After looking through the manga for a while, I decided upon a character named "Appule". He is a minor henchman of Freeza's that is killed off just as quickly as he is introduced. Despite this, he's actually given a name (being a pun on "Apple"), so I could theoretically write up a short little guide for him.

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Needless to say, this is a Street Fighter video. The song is a megamix of the eight "Word Warriors" individual theme songs.

This is actually an idea I had for several years, and simply never got around to making come true. I went back and forth on turning it into a little multi-editor project (maybe with people picking anime characters that halfway resembled the Street Fighter counterparts; for example, Shampoo from Ranma 1/2 is Chinese, so she could be the Chun-Li portion of the song). That never really went anywhere, so I just kept the idea in the back of my head.

Many years later, I decided to simply turn it into a standard "tribute" video, and indeed make it a multi-editor project... the "multi" being Meri and myself. We would split the eight characters among the two of us, and stitch it together into one fun tribute video. We meant to do it for AWA Expo 2007, but didn't get around to it for nearly a year, and ended up making it for AWA Pro 2008.

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I have a really big thing for the concept of "friendship" in my anime. It doesn't matter what the genre is... as long as there's a solid bond between friends, I'm totally there. This is clearly most shown in my love of long-running shonen, but it's crossed over to other interests, as well. One of my favorite examples was actually from Otakon 2007's video made with Meri and Jeff, "Never Fall Apart".

That being said, this video is all about friendship (of course). It's a different type of friendship though... one between a boy and his Pokemon. At the end of the day, it's not all that different, really...

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After hearing Gerald's review of Megazone 23 on Anime World Order (an anime podcast), I decided it was finally time to actually watch the damn thing. We watched it, we went on with our lives. The Monday before the AWA 2007 Exposition deadline, it randomly occurred to me that making a trailer to The Matrix with Megazone 23 was the easily idea that could ever be done. I checked around and did not see a single attempt at the idea, so I took it upon myself to do it. The video was edited over the next five days (Monday mostly being ripping and prepping the footage, Friday mostly being finalizing, exporting, encoding, and uploading the video). With one hour to spare after the upload, the video was complete.

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This is a dark comedy, somewhat childish at times, putting a fun twist on Light simply going along killing whomever he chooses. There really is not much of a traditional "narrative" to this video, which is quite different for me. Beyond getting the notebook at the beginning, it's just death... death... and more death. At the end of the day, it's a hard job... but somebody's gotta do it.

The video is (obviously) split up into individual segments. The first and second verse are timed differently (due both to story-necessity and different emphasized musical elements), but both act as the same type of mood-setters; the choruses pick up the pace with that shit-eating-grin; the breakdown and bridge are totally different, showcasing a little bit more of the in-depth actions of Light.

The first thing that came to mind in the video was the "drop" section of the bridge, which is about the only thing that remained the same from the original vision. The breakdown section was originally going to be some floating, feathered, cropped boxes of Light writing names while the names flew by both in front of and behind said boxes of video. Unfortunately, all of the scenes were too short to leave up floating around for any extended period that I could appropriately time to, so the hard cuts in the background (with a grainy film quality) came to be with the names floating around in the front. I think I actually prefer this implementation, anyway, so I'm glad that worked out.

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This video was intended to be primarily a "mood" or "feeling" video, followed directly by the story it tells to set up that mood. The beginning shots simply set up the atmosphere and locations for the story, and moves in to the character introductions (a staple of Meri videos going back years and years and years; see Liberation Of Memories Past for an example). Throughout the intro and the character introductions, you will see lots of comparison shots with characters moving their heads in similar ways, looking up at the moon, etc. These motions will even be re-created in the middle transition of the song where the characters are all shown looking longingly through windows.

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As the winners from AWA 2005, we participated in 2006's "Battle Royale" Iron Editor tournament of champions at Otakon. The theme for this particular tournament was "action movie trailer". Two winners would be chosen to advance forward to the finals at AWA later that year.

We chose the Mortal Kombat trailer for several reasons: (01) it's comparatively well-known among the geek/nerd/anime/etc. crowd, (02) it has an ensamble cast we could exploit for the variety of sources, (03) Kadaj + Shang Tsung = gold, (04) etc.

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It's really amazing what sitting and watching a new show (for a change) will do for your AMV inspiration.

A couple discs into Hajime no Ippo, we were pretty convinced we were going to do a video to it. Meri had a very loose idea for a video to Panic! At The Disco's "Camisado", but that was the problem... it was a very loose idea. My concept for Say Anything's "Belt" was also based on a loose idea, but that one just led into a few other loose ideas that ended up coming together in a more solid beginning-to-end idea, so we ended up going with that one. It was somewhat of a challenge in that the song did not tell such a literal-and-obvious story that we are so used to correlating (see 2005's Fake as an example), but it was a FUN challenge to force ourselves to match the story in a coherent fashion.

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This is our video that was made during Anime Weekend Atlanta XI (2005)'s "Iron Editor" contest. The theme for this year's competition was "exploration," so we picked the "Mission: Impossible" remix. Our competitor was Hsien Lee (Kusoyaro Productions), who has been the Iron Editor champion for many, many years. Somehow, we managed to dethrone him, which was quite a shock, considering how awesome his video was!

This video is pretty simple (didn't really have much choice, having to make the video in two hours, and all) with elements of action and a little light-heartedness. Having the "secret ingredient" helped spice things up a bit, and we thought it was fun to work with. Despite how short and simple the video is, we're both actually very proud of it. There is one massive mistake in the video, though. We accidentally used a shot from "Blue Sub No. 6" twice. Ooops!

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This video was actually my original idea for AWA Pro X (2004), but for some reason or another, we just didn't go through with it. Instead, we decided to work on Meri's idea for Pro that year (Sex, Lies, & Roses). This idea remained in the back of my head for the entire year, though. I definitely wanted to get around to it, but just didn't.

We were undecided on an idea for AWA Pro XI (2005) until very late into the year. We had a few ideas kicking around, but either didn't have the right source footage, didn't have the right audio, or both. Taking a look back on the video ideas, this one stuck out, so we went with it! Since the idea was comparatively old, I don't quite remember how it came to me. It was either in a car or on the way to class (back when I had not yet graduated). The lyrics in Dashboard songs tell such fantastic and relatively literal stories, that coming up with two anime characters to fit the male/female characters in the song was almost no work at all.

Hopefully, the story in this video is extremely straight-forward and obvious. As mentioned, the song does a great job of being extremely clear with its presentation of two characters and their own internal faults and insecurities. In essence, that somewhat makes us extremely lazy... the video nearly edited itself! Arima and Miyazawa were just such perfect fits, especially considering the gender-opposites the song speaks of.

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This video actually has a purpose. I swear.

At AnimeNext 2005, myself and Julian Grybowski ran a panel entitled The DBZ You've Never Seen. Filled with things like Japanese vocal video game openings, clips from movies that haven't been released, the original Chinese live-action movie, etc... it was a fun time.

We also covered the subject of FUNimation's so-called Ultimate Uncut Edition releases that began in 2005. For those who don't know, FUNimation's English dub of DBZ began in 1995. It was distributed for syndicated television broadcast by Saban, and was played on early Saturday mornings... typical kid-cartoon time. Needless to say, DBZ was pretty heavily censored. Approximately 15 episodes worth of material was edited out of the first two seasons (approximately 67 episodes originally, in Japanese).

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If you still don't know about this video/project, check out this page. In short, it's a multi-editor AMV project that spans the entire length of the DBZ TV series, beginning to end. It's to a custom-mix of the song "Sandstorm" (which you no-doubt already know). Besides being the technical coordinator for the project, I also edited two individual tracks (01: Raditz; 16: Fusion), as well as collaborated on another track with Meri and gambitt (12: Cell Game).

Be sure to check it out!

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I made this video specifically for the AMV panel at AnimeNext 2004, which took place Friday evening at 10 pm (June 18th). This video went with our "Fine Tuning and Easy Things to Avoid" section. After discussing all the various artistic elements that go into making an anime music video, we shifted over into the technical aspects. First, we showed a blank version of this video, with no text on-screen. After the video finished playing, we asked those in the audience to raise their hands and each mention one thing they found in the video that they would do differently. Once we got through everything (that is, everything they could pick out... which I believe was everything and then some!), I played back the version that you can find for download, which contains some on-screen, explanitory text.

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Like many of our music video ideas, this one came to us when we least expected it. Mike and Meri had not made a trailer since "The Professional," made less than a year earlier, and hoped to make a new one at some point this year. Several ideas floated between the two for many months, and, as usual, nothing really clicked.

Then, one lazy Sunday evening, Mike, Meri and Andrew "Deluxe" (Mike roommate and star of Meri's "All-Purpose DBZ Music Video") were enjoying some nice "Adult Swim" on Cartoon Network. One of the trio's favorite shows, "Sealab 2021," came on. It was an episode no one in the group had seen before: an "Entertainment Tonight"-type episode, hyping up the summer release of a movie starring the Sealab crew. At the end of the episode, a trailer for the fake movie "Tinfins" finally appeared. We were hooked by the first line: "would you put your brain in a robot body?" Not only was this a tribute to an older "Sealab 2021" episode from the first season, but Meri and Mike seemingly read each other's mind the instant the trailer began: this has to be done to "Evangelion."

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de·spon·den·cy
n. Depression of spirits from loss of hope, confidence, or courage; dejection.

If there was ever a video that I did just for me, this is it.

This video is also pretty much a fluke. Meri and I had her computer over at my house over spring break 2003 to work on a special project (for which all of EVA was ripped in its entirety). I had this video idea picking at me for well over a year (which takes me long before I was even haflway adept at editing AMVs), and just hadn't had a chance to do it. When were we ever going to do an EVA video? We didn't ever have room for it. Meri had actually just purchased a new 120 GB hard drive, so with multiple series ripped on the hard drive, we had plenty of opportunities to go in different directions with projects.

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This video is the third track in a series of anime music videos entitled the "Jet Set Radio" Anime Music Video Project. Similar to other multi-editor projects, various songs in this megamix have been spliced together and transition from one another into different videos by different editors. This is why the video has such an abrupt beginning and end.

The main reason I originally signed up for the "Jet Set Radio" AMV Project was simply to procrastinate doing a full-length video. In fact, I hadn't even really considered signing up for the project, because I wasn't sure if it would ever be complete.

However, one night I found myself in the AnimeMusicVideos.org chatroom, and NME was talking with some folks about the project. I thought to myself, "What the Hell... I'll go for it" and checked out the two remaining songs: "Humming the Bassline" and (I think) "Rock it On." I disliked both songs, but "Humming the Bassline" was clearly the lesser of two evils! I actually found it to be interesting, as it was almost a hip-hop kind of sound, which is something I never dreamed I would be working with for a music video. I put in my request for the song, and away I went.

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Fans of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" (and "Angel," obviously) will know how tortured of a soul Angel is. Back in his days of Angelus, he ruthlessly murdered without any consideration for anyone other than himself, leaving a trail of death and destruction behind. When he killed the wrong person (namely, a gypsy), he had a curse placed upon him: his soul was restored. From that day forth, he remained a vampire with a soul, now conscious of everything he had done, feeling such an incredible deal of remorse. At first he nearly gave up on himself, but in time, he began to walk down the path of redemption; by saving others, he would atone for the deaths he had caused in his past.

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There's been a lot of "Final Fantasy" videos. More specifically, there's been a lot of "Final Fantasy VII" videos. More specifically than that, there's been a lot of real crappy "Final Fantasy VII" videos. It all started back in September of 1997, probably, when the game was released. It was a brand-new "Final Fantasy" game, and the first one to get a whole slew of pre-made CG video cut scenes to enhance the story being told.

Otakon 1998 saw a buttload (OK, three) of music videos produced to footage from the game. Over the years, there's been many more videos produced using the game's footage. Many of them try to tell a story; most end up telling the story of the game. This is all fine and dandy, and quite a few of them ended up being very watchable (check out SephirothJenova's "To The Limit" for one).

The problem is that while it seems like there's a lot of footage... there really isn't. A lot of the footage on the discs is pre-rendered background scenes that your characters are placed on top of, or are very short scenes. Sure, there are the long ones like the opening, major death scenes, and the endings, but honestly, it's VERY hard to have a normal-length music video and not run low on footage.

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This video is one big fluke. Why is it that every video has to have such a strange back-story to it? Anyway, 4th of July weekend during the summer of 2002 gave us a great opportunity to slap together (at least the beginnings) of a new music video we had somewhat planned out. We had the four days off from work, so we brought Meri's computer to Mike's house, plopped it in the dining room, and left it there for four straight days as we edited, talked to cats, edited, ate, edited, drank, and edited some more.

Both of us had ideas for this song / anime at the same time. Meri was considering a "Neon Genesis Evangelion" video, while Mike was pretty set on using "Trigun" for it. In the end, it was "Trigun" we went with, as it would prove to be a greater challenge (metaphorical connections are much more rewarding than literal ones, when it comes to song lyrics), and the EVA idea was too similar to something else Meri had in mind.

Four days later, the preliminary version of the video was done. A full three minute and some-odd seconds video was DONE after only FOUR DAYS. That's INSANE.

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Our getting a DDR track is a relatively short and amusing story. One night we found ourselves at Scott Melzer's doing the usual talk / hangout -ing. We were pretty familiar with his DDR video at this point, since he'd had it done for a little bit (this is early July 2002). Conversations concerning the 2nd DDR project came about, and we found ourselves with quite a question: would we like a track? While still early on, a few people unfortunately had to back out of the project due to whatever reasons. Scott had a conversation with Hsien the night before (or so we're told), and the track had been temporarily put on "hold" for Scott to ask us about. We were, of course, rather excited; to be a part of this kind of project is something we've dreamed of for a while, and since we were moderately- to very- disappointed with lots of videos in the 1st DDR Project (3rd Mix), we really hoped that we could do something special and enjoyable.

Then we found out what song we had.

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Meri and Mike had been thinking long and hard about a new trailer to do. It had been a full year since the weekend-creation of the "X-Men" / DBZ trailer. Dozens of ideas had been passed back and forth, but none seemed to have the "uumph" that they should.

Until one day when Mike and his roommate, Andrew "Deluxe," were simply talking about movies, and "Leon (The Professional)" came up. It was perfect. "Cowboy Bebop" would precisely fit the idea of this trailer. It took three days to remember to have Meri bring home the DVD to rip the trailer, but eventually, it was done.

Work began at Meri's house one evening, with the basic plopping of a few scenes into the first few seconds of the trailer. It seemed that it was going pretty slowly, but was looking rather decent to us. We were pleased with how it was proceeding, and took a break for the night.

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