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Information

• Members: Castor Troy, Spirit Detective dot com
• Studio: Bust a cap in yo ass productions
• Title: The Haunted Ship
• Premiered: 2003-05-30
• Categories:
  • Action
  • Fun
  • Romance
• Song:
  • Takada Band Carnival Babel
• Anime:
  • Memories
  • Yu Yu Hakusho
• Participation:
  • A-kon 14, A-kon 14 (2003-05-30)
  • Otakon 2003 (10 year Anniversary), Otakon 2003 (10 year Anniversary) (2003-08-08)
  • Animefest Fan Video Contest, Animefest Fan Video Contest (2003-08-29)
• Comments: Video #50
  
  NOTE: If you saw this video at a convention, the opening and closing sequences were cut for time constraints.
  
  The idea for this video came to me during my big AMV slump. It was summertime, all the big summer cons were over and people were getting ready for their fall projects/AWA while my days consisted of nothing more than playing Warcraft 3 all day and eating burnt chicken.
  
  Yu Yu Hakusho and Memories were 2 animes that I had enjoyed within the past year. I got into Yu Yu through Cartoon Network and Memories through Kevin Caldwell's Phantom of the Opera video. Through repeated viewings of Memories, most specifically the "Magnetic Rose" episode, I started imagining the Yu Yu Hakusho characters running through the ship. I thought to myself if I should make a video with that, but I told myself I wouldn't make another crossover video ever again. Unfortunately, I didn't listen to myself and went on with the idea.
  
  I did not know what the hell I was getting into.
  
  Not only was the Magnetic Rose episode in Memories about 45-50 minutes in length (The first 12 minutes or so not even taking place on the ship at all), the entire nature of the video required me to have it take place inside the ship which was a nightmare to edit. I could barely use any backgrounds from Yu Yu Hakusho and I was pretty limited on footage. I had to remove Heinz and Miguel (The 2 salvage crew workers from Memories) from many of the scenes for many backgrounds I needed. Photoshop masks and After Effects compositions were at an all time high while working with this video (I never want to hear the word "Mask" again). I decided to use "Carnival Babel", the opening to Blue Seed as the song because due to the limited footage I had to work with, I needed a short song and Carnival Babel sounded good enough to fit the mood and most importantly the length of the video.
  
  The main story is that Lord Koenma recieved a distress signal from a ship in the far reaches of space. A powerful demon lives on the ship and is strong enough to destroy the living world. Koenma orders Spirit Detective Yusuke Urameshi, his friend Kuwabara, and the two former thieves Kurama and Hiei to head into the ship to stop the demon. What dark secrets await them on the Haunted Ship?
  
  Since the crossover genre is nothing new anymore, and being my 50th video, I wanted to do something different than a normal amv. I edited the Yu Yu Hakusho first opening and closing to fit the nature of the video. Instead of using the japanese audio for the prologue and epilogue (I'm gonna get an Otaku tomato beating for sure....), I decided to use the english dub voices done by my good friend Jon Allen, who's currently a writer for DBZ Beckett magazine and an up and coming voice actor. He also played "The Pink Hat Guy" on the dub of Dragon Ball Z. I wanted to showcase his excellent talent especially for fans of the Yu Yu dub like myself. The entire video is made more like a mini-episode of some sorts. I subbed the opening and ending sequences Software Sculptors style (Romanji in green on the top and translation in white below) to give it more of a episodic feel (Especially for people who love to sing along). The main video is unsubbed since subs would distract from the video itself. I know some people would see the modified op and end sequences as a waste of time, but I wanted to try it out for once.
  
  Now for my tidbit parts..
  
  - How did I get Memories full screen? DVD ripped it and used virtualdub. The Yu Yu scenes were captured with the Studio DC10+
  
  - The first Yu Yu Hakusho movie (Featured on the Ninku/YYH movie release) was crappily encoded (Looks like a 3rd generation fansub) so some of the scenes used off that look a bit washed out and sloppy. I'll let you guess which parts.
  
  - The video mostly focuses on Yusuke and Kuwabara. I know I could have done something rose related with Kurama and more stuff with Hiei, but they're just in the video to cut stuff up :P
  
  - I had to censor the breast of one statue. Have fun guessing which one it is. I'll give you an easy hint - It's shown 3 times in a succession of different angles. However there was one part I obviously couldn't censor and I didn't catch it until I watched the video full size.
  
  - I was trying to make the video more dramatic but sadly it didn't end up that way.
  
  - How long did it take to finish the video? Too damn long. If you know someone who got pregnant when I started the video, she's probably given birth by the time I finished it.
  
  To be honest, I feel that some parts of the video were sloppy due to the lack of footage I was forced to work with. The hardest part of the video wasn't all the masking and editing, but more so the limited footage I had to use. At times I feel kinda embarassed showing this video to people. I kinda wished the video ended up more dramatic in a sense. There were many times I got frustrated and wanted to give up on the video completely. I dunno what kept me going to finish this, but this was something that I couldn't ignore after working on it for so long.
  
  Hopefully this video shows my fandom for both Yu Yu Hakusho and Memories. Most importantly, I hope for this video to get people more interested in Memories. Memories was made by Katsuhiro Otomo who created "Akira", "Spriggan", and "Metropolis". I'm not the kind of person to tell people what anime to watch but I think Memories is one of Otomo's best works and deserves to be seen by people here. The good news is that Columbia Tristar finally got the license!
  
  This might probably be the last big effects type video I'll be doing for a while. Plus this marks my final video using captured footage. All of the videos after this one will consist of DVD ripping. The long time I spent working on this has totally fried me and I plan for my next big con project to be a more simple video.
  
  Akon 14: It got a pretty good response at Akon and Jon's voices fooled many people (Especially Machine, :P) that they came from the actual show. The crowd went pretty wild when Hiei starting cutting up things so it made me regret not putting more of him in the video :(
  
  Otakon 2003: I heard the audio was too low but thanks to the 7 people who clapped for it.
  
  This video is finally retired after AnimeFest.
  
  Big thanks to Jon Allen for providing the voice talent.
  
  Remind me never to get a video idea after eating burnt chicken.