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Information

• Member: LenWidleheyt
• Title: Excel's Middle Name
• Premiered: 2005-02-03
• Categories:
  • Comedy
  • Fun
• Song:
  • OMC How Bizarre
• Anime:
  • Excel Saga
• Comments: This is my very first AMV, made almost entirely to the purpose of having fun doing it. It's a fun/crazy video with footage from Excel Saga and OMC's One-hit-wonder song "How Bizarre".
  
  Overall, I think this video turned out nice enough, considering it was all basically an experiment, much like the Excel Saga anime itself. ;) Lip-synching turned out to be more tedious than difficult, so there's quite a bit of that in the video.
  
  The voice heard during the intro and outro are from the swedish dub of "The Jungle Book".
  
  I read somewhere that it's a bad thing to mix different framerates in the same vid, and I wasn't comfortable enough with Premiere to speed up or slow down clips. Hence, all clips in the vid are used with their exact original speed. There are almost no effects in it, apart from quite a few ordinary cross-fades and some basic alpha-channel masking.
  
  I've had SO much fun before, during and after making this AMV. I haven't been this absorbed in something since I first played Final Fantasy VII! ^_^
  
  Lyrics (someone please let me know if it's not allowed to put these up here.)
  
  Brother Pele's in the back
  Sweet Zina's in the front
  Cruising down the freeway
  In the hot, hot sun
  Suddenly red blue lights
  Flash us from behind
  Loud voice booming
  please step out onto the line
  Pele preach words of comfort
  Zina just hides her eyes
  Policeman taps his shades
  Is that a Chevy 69?
  How bizarre
  
  How bizarre
  How bizarre
  
  Destination unknown
  As we pull in for some gas
  A freshly pasted poster
  Reveals a smile from the pack
  Elephants and acrobats
  Lions snakes monkey
  Pele speaks righteous
  Sister Zina says funky
  How bizarre
  
  How bizarre
  How bizarre
  
  Ooh baby
  Ooh baby
  It's making me crazy
  It's making me crazy
  Everytime I look around
  look around
  Everytime I look around
  Everytime I look around
  Everytime I look around
  It's in my face
  
  Ringmaster steps out
  Says the elephants left town
  People jump and jive
  And the clowns have stuck around
  T.V. news and cameras
  There's choppers in the sky
  Marines, police, reporters
  Ask where, for and why
  Pele yells "we're outta here"
  Zina says "right on"
  Making moves and starting grooves
  Before they knew we're gone
  Jumped into the Chevy
  Headed for big lights
  Want to know the rest, hey
  buy the rights
  How bizarre
  
  How bizarre
  How bizarre
  
  Ooh baby
  Ooh baby
  It's making me crazy
  It's making me crazy
  Everytime I look around
  look around
  Everytime I look around
  Everytime I look around
  Everytime I look around
  It's in my face
  
  It's in my face
  
  
  Ooh baby
  Ooh baby
  It's making me crazy
  It's making me crazy
  Everytime I look around
  look around
  Everytime I look around
  Everytime I look around
  Everytime I look around
  It's in my face
  
  Ooh baby
  Ooh baby
  It's making me crazy
  It's making me crazy
  Everytime I look around
  look around
  Everytime I look around
  look around
  Everytime I look around
  It's in my face
  
  How it came to be
  
  One late night a few months ago, I was browsing the net for something fun to watch, and I accidentally came agross some AMV:s, at the time not even knowing what that abbreviation really stood for. I had seen Kevin Caldwell's "Engel" before and been amazed by it, but at that time, I didn't know there were such a huge amount of these videos out there.
  
  After a night full of AMV:s and caffein my mind was bursting with ideas of videos I wanted to make. I made a list of songs I thought could become great as AMV:s, and among the top ones was "How Bizarre". The concept was very simple and perhaps a bit childish; anime is usually very bizarre by nature (I had mostly Dragon Half, Tenchi Muyo and Excel Saga in mind at this point).
  
  Also, I've loved the song ever since it came out, especially the lead singer's voice in the chorus and the trumpet solo. I felt there was a lot that could be done with "how bizarre! ... how bizarre..." as well as the rest of the chorus (what I didn't realize [or chose to ignore] at this point was that about 30% of the song is made up of the verses, which I had no idea what to do with, which is why I'm not as satisfied with those parts of the video. A common mistake, maybe?).
  
  More creative rambling and naval-gazing
  
  After turning the idea over in my head for a while and listening to the song a lot I abandoned my initial idea of doing a "various" video and decided to settle with only Excel Saga. I thought a single-anime video would go better with the song, plus Excel Saga is plenty bizarre all by itself...
  
  Since I was eager to start editing I started out with downloaded footage, realizing (but not wanting to admit) that I would have to get the DVD:s sooner or later to make a good video. Thankfully, christmas was just around the corner, which lessened the economic impact of that problem considerably... By december 26th, I was the proud owner of the Excel Saga IMperfect Collection.
  
  All throughout this project I was always having so much fun I didn't stop much to reflect on what I was doing. I had some parts of the vid clear in my head early on, some fell neatly into place during editing, and some I just threw in there in order to get it finished as soon as possible ^_^;. Because of this (being way too anxious to finish) I'm really not completely satisfied with some parts of the video, particularly the second verse, which I thought turned out pretty uninteresting (still, it could have been worse). On the other hand, some of the footage that I threw in there on a whim surprisingly became some of the best scenes in the vid; I'm talking mostly about the solo and the last chorus. Like I've said, this project was an experiment more than anything else, so I thought I could allow myself not to worry too much about the finer points and just "get on with it" to the finished product.
  
  Someone has said that "No work of art is ever finished; only abandoned." I agree with this. I might learn what it means in the future.
  
  Credit where credit is due
  
  A big thanks to AbsoluteDestiny and ErMaC for their excellent guides, without which this video would have taken 3 times longer to make and looked like crap.
  
  A big thanks to the people who keep the org going!
  
  Software used:
  Adobe Premiere 6.5
  Audacity
  AVISynth 2.5
  BeSweet
  DGIndex
  DVD Decrypter
  Exact Audio Copy
  Paint Shop Pro 7
  VirtualDubMod
  
  AMV:s I watched a lot during the making:
  "I Wish I was a Lesbian" by AbsoluteDestiny
  "It's Tricky to Make a Music Video" by BogoSort
  "Caffeine Encomium" by Kevin Caldwell
  "La Resistance" by Lostboy
  "fullmental.panic!" by Petro
  Unlisted video - "Particle man" (They might be giants) by madmonk5
  "The Fanservice Video: Bouncing Back For More" by Zarxrax
  
  Footage from Excel Saga IMperfect Collection; Clean opening plus all episodes except 13, 24 & 25.
  Region 1 DVD:s - NTSC (ISBN 1-57813-705-5)
  
  Sound from the Swedish dub of "The Jungle Book": "Jungelboken," and the song "How Bizarre" from the album "How Bizarre" by OMC.
  
  Specs
  Length: 3:57.90
  Frame size: 640 x 480
  Frame rate: 23.976 fps
  Codec: XviD (DivX 5.0 compatible)