Now let us discuss the main topic of the progress of how this video was made.
LET IT BEGIN!!
How it began....
OK, so from since I had finished the 666 short cuts to hell competition, I began going over what things I could produce next. I was stuck in a sort of rut of no ideas after being flooded with paperwork from college thanks to some error? I don't know...
Anyway, one of my fellow classmates who cosplays a lot happen to slip about how he was going as Lavi from D.Grey Man to an Anime and games convention called "Q-con". I had heard about this place before as being an event where the masses of nerds gather to express their love for games and anime in the weirdest way possible.... JUST MY KINDA PLACE!
Nah, honestly I was a tiny bit sceptical, but upon a friends insistant request to visit the website, I did so.
Now the website itself presented many events which included cosplay, skit performances, Q&A panels from famous figures within the industry, Art competitions video gaming competitions card and board game tournaments.... The list goes on.
I was cycling through this thing, bored and not really that interested. I mean I am a fan of Anime, but not that big a fan to cosplay.
I was about to get out of the website when I saw a section called the AMV contest. It was all like:
Being curious about this I had a look. I had known what an AMV was, so I went ahead and had a look.
For anyone who doesn't know what an AMV (Anime Music Video) is, its basically a music video comprised mainly of either video game or Anime footage mixed somewhat together to a song.
And with that, I had found me new project :-).
YEEEEEEAAAAAHHHHH!!
The Planning
So once I had skimmed through the rules, I began thinking about what anime and song I should choose.
This here is something that you should always do before entering a contest, especially when it comes to short films and other video competition. Do some RESEARCH!
Research
Looking up examples
First off, I began to research up different AMVs to see how the more liked ones are done. If you are interested, here is a small list of a few of the AMVs that I had a looked at and admired:
Safety Dance - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-Z9PKIOEwI
Nightmare - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5BiTDw9zac
Random Road Trip - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoubheYhMKc
Radiation - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpqejWeT_yQ
Till the World Ends - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBrBu-9Ya4I
Medicine - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mvnB9Nv4Fs
As you may have noticed, a common trend in these videos is that they either have complicated effects and typography, or the editing is in time with the music. Like you can see the video being edited to the beat or tempo of the song.
Now, even though I love editing, I could never replicate the effects, typography and editing that where shown in a lot of the good quality AMVs in such a short amount of time (1 and a half weeks). So I had to decide on a song that had a good and easy tempo that I would be able to edit to. Also another note I made was that I could choose an anime that had a lot of effects already in it that I could dump in to make it more impressive.
Something that I did notice is that all these AMVs that I had looked up and admired where all just trying to look as awesome as possible. None of them tried to really portray a story. Now there were some that had tried to inject emotion into their AMVs (especially if they used an emotional song), but there wasn't really any emotion that you could feel, or at least mixed in with an epic feel.
You know, you could say at this moment in time, I'm doing market research. Damn, I'm doing school work....
After taking a look at these examples, I needed to look at music that I could use.
CHOOSING THE MUSIC
Now I myself have a pretty large and diverse music library. I have rap and Dubstep at one end and pop and classical at the other. But I didn't want to take something directly out of my collection. I wanted to get a song that had a good oomph, but was completely new to me.
That way I could completely meld a new message to the song with the video. To me anyway, I wanted to not have any biased views when it came to editing.
I needed to be completely separate from it. If a part I liked was wasting time, I would have no feelings against removing it as it is a new song........ (God I'm making this out to be weirder than it really was)
Anyway, I began looking up music I didn't know via music promotional channels, for example: Proximity
Using this channel, among others, I was able to locate a few tracks I liked. Now I didn't know what kind of video I wanted to make (one with a slow tempo, fast tempo, electronic, classical), but after looking at how techno and remixes with AMVs seemed to get some of the best responses, a lot of what I picked out was techno and Dubstep.
In order to get the list of songs, I made a list of songs in according to how much I liked them and what I thought I could do with them. It kind of fits in with what I like about songs. The kind of songs I like are the ones I can imagine things happening to. Almost like the songs I know you could create a good video with.
Anyway, after a long while of trying to pick out a couple songs, I came down to a list of 6 songs that I liked the most and thought I could create a video out of:
Ivan Torrent - Remember me: http://youtu.be/ATz72ozX3Yk
Nero - Fugue State: http://youtu.be/FtpNAxldqzw
P.O.D - Boom: http://youtu.be/ufb6T-av-rU
Hans Zimmer - Time (We Plants are Happy Plants): http://youtu.be/KNEBwNH6SxY
Mako - Beam ft. Angel Taylor: http://youtu.be/Unu5YR3WL94
Pieces - Red: http://youtu.be/x3U6BCUQqG8
Now all of these songs I believe that I could make a video out of, but none of them I think could make have that feeling that you so commonly get from all the other AMVs (which is just awesomeness). That's when it hit me.
The Unforeseen Brainstorm
Throughout the whole process I was looking for epic tracks that would just be able to mix together well with an Anime, but I thought what if I was able to tell a story with it.
You see I was just watching through some more AMVs on a multi-upload and I got through to a channel called MJHoL97. On this channel was one of the best AMVs I had seen, out of every video I had watched so far. Here it is:
This AMV sparked off my imagination. Every single AMV I had seen as far had only ever used music and not the sound clips from Animes or movies. It was then I thought I wanted to convey a story through the video rather than making it as awesome as possible. I then had found out what I wanted to do.
Choosing The Anime
Now that I had this idea, I needed to choose an anime that had an inspirational or emotional monologue (or at least some lines I can mix together). Truth be told, I had already ordered some English dubbed Animes from Amazon that I believed would have made good AMVs. These included:
Because of the fact I had to choose an Anime I could create an inspirational monologue, or at least be able to tell a story I had to look at these series in detail. And that took a while....
Finally however I came to a conclusion.
Finally however I came to a conclusion.
PLANNING CONCLUSION!
I decided to pick -
Anime: The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya
Song: Pieces - Red.
The reason I picked these was because of my sudden brainstorm. I wanted to tell a story with this AMV, or at least portray a feeling of emotion rather than just awesomeness. At the beginning of the song Pieces, there is around a 1 minute piano section. During this section, I believe it would be a perfect place for the monologue I want to put it.
It is also the case the Anime I have chosen has a lot of quiet monologues in which the main character Kyon thinks about the things that is happening, more specifically about a female character called Nagato. I knew I would be able to mix some of these parts to be able to create a story around it, and then be able to bring it together with the mixing of the rest of the story to the rest of the music.
Now I had to be aware that the song pieces was too long for the video. The song Pieces itself is 5 minutes 58 seconds and the AMV time limit is 5 mins, so I began to mark out areas of the song I could chop out while also marking out which parts within the movie I could use while my editing software downloaded.
Oh by the way, did I mention that I downloaded a trail of Final Cut Pro X?
Truth be told, I just did it for the effects, but it actually seems like a reasonable editing software. However, it is not worth me spending £200 on it (at least, not while I'm broke).
EDITING!
(Beware, no pictures here!)
Okay, so after ripping the anime "The Dissapearence of Haruhi Suzumiya, I went ahead and began taking out parts of the monologue of which I liked to try and form a beginning story out of it.
After a bit of thinking, I wanted to make a small back and forth between Kyon and Yuki describing the end plot of the movie at the start. But before that I was going to have Kyon getting stabbed, to reel the audience into the video.
00:22 - 01:45
In order to create the monologue, I needed to isolate the audio from each of the scenes I was taking from and then bring it together in the time line. I did that by using the section highlighting feature in the event library of Final Cut Pro X. After that, I chose to only drag the audio and create multiple layers for each part of the monologue. After creating it, I then began to overlay the footage from the start scene all the way till the intro scene was done.
In some of the scenes, you see the characters talking. This was actually taken from the movie itself to cut down editing time as the voices from those scenes were already in sync. The only actual editing that was done to match the mouths with the voices was when Nagato says "it was preferred".
I basically brought together a frame of when Nagato had her mouth closed and then some frames of when she was opening her mouth.
I then overlaid the opening mouth frames when Nagato began to say something and PRESTO! You have got a mouth sync.
01:53 - 01:55
After the final fade from Nagato from the end of the monologue (which was just a fade transition) there was the door fading in effect.
This was not that tricky. What I did was I dragged the initial layer of Kyon opening the door into the time line. I then copied that layer (Copied = 2nd layer) and put it on top of the original (original = 1st layer). I then masked out the door in the 2nd layer and cut the 1st layer to appear when the door opens. I then threw on a fade transition to the both when I wanted them and BOOM! You have got an effect... thing.
I also did this effect later on in the video during a part where is Kyon is contemplating the "scattered pieces of who I am".
02:10 - 02:14
It was pretty much the same except I re sized and positioned the pieces of footage on certain places on the screen. I adjusted the opacity to 60% and then added some fade in/out effects where I needed them.
Another thing that I did during the edit multiple times was the camera movement effect. This is seen at 01:55 - 01:59, 03:13 - 03:17 and 04:52 - 04:56.
Now both these things had a similar component in them.
For the both of them, I readjusted the size of the clip to be bigger by about 40%. I then positioned them higher in the final edit view, key framed it and then moved the clip lower in a later clip and key framed again.
the one thing that was different between the three is in the second one. Now as I did make the clip slightly bigger and key framed it to go higher than the previous clip, I made the clip go too far and the screen then went into black as there was nothing beyond the footage.
We were seeing the edge of the footage. So what I did was I went into Microsoft Paint and saved a completely white PNG file. I then placed that a layer below the first layer.
Because the sky was white in the footage, it looked like the camera was just panning up to the sky rather than revealing white behind the footage!
Probably the most difficult effects to do where the sudden flashes of Nagato in the background at 02:40 and 02:43 and the effect where we went into her glasses at 02:36.
The first effect of going into Nagato's glasses where slightly more difficult than I had expected.
I first took a single frame of Nagato standing, copied it a bunch of times until it reached 30 seconds and exported it as a video file in a separate sequence. I did the same for the footage we see in her glasses.
I then took a enlarged and repositioned the frame of Nagato a bunch of times while key framing each edit in the particular frame until we got a very extreme close up of her glasses.
Upon that I then added a vignette effect too two layers of the footage of Kyon standing and repositioned and re sized them in the glasses of Nagato as the start of the frame. I then went and edited their size and position for each frame of the movement into her glasses to be stationed in the glorious spectacles.
This did take a while as going through each frame to make sure the movements matched was quite a chore, but worth it. It probably would have been easier in after effects with its movement tracking tool, but you sew with the seeds you've got.
The other effect that was difficult was the flashes in the background at 02:40 and 02:43. Now these were difficult because of masking. First off I started with 1 layer for the background flash. I masked out the area of the footage I wanted to show and then repositioned it to where I wanted it to appear. Now because I wanted the flashes to appear behind Kyon, I had to create a layer mask around him and overlay it over the flashing footage .
Now here came the tricky part. In FCPX (Final Cut Pro X), you can only have 4 masking points. So in order to make a smooth mask that didn't have chunks in it that made it look unnatural. I ended up having to create 10 layers of Kyon masks to get a smooth mask. And even with that, there was still a noticeable chunk in the second flash at 02:43! And with that I then had to add a fading colour correction to all those layers to get the flashing colour effect!
I probably could have downloaded a plugin but by the time I had reached these points, I only had 1 day left until the deadline.
I had to go through the same process at 02:52 but instead of making the footage flash, I just had to adjust the opacity to fade with the background footage instead of adding a fade like I did with the rest. for some reason it crashed every time I tried to add a fade effect to that layer (looks like I found FCPX's limit with transitions. Only 10 can be done in one second).
The one final piece of editing I can really talk about is the fact every cut was with the rhythm of the beat, be it the drums as 03:27, or the lyrics and piano at 02:48- -2:58. It added momentum to the piece and I believe made it look more professionally edited than just clips playing alongside music.
At the last point of exporting, I simply overlaid some colour correction and glowing effect for certain scenes to make it look more dramatic and TOUCHDOWN! You gotta music video!
THE EPILOGUE! OR UPLOADING! OR..... Whatever.
Because it was such a large piece it took around 30 mins to export and the 7 hours to upload to Youtube. That's right, 7 HOURS!! FOR A 5 MIN VIDEO! And then I added the description tags and it was done!
During the time the AMV was uploading, I decided to check out some of the competition. So I began to search for a few on Youtube.
It really took a while, as some of the AMVs aren't listed or tagged under Q-CON, but I found some. Here are some of the previous years entries:
The Insane Kishin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ph202dZS6is
Angels on the Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWaU3eGIVQg
Let The Flames Begin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnYgDHxSn2E
Bad Wings: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjBAteHS3Fc (Personal Favourite)
Can't Stand It: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fs2JJ5A-Pk (Very Joyful)
The Wrath of God and All its Fury: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8difewm6E5Q
Some of these entires seem good, some brilliant even! But I happened to find a few contenders for this year's Q-AMV contest. And I have got to admit:
I'm going to have some real competition!
Over The Clouds: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUjZyneO0lQ
Taiga Problems (Hot Problems): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIHJ0BOpe0g
We Are Forsaken: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVc20OsksHg
So after the video uploaded, I then sent of an email for the submission of the video. And you know what?
Can't Stand It: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fs2JJ5A-Pk (Very Joyful)
The Wrath of God and All its Fury: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8difewm6E5Q
Some of these entires seem good, some brilliant even! But I happened to find a few contenders for this year's Q-AMV contest. And I have got to admit:
They are really goddam good!
Over The Clouds: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUjZyneO0lQ
Taiga Problems (Hot Problems): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIHJ0BOpe0g
We Are Forsaken: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVc20OsksHg
So after the video uploaded, I then sent of an email for the submission of the video. And you know what?
They haven't replied...
This is actually some pretty worrying news, as they are supposed to reply within the 3 days of your submission and its been at least 5 now...
I have mailed another one of my fellow entries however and they say they are in the same boat, so its not just me. He suggested that they probably just hadn't got round to them yet. But it still leaves me slightly worried....
IN ANY CASE!!
I had a lot of fun editing this AMV together. I really hope it does well, but then again its a lot to ask for with a 3 day's piece of work!
If you feel like it, tell me what you think about the video and how it compares to some of the others.
Thanks again for reading and congrats if you have made it this far with a minium amount of pictures.
Now.......
RANDOM VIDEO TIME!!
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