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Information

• Member: Bakadeshi
• Studio: AuN Studios
• Title: ~Swallow~
• Premiered: 2004-08-18
• Categories:
  • Drama
  • Character Profile
  • Serious
• Song:
  • Story of the Year Swallow the knife
• Anime:
  • Now and Then, Here and There (Ima Soko ni Iru Boku)
• Participation:
  • Anime Weekend Atlanta EXPO AMV CONTEST, Anime Weekend Atlanta EXPO AMV CONTEST (2004-09-24)
• Comments: Intro:
  
  Lets see, what to write. This video was made for a freind, I asked her to pick out the song, and she chose Story of the year, Swallow the knife. Apon listening to the lyrics, I found it matched Now and then Here and there pretty well, and walla, 4 weeks, lots of Premiere crashes, and 1 system reinstall later, this video came into existance.
  
  I stuck mostly to simple editing techniques in this one, with ocasional use of Blur, Brightness/contrast and Solarize effect filters. The text effects is my own custom technique I came up with for my plans for Angels Redemption 2, And tried it out here. It is not a filter, and is half the reason Primere crashed so much. Premeire seems to not like too much effects work on text objects. This video is not ment to be an effects video, so I left out the Digital effects category. Its only there to help where I thought it might be nessisary for the mood.
  
  Description:
  
  The video aims to showcase the suffering and pain that the characters go through in the series, and how they "swallow" the bad stuff so to speak and continue to persevare. The video was originally going to showcase the 2 main characters Lala ru and Shu, but Sara also ended up becoming a strong presence in the AMV, I couldn't bring myself to leave her out in the end, too much emotional material involving her. The quote at the end of the video is something Shu says to Sara at the end of the series that I think puts a nice close to the events that take place in the AMV and the message it puts across. The AMV also touches on the strong bond that forms between Shu and Lala Ru.
  
  This video is Dedicated to Enyani-kun.
  
  Technicalities:
  Video Specifics:
  640x480 Xvid 1.01 Quantizer 2 single pass.
  LameMP3 360Kbps Audio
  Runningtime 4 min 5 seconds.
  
  
  Programs Used:
  Adobe Primiere Pro
  Gimp 2.0
  AMVApp 2.0
  AVISynth2.5
  
  
  Cleanup Filters Used:
  fluxsmooth()
  deen("a3d")
  mftoon()
  colorYUV()
  Tweak()
  
  Special thanks to AbsoluteDestiny and Ermac for their excellent work on the Video processing guides that helped me clean up this DVD for the video. The US DVDs sucked, trust me when I say this looks way better than It did when I started.
  
  
  As always Opinions are always welcome. Especially since I experimented with taking a diferent almost random aproach at presenting the story from 3 diferent agles, that of Shu, LalaRu, and Sara and tried to blend them together to form one strong story development at the end. I'd like to know how successfull I was at this.
  
  If you leave an opinion, Most times I'll try to return the Favor If I find a video by you that I like enough to review.
  
  
  Spoilers = Light, some minor spoilers are there, but I don't give away how it ends. Although I do use some of the scenes from near the end of the DVD.
  
  
  Background Information:
  (***Warning!! Spoilers Ahead***)
  
  Since a few people that didn;t see Now and then Here and there have had problems following parts of the video, I decided to give some background information on the characters in the video. How the story goes, is Shu is a regular school kid in a normal time period at the begining of the series. He then meets the girl, "Lala Ru", at his favorite hang out spot, looking at the sunset. Lala ru had time jumped to his time period to escape some persuers who are after the power in her pendent, which is the ability to produce Water, something very rare in the time period they are from. Long story short, they follow her, and take her back, but Shu gets caught in the range of the device when he tries to rescue her. So Shu is stuck in this time period throught the rest of the series, With the Madman Hamdo (the crazy guy in green with the red and yellow decorations on him) as the dictator. Hamdo is literally insane, and its sometimes funny to watch him carry on as a big baby when in danger, but he is also the cause of much of the suffering in the anime. He cares nothing for other people, only about himself.
  
  The second in command woman (the woman I show talking to the intercom in the video, and various other places) She has a strage attachment to Hamdo in the series, And I think she knows what she is doing is wrong, but does it to please Hamdo, and you can tell theres conflict in her throught the series. I used Hamdo and the second in comand lady to depict the "Problems that lie within" the lives of everyone in the series, including Lala ru, Shu, and Sara.
  
  Wich brings me to Sara, she is from the same period/dimension as Shu, but she is American. She was abudcted originally mistaking her for Lala ru. She is probably the most abused in the anime, and ***SPOILER ALERT *** is raped at one point in the anime. This happend imidiately after Shu tells her everything will be alright. Shes pretty devistated by it in the anime, and much of the Angst in the show is around her. She is pregnant at the end of the AMV, which you would have to have good eyes and realy good observatoin skills to notice, since she is just holding her hand over her belly and its a short clip. *** END Spoiler alert *** Anyway thats one of the "good" things that may come out of her misfortune presented in the video.
  
  One of the good things about this anime though, is the enthusiasm and Never give up Additude that Shu displays almost all the time in this show. Hes easily a likeable character, and unlike alot of other male protagonists, He is no where near invinsible, hes not even that strong physically, hes just a typical normal boy. because of this, the show is hardly predictable, and keeps you on your toes of what happens to them next. I wanted to showcase his never give up attitude as much as possible, while keeping intune with the mood of the video depicting suffering and Perseverance.
  
  And thats about all I want to tell you about the series without spoiling too much for you. I think I covered all you need to know to understand the AMV. I suggest buying this anime, or Go rent it at your local blcokbuster if you like drama, it won't disapoint you.
  
  
  Contests update:
  Nominated for best Dramatic for 2005 VCAs.