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Information

• Member: Ainaelle
• Title: Patterns in the Ivy
• Premiered: 2001-11-08
• Categories:
  • Drama
  • Character Profile
  • Serious
  • Instrumental
• Song:
  • Opeth Patterns in the Ivy
• Anime:
  • Neon Genesis Evangelion
  • Neon Genesis Evangelion (Death & Rebirth)
  • Neon Genesis Evangelion (Director's Cut)
  • Neon Genesis Evangelion (End of Evangelion)
• Comments: History
  
  The Patterns in the Ivy idea was born some time around March 2001, when Opeth released its fifth opus, Blackwater Park. Back then, I've had making an AMV on my mind for quite a while already, most likely under impression of some of the productions that emerged in 2000 and early 2001. So, in a way, Patterns is here thanks to my jumping the (AMV-making) bandwagon - but this one time, I do not a single bit regret doing it.
  
  The video took about 6 months to make, from the first more refined idea until completion in September. Various factors contributed to the process taking so long: obviously lack of experience in editing videos and need to learn to learn everything from scratch, but also lack of usable sources. Many clips came from a bad VHS capture of a subbed broadcast from VOX; getting rid of the subtitles or otherwise fixing the clips to make them usable took a substantial amount of time. Finally, fine-tuning - I'm rather a perfectionist, and wanted to make sure the thing was as good as possible before letting it go.
  
  I can't really estimate the actual amount of time spent making the video. The most intensive work took place over July and August (holidays), probably approximating at 3 hours a day - this should give you some idea of the total.
  
  Once finished, it took another 2 months before announcing and making the video available to the general public (the premiere date reflects when an announcement was posted on Usenet). Reactions were, for the most part, very positive, both from people who got it off the Internet, as well as from those who saw it at numerous conventions it was screened on.
  
  Not very long after, there came an announcement of the First Polish Nationwide AMV Competition. Obviously, Patterns got submitted, and, over a span of few months, won two 2nd places (jury and audience verdicts, taking place on two separate conventions), providing me with nice and warm 5 minutes of fandom fame. ;-)
  
  There's not much to add after this point. It's been nearly 5 years since the creation, but it still every now and then surfaces in most unexpected places, receiving positive comments despite being quite aged already. To put it short, I couldn't have been more satisfied.
  
  Plot
  
  This is a Rei Ayanami character video. It couldn't have been anything else, with me being barely healthy obsessed with Evangelion and Rei herself back then.
  
  There is a thoroughly planned story there, quite alternative to the original. It relies heavily on tiny details and differences, things that are there, and things that are missing. It remains completely open to interpretation, however detailed knowledge of the whole NGE saga (and perhaps some scene-by-scene comparisions, should anyone ever bother doing such a thing) will surely help getting the references and the general idea behind the video. Lack of such knowledge shouldn't diminish the aesthetic pleasure, but please be aware that it contains heavy spoilers to the series and movies.
  
  Technicals
  
  All editing took place on a K6-2 300MHz / 64MB RAM / 4GB HDD machine running w95, with Aver's TVCapture98 used for ripping clips from VHS. Least say, it was quite frustrating even back then.
  
  I'm not happy about the resolution, but 320x240 was the most that machine could take, without instantly killing the motivation to ever finishing the video.
  
  As for editing, there's barely a single frame unaltered in one or another way. Many of the edits were minor (or major) touch-ups to bad source material, but most were necessary story-wise.
  
  There is some heavy masking, zooming, panning, overlaying, compositing, speeding up, slowing down, manual retouching on filmstrips... a lot. My favourite is probably one very short animated cut, created from what originally was a static frame - guess which one it is. Today it all sounds more impressive than it looks, but I'm still quite proud of it.
  
  There isn't much to say about the audio portion - mixing the seashore clip with music was probably the easiest part of making the whole thing.
  
  Participation / Awards
  
  Best Polish AMV of 2001:
  
  Teleport 2002 (jury verdict) ........ 2nd place
  BAKA Y2K2 (audience verdict) ..... 2nd place
  
  To do
  
  Remake from scratch with DVD sources. Some day, surely...
  
  (060314)