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They've all gone MAD
2008-05-28 21:15:16
Ok, so what's with all the deep thinking in the forums lately? It's like every time I turn around someone's saying something that isn't nonsensical...and worse, other folks are actually replying in kind. WORSE...I can reply and I don't get clobbered for attempting to be serious. Wow. That's like...what is wrong with this place?? I can't help but suspect the time of year is to blame - lots of (omg, I just almost wrote "kids"!!!) PEOPLE are getting out of school around this time, they've been brain fried with big tests, papers, presentations...they're in a philosophical mood.
Or else AMV.org is about to implode.
/me ducks
...I just almost called people in college "kids." I feel like I should rush over to the mirror and check for gray hairs or something. :| -
AX it is...and then my AMV can finally retire from showbiz.
2008-05-28 10:02:01
AHAHAHAHA!! Anime Expo HERE I (sort of) COME. :D And here I thought I was going to have to wait until the end of the month to find out if I made it into the finals. Well didn’t THIS just make my day a little better. I’m kind of “heh?” about how they went about selecting the finalists, though, and it seems like I’m not the only one. Hmm, maybe I should drop them a line and warn them that my AMV can be rather, er, unstable? Yes…yes I think I’ll do that. We don’t want the AX AMV Contest getting shot in the kneecap by Cloud & Co. Imagine what kind of trouble I’d be in THEN:
“GAHH!! That damned Drift ruined AX 2008!”
:(
“I can’t BELIEVE you, it would have been fine if you hadn’t entered your stupid Ghostbusters AMV. You just have to ruin it for everyone, don’t you?”
:(
“Yeah, she just had to go for AX, didn’t she? It’s like she was out to sabotage every competition around.”
Hey. If I wanted to sabotage the competition, I wouldn’t do it by sabotaging my own AMV. That’s just stupid. No, I’d go out there and steal copies of the contest disc from everyone and replace them with dummies that featured The Laughing Man symbol on loop. Besides, I think it’s been proven a la Sakura-Con, Tekkoshocon and Anime Central that my AMV usually does behave itself in public. Further, when it IS naughty, it only hurts itself, not any of the other AMVs. And as for “every competition around” – since when were there only five competitions around??
Anyways…
I wonder if I have the only AC AMV there? I have to say I was extraordinarily pleased to see that happen at AB. People see Sephiroth come up on screen looking all evil and they’re like “Woooo!!” and then they remember this is a comedy AMV and they’re like “Wooo??” and then up comes the tabloid and they’re like “WOOOO??!!” and so on and so forth. The wooing then revs up 200-fold when Vincent shows up, what with all the fangirls shrieking to wake the dead (no pun intended). It still cracks me up – I had no idea whatsoever that was the reaction his entrance was going to get. So anyone going to the AX AMV contest may want to invest in some earplugs…or at least have their hands up and ready to cover their ears.
Man I wish I was going to AX. I always did want to check it out and now I have an awesome extra special reason to go. This is probably the first time in my life I’m regretting living so solidly in the Northeast. But nope, flight would cost about $450, then another $500-600 or so for hotel room, another $200-300 for food and transportation and things like, oh, getting into the convention…I don’t have that kind of money to burn.
Wow. Ok, so the journal entry I was planning to make about shelving XII for awhile may have to wait. Now I’m remembering how difficult ‘Bustin was, in certain respects…but I got through it and look what happened. Surely I can get through XII…except, I’ve decided, the real problem is that XII at its best would showcase an editing style that is definitely NOT my editing style (which I don’t have - style that is - however I do know what I don’t have, which is what XII needs)…aka I’m going to ruin this AMV. Maybe what I’ll do is work on something fun while I also work on XII…yes…that might keep me motivated. (Here comes the dessert cart.) -
Gotta keep myself pumped!!
2008-05-27 10:12:51
XII
Pre-edit: 15
Hot sauce: 4
Editing: 2
I feel like I'm making Sephiration Anxiety again. I rearranged my living room furniture into its summer layout, so now my desk is back where it was when I made S.A. I think this is a bad feng shui thing, though, because I am NOT happy. I can't really move the furniture any other place though. :| So the whip that's apparently going to make me make this AMV is now the following:
1. It's way over my head. Well, we'll see. Theoretically all my AMVs have been way over my head, but I got through them. (though, to be fair, this one is like @_@)
2. It's not the kind of AMV I like to make/feel at ease making. This makes three in a row, then, which begs the question of what the hell kind of AMV I DO like to make, if I keep making ones I don't like to make.
3. If I make this AMV, then I can go ahead and make something fun. We'll see how long it is before I decide to go ahead and do the fun stuff first, sort of like having dessert before your salad.
My sunburn is better, in a few days I should have a decent tan for my efforts. Except I wore a t-shirt, so now I've got to haul out a tank top and burn the rest of me to match. -
Just how bad is it, Drift?
2008-05-26 15:57:03
Things are SO bad that working on my Web site (see below) has managed to outrank working on my AMV. That is BAD.
1. I don't "do" Web design. I fear and loath HTML. It's one of those absurd things that you'd think I'd have learned how to do back in high school, but no...so now up up a giant, raging, flooded creek without even a toothpick to help me out.
2. If the AMV Gods are against me, then the Dreamweaver Gods are conducting a holy war against me.
3. My hosting providers(s) are in a terrific battle over who controls my domain name, my site, just about everything. And both expire next month. -_-
4. I think I'm going to have to either remake my site from scratch *shudder* or give up and get a hosting package so I don't have to deal with any of this anymore.
What I need to do is find some nice person who can design sites who needs some gardening done, furniture refinished, photography employed or graphic stuff done and wants to trade skills. Wait, what am I thinking? This is rural Vermont. -_- Wait...I may know someone who knows someone...hrm... -
Today I'm going to complain about me.
2008-05-25 18:37:24
XII
Pre-edit: 15
Hot sauce: 4
Editing: 1/2 hour
So...despite not actually having my real audio on hand, I dropped a few tidbits onto the timeline today. Overall it was a very bad experience, just hardcore "Ugghhh I don't WANNA make this AMV!" I keep having to remind myself that this AMV is supposed to be about more than just straight footage and so of course things are going to look boring and dull and - dare I say it - stupid without sauce. I also have to keep reminding myself that I CAN tell the story I want to tell in this AMV because, for once, I actually have the footage right there in front of me. I'm not trying to create a story that doesn't really exist (contrary to popular opinion, 'Bustin was not easy to put together, I don't care how straightforward it looks). All the scenes I need for XII are here (or can be made a la WOTB) I just have to figure out how to put it together succinctly and in an interesting fashion.
ME: Today was the first nice summer/spring day in central Vermont. About 75 degrees, sunny, light breeze, just perfect. In between doing horse stuff, I puttered about in my garden and read a book ("Sunshine" good stuff!! I hope there's a sequel) and managed to contract my very first sunburn of the season. Right now my arms and legs are on fire. I won't know how bad it is until tomorrow morning, however, because my burns take awhile to percolate. Plus this is really the first day I've been out in the sun, so it always seems worse.
Generally speaking, I have to get one good burn before I settle down and start to tan, which is somewhat extraordinary given my red hair, blue eyes and otherwise very fair complexion. I remember about 15 years ago visiting my grandmother in Florida and somehow managing to get a really good tan without burning. It still amazes me. It also amazes me when doctors shake their heads and lecture me about my freckles, as if they showed up because I've spent the last 30 years frying myself. Excuse me, but I probably have as many freckles right now as I did by age 8 and as a child was subjected to wearing t-shirts over my bathing suit because my mother didn't want me to get a sunburn and knew sunscreen wasn't going to be able to keep up with me. There are millions of people out there without a tenth of the freckles I've got who expose themselves far more deliberately and dangerously to UV rays than I. Jeez, I'm not Nicole Kidman, ok? I'm not going to spend my life under a parasol. :|
At least my hair doesn't bleach in the sun. Or rather, if it does, it winds up being just a slightly different shade of red. Did you know that red is the hardest hair color to mimic (aka achieve via dye) because, generally speaking, people with red hair do not have hair that is one uniform color? "Red" hair is usually comprised of many shades of red and blonde and is therefore difficult to bottle. What's interesting is that I got red hair by some weird twist of genetics. My mother has/had red hair (dark copper) identical to that of her four brothers and her father (whose nickname was "Red.") I and two of my cousins inherited red hair, however mine's not like everyone else's. It's a kind of strange shade, the kind that makes almost every hairdresser I've ever been to ask "Is that your real hair color?" (yes!! ) and more than a few people remark outright "Wow, what unusual hair." I look in the mirror and I can't even see that my hair is red, even though I know it's definitely not brown or blonde, that's how weird it is. So when the sun bleaches it or whatever it doesn't really get more blonde or more brown, it gets more weird.
Weird in a good way, I think. Not like what's going to happen when I get older.
What's that?
Well, I'm not quite sure how long it will take if I don't have kids (which I don't really plan to), but eventually my hormones will change and suck all the red right out of my hair. Yes, it's true!! There's a reason seeing red hair on an older woman makes you sick to your stomach - it's just not meant to be! When a woman with red hair has children or whatever, the change in hormones leeches that red color out. And, since I'm not a hair dye type of person, I'm not quite sure what's going to happen to MY hair...or when. All I know is that I don't want to be blonde. :|
Which brings up the subject of my sister, who inherited weird hair from my father's side of the family. This time, instead of red, they start out as platinum blondes but wind up, by their 30's, as very dark brown. Bizarre, but true!! For YEARS my sister would put highlights in her hair, tweak the blonde, etc. and it was always a losing battle. She finally submitted to the trend and now dyes her hair in the brown direction. Right now I honestly have no idea what her real hair color IS, that's how bad the hair changing color situation is. I know it's not blonde, though.
So when I'm eyeballing my second cousins (or whatever they are - the children of my cousins), only one of whom has THE red hair, I'm wondering whether I should join some kind of Save the Redheads movement or something. I watched some documentary awhile ago about the human race and apparently redheads are an extremely endangered species. The red hair gene is not a dominant gene and once it got out of the British Isles it was doomed, so to speak. In another few centuries there may be no more people with red hair. Hey, if I'm an endangered species, do I get a tax break?
But I digress.
Right now I'm in the bad position of having to force myself to work on an AMV by threatening myself with other, even more unpalatable activities. Like washing the kitchen floor (which previously was actually ranked higher than working on an AMV), working on my Web site or putting away my laundry. I'm just like "Bleh...nooo...I don't want to make another AMV that I think I'm going to screw up..." I've decided that I really do not enjoy making AMVs, it's very hard, very frustrating, very tedious. The worst part is starting one, because it's like I'm looking down this really looonnnggg hallway (in the dark) with no guarantee I will ever make it to the other end.
Not a small part of this is the annoying feeling that I did what I set out to do and now I've used up all my luck (or whatever) and it's all downhill from here. If I enjoyed making AMVs for the sake of making AMVs I wouldn't be so reluctant to MAKE them, after all.
ok, this wasn't as long as Ari's, but gimme a break. I'm suffering from a wicked sunburn.
JOURNAL: DriftRoot (Lauren C.)
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