-
Nothing special, just a minor landmark.
2012-02-23 19:56:27
The Kingdom of L.F.S.
Pre-edit: 3 hours
Edit: 77 hours
Post-Production/Special Effects: 135 hours
The Good: I watched LFS last night and came up with a short list of only 15 things which immediately jumped out at me as needing to be fixed. This is quite an important landmark: it means, for all intents and sanity, I have completed my fifth AMV! I never thought I'd make five AMVs. @_@ A year or so ago I was pretty much done with this whole business.
The Bad: This business with keeping track of how many AMVs I've made is a little tricky, since I have a habit of over-complicating things: L.F.S. is my fifth "Ok, I'm going to upload this" AMV, my third "Yep, I really mean it this time" video and my second "I'm in it to win it (by which I mean get into the finals, all else being unexpected bonuses)" con-focused endeavor. Further, my AMV Hell 5 contribution was technically my second AMV, however since I didn't do anything with it for several years and it's just a 30- second clip that amounted to nothing special, it doesn't count for much and kind of exists on another timeline... :|
This says nothing about how many hours were involved in making those five AMVs, or how many more hours were involved in making things that never actually got made. Long story. Takes about six or seven years worth of journal entries to read. I don't recommend it.
Ugly: If I have time this weekend, after truly finishing L.F.S. and sending it off to be interrogated under the harsh lights of AMV con judges (good lord, my poor AMV!!) I plan to buy a new mattress and make myself a much healthier, happier person. Heh, I'm just remembering this now, that I felt like some worried parent whenever I used to let 'Bustin out of the house on its own. It wound up in Germany and France and whatnot, and I had no idea WHAT it was doing there, even though people thought I did!! L.F.S. is a lot more grown up, though, so I think it will be able to take care of itself just fine.
It's a sad day, when you start anthropomorphizing your AMVs. :(
-
Convention rules are getting unconventional.
2012-02-20 21:02:26
Every single con I'm planning to submit L.F.S. to has different formatting requirements, different ratings standards and different judging/categorization rules. It wasn't like this back in 2008, what the hell happened over the past four years??
Latest Lip Flapper is out...read it...http://www.animemusicvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=108350
Good job to the .Org and its supporters for jumping enthusiastically into more far-flung, user-friendly, exciting activities like twitter, FB and livestream. It's made me pay more attention and get a tad more involved than I've been in years. It's nice to just have fun with this hobby while still showing the appropriate respect for some of the truly exceptional people, videos and contributions which make the .Org the .Org.
Good lord, is this me talking positively about the .Org? HUZZZAAAH!!!
Hopefully I can be part of the solution, and not part of the problem. :( I realized recently that, regardless of past issues, I do identify closely with the .Org and its overall standards for AMVs, and, as such, am a decent representative of this place. Kind of startling to think of things that way, but I wouldn't still be around if I didn't see some positives. Hopefully the positives continue to outweigh the negatives.
Does anyone here consider themselves a "professional AMVer?" If you do, on what grounds? What does it take to cross the line between "professional" and "casual" AMVer? And, most importantly, IS IT ALL IN YOUR HEAD?! I ask b/c myself and a few others on ng's livestream were praised as professional AMVers recently, which kind of made me laugh (and deny, deny, DENY!). This label did drive home that simply being associated with the .Org makes you somewhat a representative of the .Org and its "professional" reputation, however (whatever that is...fill in your own blanks, be that good or bad). -
It pays to ask questions.
2012-02-14 18:36:38
Two out of three AMV contest coordinators agree: my AMV's audio track must be censored for their cons because of one glaring instance of extremely vulgar language.
I hope I can pull this off. I already sneakily edited the audio at the exact same spot to obscure some unwanted sounds. Now I have to do a 180 and make it obvious I'm trying to cover something up. And OF COURSE this one word caps off the final comedy sequence of the entire video, OF COURSE that's the part that I have to now sabotage.
*fumes* I had a feeling all along this might happen, so I can't say it surprises me. I just am very mad at the trailer-maker folks who decided to include that word in the audio track! -
This AMV has given me a profound distaste for the color red.
2012-02-13 22:51:42
The Kingdom of L.F.S.
Pre-edit: 3 hours
Edit: 77 hours
Post-Production/Special Effects: 134 hours
Typical stupid move: I start with a short, two-something second sequence that I have a few choices about how to rotoscope, namely with regards to how big and how complex the area is that requires masking. I decide to arrange my footage for maximum screentime, but also so that it's mostly hidden by the foreground art. Great, I think, I've cheated a bit by not having to mask so much.
Four hours into this, I decide to move the background artwork a little, which moves it into an area I formerly didn't have to mask, an area that contains lots of little horrible spaces that need to be rotoscoped. So I add more masks, duplicate layers, add more masks, etc., etc.
Ten hours into this, I decide the background art needs to be moved a little bit more. Now I have masked areas that shouldn't be masked, plus others which now NEED masking. I also have to start manually retouching the actual video to remove some weird artifacts which, thanks to my careful rotoscoping, now stick out like sore thumbs.
Twelve hours in, I'm "done" and finally get around to adding some effects to the background art. So I add them, and find out these effects now render key portions of my rotoscoping inadequate. So I spend another two hours fixing this. Then I move some more background art in a nearby segment and have to add three more masks over there, too.
OH! But the good news is that the chronic, crippling program freezes which were grinding AE to a halt every minute for 30-seconds at a time suddenly ceased. I have no idea why they ceased, but they did! That's the main reason rotoscoping 31 frames took me 12 hours. :| Normally I mask at a rate of about 20 frames per hour...
I am nuts. -
*rubs eyes*
2012-02-12 20:08:08
The Kingdom of L.F.S.
Pre-edit: 3 hours
Edit: 77 hours
Post-Production/Special Effects: 130 hours
The Good: I finally was able to save a full uncompressed file of my AMV that, should all else fail, at least is complete enough to call "done."
The Bad: Why did I do this? Well, my computer is getting ready to implode. AE freezes up about every three minutes, Premiere's dumping out all kinds of errors and I'm spending more time hoping and praying my project file is holding together than actually working on it.
The Bad: I went to bed last night with bloodshot eyes b/c of how hard and how long I'd been staring at pixels. Then I spent another eight hours or so today doing it all over again. Back is killing me, too. It's rough being an AMV editor.
Working on this in the middle of the VCAs is both inspiring and daunting. It's been awhile since I've enjoyed so many videos in the semifinals. There's also some great song choices this year, particularly "Cosmic Love" in Shin's Madoka video. After watching all these videos, though, I go back to L.F.S. and get a little bummed out by how plain and slow it is. Oh well, as long as my computer holds out just a little longer so I can finish it, that's the main thing right now.
JOURNAL: DriftRoot (Lauren C.)
Current server time: Jul 30, 2025 20:13:03