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Information

• Members: 808-buma, JudgeHolden
• Title: PSA Rule #06
• Premiered: 2006-09-23
• Categories:
  • Comedy
  • Fun
• Song:
  • Devo Come Back Jonee (easy listening version)
• Anime:
  • Cowboy Bebop
  • Kiddy Grade
• Participation:
  • Anime Weekend Atlanta 12, AWA 12 SAST CONTEST (2006-09-23)
• Comments: PSA Rule #06 (a mock public service announcement for animemusicvideos.org)
  
  Originally created for the SAST competition at AWA 2006
  
  Source Music
  Come Back Jonee (easy listening version) by Devo
  So I really wanted to get an old-time ‘PSA’ cheesy sorta feel to this piece, so I began to scour my CD collection for something that fit the bill. I had gone thru maybe a dozen CD’s when I came across this song and instantly knew that it was the one when I heard it. It had all the qualities I was looking for but I wanted to change its sound in the downward direction, to make it sound like an older recording.
  
  So, doing what I’ve been always taught not to do, I took the original WAV file I got off the CD and then made it into a low quality MP3 file (96 Kbps IIRC) and then back to a WAV file. The slight degradation in sound quality did just the trick! All I needed to do was to edit the song down to the required 30 secs and I was good to go!
  
  Source Video
  Cowboy Bebop, TV series
  TKO, by JudgeHolden (Kiddy Grade)
  I originally planned to use Radical Ed as the main character right from the start, as she is the perfect computer geek and I needed that type of footage for what I had in store. I got rather lucky as I believe that nearly 100% of the video footage actually comes from a single episode so it was extremely easy to get clips for everything. The lasers weren’t part of the original concept (as I really hadn’t worked it all out in my mind at the time), but once I saw it, I knew how to end my video!
  
  The source video for the ‘borrowed’ AMV in the video is from actual footage from JudgeHolden’s TKO video (used, of course, with his gracious permission, and hence the colab on this project). And just why did I use his video? Read on to find out!
  
  Basic Ideas and Themes
  The origins of this video are due to actual events and a spark of inspiration (and a looming deadline for the SAST competition too). It all started earlier in 2006 when, in another AMV contest, it was discovered that my collaborator on this project, JudgeHolden, had a video stolen from him. The entrant had taken his video, removed the original audio, did some gross movement of footage (grabbing a chunk of video from here and moving it there sorta thing), and then added another musical source to it.
  
  Now if this were your typical mail-in your entry sort of contest, I’m pretty sure the ‘editor’ would have gotten away with it (as the convention was a smaller, local convention IIRC) – however, this contest was an email your entry so we can post it up and everyone can vote on it contest, so when I and a bunch of fellow editors saw it posted, all of us started to email the contest coordinator and began shrieking ‘Stolen footage! STOLEN FOOTAGE!’ like stygian witches (or was that just me who sounded like that?). Needless to say, that person has become persona non grata, blacklisted, the video was removed (as well as others the ‘editor’ had entered), and I got the inspiration for this video!
  
  I wanted to portray the video like an old time PSA and that helped color my selections for video and audio.
  
  Techniques
  I had some fun trying to recreate a ‘modern’ looking animemusicvideos.org homepage shown prominently in the first third of the video. I had to try and figure out a way to emulate it and get all the information across to the viewer in something that would read well (as we found out in an earlier that used the ORG’s homepage as a bridge to the video). The other challenge was to skew the page as well so it would show up like it was being viewed on an angle too – which I found out Photoshop’s transform—skew tool was ideal for!
  
  Visual Effects
  The only real visual effect is the masking of all the images together where Ed is demuxing and remuxing the video (I know, the term should be MUX not REMUX, but I wanted to get the point across that another audio source was being used so I chose consciously to use the term REMUX).
  
  The big problem was that there were so many layers coming together at once – the demux screen, the remux screen, the background, the foreground, Edward herself, and the reflection in her goggles (which I had the text in both the reversed and reflected and reversed reflected until I finally figured out which way it was suppose to be – at least I think I got it the right way round now). Overall however, it did come out pretty well if I do say so myself.
  
  Technical
  This video (as most of my vids are) was created on 2 machines and a portable HD
  Home computer – Athlon dual core X2 4200, 2 gigs ram
  Work computer - Pentium 4, 3.4ghz HT, 1 gig ram
  Portable HD - 200 gig USB hard drive
  
  Audio editor: Audacity (after a quick trip thru a LAME encoder to ‘downgrade’ the audio sound)
  Video editor: Magix Movie Edit Pro 10
  Encoder:
  XVID [first pass] - VirtualDubMod
  MP4 [Q=30] - Zarx264gui
  note: to view the MP4 file, you will either need the CCCP codec pack installed onto your computer or use VLC Player
  
  Time: about 12 hours over the course of 1 week
  
  Closing Thoughts
  I hope you enjoy this quick romp thru the ‘seedier’ parts of the AMV world. As always, if you like this or any of my vids, QC’s and / or opinions are always appreciated!