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Information

• Member: xharas
• Studio: X'3m Productions
• Title: Tempest
• Premiered: 2002-08-25
• Categories:
  • Action
  • Instrumental
• Song:
  • Full Metal Panic OST2 Track 17 - Monster Movie
• Anime:
  • Hunter X Hunter
• Comments: I was listening to the Full Metal Panic OST2 when I heard this instrumental piece of music. Immediately I thought that this music conveyed feelings on being on a ship. The bass viol is the periodic hum of the ships engines, the army-ish sounds of the snare drums, the trumpets as the cries of the sailors and the timpani for the rumbling of a storm.
  
  I watch Hunter X Hunter recently and I though this anime was perfect for this piece of music. It isn't well known yet and there was only a few AMV made to this amazing series. I took the footage entirely from Episode 20 since this music was so short, most of the other Hunter X Hunter episodes are about ships and to save hard drive space.
  
  Due this constraining it was difficult to put together a self-explanatory story, which I always try to do. The best I could do is a theme where the characters are struggling against the storm.
  
  What I tried to accomplish in this mini-video was to create a purely action video while practicing special effects for my upcoming dance AMVs.
  
  My philosophy for action videos (not dramatic action videos) is that each scene change should be around 1 sec or less. For a 90 sec video this meant at least 90 different clips must be used. Another point is try to keep action AMVs short because a 4 minute Action video would mean bombarding the viewer with 240+ clips which is a strain on the eyes.
  
  For special effects my philosophy is that special effects should enhance the video not distract for it. That means it must be subtle and most views should feel it's natural to have it in there and often times won't notice it.
  
  Here a list of the major special effects techniques I used in combination with rubberband overlays.
  
  
  Section 1 - 0:00 to 0:16
  
  I tried to blend a series of images together in a way that matched the music. Each time you hear the bass, I used a 6 frame fade out in combination with Radial Blur effect. I set it to zoom mode blurring from 1 to 100. This enhanced the feeling of the bass with the images. In addition I chose images with panning and zooming motion to give the feel of flowing from one scene to another.
  
  Section 2 - 0:16 - 0:32
  
  This section mainly relied on effective use of rubberband overlays vs. rapid changes of clips. I felt blends matched well with the slower pace of the music.
  
  0:18 I call this the double take effect. Take the clip and split in two. Use motion to zoom in the first clip. With the second clip, extend the clip to the left so you rewind a bit. Then use motion but this time zoom it even further and overlay it with the first clip.
  
  0:22 - 0:24 Double Take II. Same idea as before but this time I set the rubberband opacity to 50%. Add a bit of Gamma correct for the second clip as well.
  
  0:25 I shifted the image by 1 pixel using motion. This is hardly noticeable but I feel it helps match the image with the music change. Without it, the clip looks extremely plain.
  
  0:26 This is a manual ghosting effect. I had 3 layers with the same clip. I set zoom to at different percentages in the beginning but made them the same at the end. Lastly you overlay all 3 clips.
  
  0:29 Used Ghost effect to make the clip less plain
  
  
  Section 3 - 0:33 - 0:49
  
  I wanted something similar to section 1 but more dramatic. I set it so one set of images a series of blends conveying emotion and the other set of images is abrupt action sequences. Again I used the Radial Blur for transitions
  
  0:36 - 0:40 This used a blend of three images. I tried to limit these images to clips with little panning of zooming. When having three or more images being overlay, it gets a bit confusing if there is too much action involved.
  
  0:40 - 0:44 I used varying % and durations of Radial Blur on the clips. I started at 70% and gradually decreased it to 25%
  
  0:48 Finally I wanted to make a large impact before the scene changed. Since I used very little panning and zooming clips earlier, it was more dramatic when I zoomed into the face. By decreasing and suddenly increasing the opacity, it enhanced the sync between the clip and music. In addition I used Find edges to give a white rage effect.
  
  Section 4 - 0:49 - 1:28
  
  The music changes near the end of the video. It becomes more dramatic so I chose to use less blending and more intense and abrupt scene changes. I try to use a lot of scenes to convey the feeling of the music and enhance the flow of the video.
  
  0:49 Again the Double Take effect except the zoom % difference is a lot higher and there was no overlays between the two clips
  
  0:54 - 0:56 Straight cuts but with some ghosting.
  
  The rest is mostly motion, rotating of clips, increasing gammas, ghosting and effective use of the rubberband opacity. Note sometimes you don't have to set the rubber band to 0%. At 1:20 I set it at 50% at the end and this gave a dimming effect sort of like reducing brightness and contrast.
  
  
  
  Overall I would say that this is an average video, not spectacular but not boring. As to the sync of the special effects I would say 70% sync rate. I still need more practice to perfect it and learning After Effects is a must.