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Information

• Member: MeriC
• Studio: Temple O' Trunks
• Title: Has Anyone Seen My Underwear?
• Premiered: 2003-01-10
• Categories:
  • Comedy
  • Fun
• Song:
  • The Youth Ahead Has Anyone Seen My Underwear?
• Anime:
  • Chobits
• Comments: This video is part of AbsoluteDestiny's MiniVid Project:
  
  http://www.absolutedestiny.org/minivid.htm
  
  After a busy summer of 2002, what with doing a DDR video, a trailer, and an AWA Pro video, I decided I wanted to make something short, sweet... and that wouldn't make me all totally stressed out! At some point last year, I signed on to be a part of AbsoluteDestiny's (Ian Roberts) MiniVid Project, in which each creator would make a very short music video to anything they wanted. For months, I struggled to come up with a humorous idea for the occasion, but everything I came up with fell short of being, well... funny.
  
  Last year, I started watching the anime and reading the manga of "Chobits." I found it a light and cute and enjoyable show, and I definitely wanted to work with the anime somehow. One of the most memorable and amusing aspects of the series is Chii and the "pantsu" episode (or for that matter, all of the moderate fan service in general). I figured "hey, that could be a fun video, making fun of all the underwear jokes and fan service in Chobits. But that would only 30 seconds funny." 30 seconds funny? Hey, I've got a MiniVid idea on my hands!
  
  With the opportunity to make a short video in mind, I opted to make an extremely short humor video using Chobits, and focus on the concept of Chii's ineptitude to function in society, specifically to get/wear underwear. And, I had the perfect song for this idea, to boot!
  
  I used The Youth Ahead's "Has Anyone Seen My Underwear" as the audio for this video (from the "A Day At the Park" CD. Thanks for lending it to me, Mike! Quick factoids: The Youth Ahead is a pop-punk band from my home state, NJ. At the time of this song's recording, TYA was a three-part band, but now there are four members in the group). However, since I was making a MiniVid, I had to cut the length of the song considerably. That said, there is a massive amount of audio editing in this song that I hope goes unnoticed. :)
  
  Now, the song itself actually plays an integral part in the video (and well it should, since, you know... music and video kinda go together to form a music video!). My twisted logic works like this: this is a fun, short, stupid video, so I can do what I want. Most people have never heard of this song, and I want to incorporate the lyrics of the song into the video. And I did so!
  
  What I did for the one verse in this video was I used Photoshop to make some files of the lyrics. In the video, I played the appropriate lyrics on each scene. By doing this, I hope to accomplish a few things: 1) people can learn the words of the song, and therefore realize how inherently stupid this video is, 2) they can sing along!, and 3) adding text inside the video adds a little visual goody-ness, and allowed me a chance to experiment more with "special effects." However, because of the use of the text, I recommend that you watch this video more than one time: once for the lyrics, and once for the video. I understand that the lyrics might be distracting, but I still wanted to put them in there.
  
  And speaking of special effects, this video features a few, albeit subtle, of them. First up is the simple use of image masking to cover any and all lip flaps. So you won't see any of that annoying junk here in this video! Next, as I mentioned, is the implementation of Photoshoped lyrics into the video. I applied some simple motions and transparencies to those Photoshop files. Third, and perhaps the only tricky "special effect" in this video, is the matting of Chii on to a TV monitor at the end of the video. It took me forever to do, even though it's very simple, but I taught myself something new, and that's always good.
  
  OK, so that's all the technical tidbits about this video. Time to talk about the story itself! Story is... Chii's a dumb blonde robot with an apparent inability and/or desire to find and/or wear underwear. Simple, yes, but that's why this is a short video. That idea can only take me so far, ya know? The video starts off with Hideki finding the robot (known as a "Persocom" in the anime) in the trash, and once he brings this scantily clad lass home, he learns that she isn't wearing any panties! After this, Chii goes on her trek around town to find underwear. By the time she has underwear, she doesn't know what to do with them, and well... you'll have to watch the video to find out what happens in the end. :P
  
  To end it simply, I wanted to make a short and fun Chobits video that pokes fun at the blatant fan service in the show (I prefer the Chobits manga, so in a way, I'm making fun of the anime). Also, I just had to find an excuse to use the song "Has Anyone Seen My Underwear". :) I hope you enjoy this video! It's no dramatic groundbreaking piece of work by any means, but I blew off some creative steam and had fun making it in the process (despite all of the times Premiere crashed, more than any other video I've made, due to a bad audio file). Feel free to let me know what you think of it!
  
  ** Equipment Used **
  - "Chobits" DVD 1 (HK version... don't worry, I plan on buying the domestic release of the series. ^_^)
  - "Has Anyone Seen My Underwear" by The Youth Ahead from the CD "A Day At the Park" (track 4)
  - HP Pavillion, 1.5 GHz, 128 MB RAM
  - Adobe Premiere 5.1, DVD Decrypter, DVD2AVI, VirtualDub, TMPGEnc, Photoshop
  
  ** Technical Info **
  - Master AVI encoded HuffyUV, 720 x 480, 44 kHz stereo sound
  - MPEG encoded 352 x 240, 2-pass variable bitrate (3000 max, 2000 average), 44 kHz 192 kbps stereo sound (TMPGEnc)
  - length: 00:00:57 seconds
  - size: 14.4 MB
  
  Happy viewing!