another Nightwish treatment, and it's our heaviest action video ever. It's just about all action, and it is KILLING US. We just don't do action videos well- we eat up sybolism and motifs and themes and dramatics in AMVs...that's our style. So making a video where all the video footage has to be sped up just to keep pace with the song...and trying to find non-gay special effects to accent the beat ( sorry to any homosexuals. I couldn't think of a better word. Okay,I can. Cheesy, maybe? I should probably put that in instead ^_~x ) is hell. In all honesty, for most other AMV creators, this video would probably be a cakewalk. But for us, it's by far our most intimidating project to date, and it's kicking our ass in retrospect to just "kicking ass".
Anywise, if anyone actually sat through this entire thing, I am amazed. You go, people!
And if I offended anyone..enh, you know our email. But unintelligent banter hardly ever elicits a response from us.
On a more postive note- I've getting around to answering most of our opinions received, and being responsible enough to leave some reviews/opinions of my own. Robert and LIT have been doing the same from their own personal accounts. And oh yeah, we donated again. Because we honestly appreciated this site and the fact that it so willingly provides storage for so many videos......even stolen ones ^_~x
"AMV Hell - 3" just finally finished downloading. I'll take a look now, and then after that...who knows ^_~x
Yeah. So much love...everyone keep up the good work.
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2003-08-06 20:35:25
JESUS CHRIST PEOPLE, USE SPELL CHECK!!!!!!!!!!!
urgh O_Ox -
Second Inu Yasha Movie
2003-07-30 17:33:11
Augghh...I FINALLY saw it this morning. Finally Finally FINALLY. That movie was such fan service, but damn, that was some fan service I was extremely grateful to accept. Now if only Inu Yasha and Kagome would get it on in the original manga series so I wouldn't have to turn to a fan service movie.
And there were some scenes that if I pan and scan correctly, the characters don't look so different that it can't be incorporated into the "Rose in the Wind" re-release that we are working on ( well, namely I'm working on. Robert is so tired of working on that video already ^_~x )
Good Kagome with flower petal scenes blowing in the wind- PERFECT!!!
~KCM
JOURNAL: Second Element
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