Information
- Member: Mr Pilkington
- Studio: Less Than Three
- Title: A Decade of Dreams
- Premiered: 2009-09-21
- Categories:
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Song:
- Avenue Q I Wish I Could Go Back To College
- Anime:
- Participation:
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Comments:
This video was made exclusively for the AWA 15 Master's contest.
It really has a lot of meaning to me as an editor as it surly defines the last 10 years of my life. A prefect 10th anniversary video to commemorate not only 10 years of Pilk videos, but also my return to school. In 1999 I graduated high school and moved out of my home town into a small college community in middle Georgia. Here I met my friends Trevor and Rob who we're into DBZ. They quickly introduced me to DBZ and with in just days we sprung into Trigun, Gundam, Cowboy Bebop, basically all the popular anime (at the time) that I could muster. That fall, just a few short months into the whole DBZ craze I got a really cool idea to mix DBZ episode with my favorite songs. It took forever but I eventually completed the videos and thus editing became an obsession. Most of them are sans bumpers since at the time I had no idea anyone else had done such a thing. I quickly gained fans in the DC++ hubs and began trading for Jesmaster, KC and Hsein's videos. Thus how I discovered AMVs as a whole. Late in 2001 I acquired my copy of Main Actor and began editing with other shows stepping up my game. Then in March of 2002 I acquired a handle, competed in my first AMV contest. The rest is well documented in the anneals of the org.
What is not however is my eight year struggle with career paths and education. I left my college just a few credit hours shy of acquiring my degree to follow a business venture in PC sales and repair. It was lucrative and fun. But in the end I just could not compete with the mega stores. In 2005 I took some advice from my mother and made a resume for editing. With in a month I had my first video related job. I found a profession using After Effects and loved every moment of this position. It opened my eyes and for the next four years I became more and more adamant that I had to return to school and complete my education.
Earlier this year I applied to the Art Institute of Atlanta and shower that on my date of application, were I accepted I would edit a video with this song to commemorate.....
So July 14, 2009 I began Freshmen quarter and will spent the following 3 years completing a degree program in Digital Effects and Motion Graphics. I used much of what was learned my premiere quarter for my video here; and even exploited a few nifty effects that I had not employed before.
The Video:
For this project I did not want to keep with something solely funny like most other "Avenue Q" videos. Likewise thought a totally serious video would have been quite boring. My choice in footage was carefully selected with this in mind. It is a storytelling style used with a bit of irony in the characters built in to provide a background humor level. After all my favorite genra is comedy, and all of the videos I'm best known for are my funny ones.
The Cast:
Kate Monster - (played by Excel Excel)
Nikky - (played by Randel Oland)
Princeton - (played by Tanaka Oji)
(special appearance by Kawahira Keita)
The Rest:
The original footage was shot by myself on a Cannon XL1 actually at the school. The footage was captured in FinalCut Pro and cleaned, then exported as lossless. The rotoscoping was preformed in AfterEffects and reminder edited entirely in Premiere CS3 (on a PC). This is actually 3AMVs in one. I edited each of the 3 parts separately then motioned and matted them on a separate sequence for simplicity. (It could have been done all in one, but from an editing standpoint this was far more convenient though a memory hog.) The final sequence was simply the motioned panorama of New York city, Keita footage and the 3 other sequences. No, I did not take the New York image; I found it on google images. I might post some more technical data if asked. This was hands down the most fun I have had making an AMV ever.
The AWA Masters showing had flat characters from a PSD file sitting in the computer lab. Before it's org release I will acquire and rotoscope the motioned scenes from the series and upload the fixed version with proper keying. Also some of the timing was sketchy so that will likewise be re conditioned for the final product. The properly keyed, scoped and sweetened product should be available soon.
This is the copy that was entered into AWA Masters competition. It's not perfect and still in the process of being finalized but non-the-less enjoy! :D
Opinions (0)
Downloads
- Link Format Bitrate Codec Duration Filesize Link Check Information Comments
- Indirect MPEG4 (.mp4) 14MD Last Checked: 2009-12-22 12:54:21 200 OK Consider this version 1.0. It's the same version shown at the AWA masters competition. I plan to work on a few more things before it goes local, but for now enjoy