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Information

• Member: TaranT
• Studio: Studio Tarantella
• Title: The Knack
• Premiered: 2004-09-05
• Categories:
  • Character Profile
  • Parody
  • Fun
• Song:
  • From the "Dilbert" TV OST The Knack
• Anime:
  • Hand Maid May
• Participation:
  • Anime Weekend Atlanta EXPO AMV CONTEST, Anime Weekend Atlanta EXPO AMV CONTEST (2004-09-24)
  • Anime Destiny 2004, Anime Destiny 2004 (2004-11-14)
• Comments: The audio for this video is from the first season, episode 10, of the Dilbert television series (1999).
  
  **********
  
  This video is a bit of personal fun, being an engineer myself and knowing that many AMV editors are also engineers of one type or another. The audio track is from a Dilbert TV episode called "The Knack" and it gained some fame by being passed around the email circuit a couple of years ago.
  
  Since the track is only 50 seconds long, a simple full screen video would have been boring. So, I used a five-panel composition - one foreground and four background - to add some visual flair. Each panel is a vignette or mini-story focused on the hapless engineering student, Kazuya, from the anime Hand Maid May.
  
  Main panel: introduces Kazuya as he tries in vain to fix his squid-bot.
  
  Upper left: Kazuya encounters strange problems with his computer that eventually lead him to the maids' Web site.
  
  Upper right: the squid-bot enjoys showing off to the girls and embarrassing Kazuya at the same time.
  
  Lower left: Kazuya and May spend a day together.
  
  Lower right: a typical day of study, but he's still dreaming of her.
  
  
  Production notes:
  
  The four background panels have 80% of their color removed. This was done to prevent drawing attention away from the main panel. At the same time, a small amount of color makes them more interesting than simple black and white (or sepia).
  
  The main panel in the center maintains its full color (actually, with a slight boost in saturation). I also added a phosphorescent glow "behind" the panel.
  
  The scenes with the "rendering finger" were not planned or intended, but once I noticed them, I decided to make the most of it. Users of Adobe Premiere are more likely to notice the joke.
  
  Sony Vegas users: the panels are easily made by applying the cookie cutter effect with a small border. Then use the pan-crop window to cut the dimensions in half and position in one of the four corners. These effects, along with the black and white conversion, are applied to entire tracks, not to each individual clip. And be prepared for VERY long rendering times when you do this.
  
  
  For the online version I added an OMAKE. This is the original video with the center panel
  removed and the four background panels restored to their full color.
  
  
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