Video Information

Information

  • Member: jhfong
  • Studio: Ingress Productions
  • Title: 'Cause I'm a Blonde, Version 2
  • Premiered: 2004-01-17
  • Categories:
  • Song:
    • Julie Brown 'Cause I'm a Blonde
  • Anime:
  • Comments: ** NOTE: The direct download was last available on May 8, 2005. **

    (Reprinted from http://www.evilnet.net/~jhfong/amv/blonde/):

    This is a revised version of my video that won the Audience Choice Award at Sakura Con 2001. I've retired the original version, but the commentary I wrote for it can still be found here. In this commentary, I'll mostly talk about the changes I made in Version 2, but I'd like to repeat that I'm glad I was able to win an award in the first contest I participated in, and I still don't forsee that I'll ever enter any other contest except Sakura Con's unless I can go to the con myself. I'm grateful to everyone who's watched and reviewed this video, and I hope you find Version 2 to be funny, since I still can't look at it with the right perspective.

    All the clips that I'd previously captured from VHS have been replaced by captures from DVD, except for the D4 Princess clips and the montage of Noelle, Yumi and Sailor Moon giggling at the very end of the video. I didn't want to have to find that episode of Sailor Moon S again just for the sake of reconstructing that segment, and the shots go by quickly enough that the video noise isn't very distracting. I tried to reproduce the scenes I selected three years ago as exactly as possible. For example, the "C-ko's date" segment at 1:08 looks identical to the way it did before. In the original version, I was working from a subtitled tape of Project A-ko 3: Cinderella Rhapsody, so I had to be careful to pick shots that didn't have any subtitles in them. This time around, I didn't have that constraint, but I ended up using the same shots anyway, because they seem to work best with the lyrics. However, I've included a new shot of C-ko doodling on her test paper from that OAV at 1:40 to replace the more boring shot of her tapping her pencil against a blank sheet from the first Project A-ko movie. The majority of the C-ko footage comes from the Project A-ko Collector's Edition DVD, which is correctly full-frame instead of artifically letterboxed like the first DVD release. This changes the composition of some shots, which is why at 1:35 I have that shot of her looking through the A-ko's peephole. It replaces a shot of C-ko clapping her hands with A-ko in the foreground; in the fullscreen release, the shot emphasizes A-ko too much.

    Practically all of the Mihoshi footage is the same as before. At the beginning of the video, at 0:15, I substituted a shot of Mihoshi looking shocked from Tenchi Muyo in Love for another one from the Mihoshi special, since that was the only TMiL shot in the original video, and I had to zoom in on the same way I'd done with the widescreen A-ko footage.

    I've been criticized for having Usagi switch between her Sailor Moon costume and her school uniform in the "acceptance speech" segment beginning at 1:48, and I wasn't happy with the lip-synching I originally did for the line "I just want to say that being chosen as...", so I went through ADV's subtitled Sailor Moon boxset looking for a clip to replace it. It had to be a shot of Usagi wearing her school uniform, smiling, talking and looking into the camera. You'd be surprised how hard it is to find a shot that matches those criteria. Most of the time we see closeups of her face, she looks worried or scared, especially near the end of the series. The shot I ended up using is of her talking to Mamoru in an early episode. Immediately after that, for "...this month's Miss August", I replaced Usagi's fantasy of becoming a model with her fantasy of becoming a TV star from Sailor Moon R, because it looks more like she's won a beauty pageant.

    I completely removed Cowboy Bebop's Murial the waitress from this version of the video; she only appeared in two shots anyway. I've replaced those clips and cannibalized some from other characters -- mostly Minako and Lisa -- to introduce two new characters, NieA_7 from the anime of the same name, and Lote from Starship Girl Yamamoto Yohko. Lote's hair isn't actually as blonde as that of her older sister Rouge, but she's ditzier than just about any of the other blondes in this video, so she's in. NieA is introduced in the "I see people working" line at 0:40, walking up in the upper right corner. I don't really like the composition of that shot, but I think she works better as an example of someone lazy than my original clip of Mihoshi dreaming. I worked very quickly on the clips of NieA and Lote, and I don't know if I've conveyed enough of NieA's personality with the clips I selected for her.

    I've made some other tweaks such as altering the speed of clips to improve the timing of some jokes, and replaced some shots with others using the same character. I particularly wanted to include a shot of Nanami wearing her Duelist uniform, which I've done at 1:45. I've also tried to adjust the video settings and color balance throughout the video to make the image as consistent as possible. The variations in picture quality were one of the biggest drawbacks of the original video, and they were the main reason why I came out with this remastered version now. Once again, I want to thank everyone who supported this video in the past, and also to welcome those of you who haven't seen it before.


    THE CAST (in order of appearance):

    Tsukino Usagi/Sailor Moon (Sailor Moon, Sailor Moon R, Sailor Moon S, Sailor Moon SuperS Movie)
    Kuramitsu Mihoshi (Tenchi Muyo OAV series, Tenchi Muyo Mihoshi Special, Tenchi Universe)
    Kotobuki C-ko (Project A-ko, Project A-ko 3: Cinderella Rhapsody, A-ko the Vs.)
    Aino Minako/Sailor Venus (Sailor Moon R, Sailor Moon S, Sailor Moon SuperS Movie)
    Kinezono Rio (Burn Up W)
    Judy (Cowboy Bebop)
    Ruridou Doris (D4 Princess)
    Nina Purpleton (Gundam 0083)
    Noelle (Tenshi ni Narumon! [I'm Gonna Be an Angel!])
    Rane Che Pani Coras (Elf Princess Rane)
    The President of T.N. Software (Golden Boy OAV 1)
    Yumi François (Tekkaman Blade II)
    Lisa Vanette (Bubblegum Crisis OAV 8: "Scoop Chase")
    Excel Excel (Excel Saga)
    Kiryuu Nanami (Revolutionary Girl Utena)
    Kagurazaka Yuna (Galaxy Fraulein Yuna, Galaxy Fraulein Yuna Returns)
    Silvie Gena (Macross II)
    NieA_7 (NieA Under Seven)
    Lote of the Red Snappers (Starship Girl Yamamoto Yohko)

Opinions (25)

  • Orig
  • Visual
  • Sound
  • Synch
  • Lip
  • Effects
  • Effort
  • Re-View
  • Overall
  • 9.68
  • 8.74
  • 9.37
  • 9.11
  • 8.84
  • 9.37
  • 8.89
  • 9.47

Downloads

  • Link Format Bitrate Codec Duration Filesize Link Check Information Comments
  • Local MPG 5052/128 MPEG-1/MP2 2:39 44.0 MiB blonde2.mpg
    Mpeg 1 System File [Video/Audio]
    Muxrate : 5.18 Mbps
    Estimated Duration: 02:39.18s
    Aspect ratio 1/1 (VGA)
    Size [320 x 240] 30.00 fps 104.86 Mbps
    Audio : Mpeg 1 layer 2
    128 kbps 44100 Hz
    Stereo, No emphasis