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Information

• Member: jal0021
• Title: Perfect Day
• Premiered: 2004-03-16
• Categories:
  • Drama
  • Character Profile
• Song:
  • Collective Soul Perfect Day
• Anime:
  • Someday's Dreamer
• Participation:
  • animecentral AMV Contest, animecentral AMV Contest (2004-05-14)
• Comments: **NOTE: The file available via the INDIRECT link is a newer, remastered encode.**
  
  This is a fairly straight-forward character profile video - and when I say "straight-forward", I don't intend to sell the video short. Rather, I let the show's original story and atmosphere speak for itself. I didn't try to change the world.
  
  Yume and Angela are the characters of interest, and while the focus on Yume should seem a fairly obvious approach, the decision to utilize Angela may not. After all, she's very much a secondary character in the show. However, I felt she functioned as a good contemporary for Yume's character. That, and the song was structured in a way that focusing on two separate but similar characters worked well.
  
  And beyond that, there's not much more I can say about the video itself. Fans of the show should clearly understand what the video is trying to say, and I hope that those unfamiliar with the show will be able to figure things out with little effort.
  
  The story behind the video IS worth writing about, however...
  
  The general idea for the video - idea as in "song + show = profit!" - came to me in February 2003. Someday's Dreamers was still in the middle of its original television run in Japan, and I found myself thinking the usual "I'd like to do a video for this someday". Around the same time, I had been actively listening to Collective Soul's "Blender". While not my favorite Collective Soul album (by far), I noted at the time that it contained a number of AMV worthy songs - "Perfect Day", in particular. It didn't take very long to make the obvious connection between "Perfect Day" and "Someday's Dreamers", but with the show being so new, there was nothing I could do with the idea at the time. So, I filed it away in the little corner of my brain where AMV ideas go to die and moved on to make "Forever and Before".
  
  After finishing "Forever and Before", I took an extended break from editing and the AMV community in general. For one, free time and energy were growing difficult to come by. But perhaps more importantly, I was growing disinterested in making videos in general. All of the newer After Effects fueled videos being released were a joy to watch, but they made me feel a little inadequate - not because I felt I couldn't work with AE, but rather because I didn't have the patience or desire to bother with it. Sure, we're supposed to edit because we enjoy editing, but with a blue million videos being released every month, you have to keep up with the trends if you want folks to even have the opportunity to watch and enjoy your work. It's always a shame when good, solid videos get lost in the shuffle.
  
  In January 2004, however, I started to get the itch again. And as it was time for the Viewer's Choice Awards here at the .org, I scratched that itch by checking out the nominated videos. Since I had been out of the loop for awhile, most were new to me. And while all were incredible in some way, one video caught my attention: Eric Parson's (Corran) "The World She Knows".
  
  Did "The World She Knows" inspire "Perfect Day"? Perhaps. It was at least a reminder of how enjoyable a video can be without being an effects bonanza - a perfect example of how important simply pairing the right song and show (or idea) is in making for a good video. And since it also made use of a Collective Soul song, it was very much responsible for making that light bulb go off in my head, reminding me of that idea I had long since forgotten. With that, "Perfect Day" was set into motion. It was simply a matter of waiting for the final R1 DVD to be released in March 2004, and then work began...
  
  …and was promptly finished in four days. Yes, I pulled 12 hour editing sessions for four days straight, working to finish the video before leaving for a previously scheduled trip out of town for a few days - a self-imposed deadline to keep myself focused and productive. And damn if it didn't work. The final seconds of the video were laid down in the wee hours of the morning the day I left town, but I was completely satisfied with the finished product.
  
  Anyway, a few technical notes: Total editing time was roughly 50 hours, all in Premiere (OK, maybe 20 minutes in Paint Shop). I did spend some time working in AE (gasp!), but was dissatisfied with the results and ended up trashing them at the last minute. Source was DVD (duh). Post-production and XviD encode done in VirtualDub; MPEG-1 encode done in TMPGEnc.
  
  A few special thanks: Eric Parsons (Corran) for the roundabout inspiration (of course), Randy George for the technical expertise he's always provided, James Wong for inspiring me to try my hand at video editing long ago, Danniel Cecava (rubyeye) for always taking the time to offer feedback, and Justin Emerson (ErMaC) and Ian Roberts (AbsoluteDestiny) for maintaining the technical guides so I can spend less time thinking about frame rates and more time being creative.
  
  Comments are always appreciated.