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Information

• Member: Phantasmagoriat
• Studio: Phantasmagoriat Productions
• Title: Cell Phones, Birds, and Brown Eyes
• Premiered: 2007-07-02
• Categories:
  • Character Profile
  • Instrumental
• Song:
  • Atreyu An Interlude
• Anime:
  • Gatekeepers 21
• Comments:
  
  Announcement Thread:
  
  http://www.animemusicvideos.org/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=81193
  
  Concept:
  I was contemplating whether or not to make a write-up on this piece, but I decided it would be a waste to put all these little things into the video without explanations. There is a central theme relying heavily on flight/escape. The goal is pretty explicit when you read that this is a character profile [of Ayane Isuzu from Gatekeepers 21]--so I wanted to capture her in a quick 2 minutes without any lyrics :
  
  BackStory [no spoilers]
  You don't need to know the story, just know that Ayane Isuzu is:
  quiet, smart, has a pessimistic view of life, antisocial, has no friends, a high school girl that has the power to open the Gate of Wind [sometimes with the help of cell phones] to aid an organization in resisting the Invaders. As such, she would always appear sad; the type of person that tries to bear the entire brunt of the world on her shoulders.
  
  Video Themes
  After reading the Concept and BackStory, you can probably pick up enough on your own. The video is highly focused around Ayane's lifestyle; what she goes through from the start of the day, battling Invaders, going to school-- to the end of the school day [okay, time-wise the intro is a little off since the sun is a bit high for morning... which I tried to fix with color correction... but you get the picture]
  
  
  Keep an eye out for all things in the title [Cell Phones, Birds, and Brown Eyes]. I make a huge amount of references to flight, freedom, escape... and all these items illustrate this, and are things that people like Ayane need to keep going on. Not only do cell phones help Ayane channel the Gate of Wind, but can serve as a means of escape--being somewhere that you are really not. Birds... no need to explain; Brown eyes... the gates to the soul--people can also escape inwards, not just outwards.
  
  
  
  The Breakdown
  I'm not going to explain everything here, but if people want to discuss more than what I write... all the power to ya. Also, I'm not a poet, but in the order of the video:
  ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  
  Cell Phones, Birds, and Brown Eyes [this is meant to go along with the video]
  
  flight; Starting off the day with these thoughts.
  Cell Phones
  fighting an Invader; the look in her Brown Eyes after it's over
  More cell scenes. Pause... contemplating its use... then turning it off
  [without feeding her own soul]
  Shattered.
  
  Keep moving along
  
  The rest of the World.
  backwards Beat
  still here
  
  bell*
  
  the shadow walks into a Bird
  outlined Connection
  Brown Eyes
  
  Interesting; it finally happened.
  Jerk
  
  Don't look Back
  Back at school
  Triplet
  
  Brown Eyes.
  
  ----------------------------
  
  *watch the anime
  
  
  
  
  Technical
  Made in Magix Movie Edit Pro 10; See my profile for the rest of my 'tools'
  The original song was 2:10, I brought it down to 1:55 [minus intro & closing]. It was mostly more repetition, but as it stands there is enough repetition to drive home the point [Keep moving along].
  
  00:18 -- the blur/grey might be too subtle to catch since I wanted it to switch quickly when the person steps in front of Ayane.
  00:19 -- the eyes are less brown on purpose
  00:24 -- more brown
  00:31 -- Gaussian Blur in Microsoft Picture it! overlayed onto the video
  00:44 -- rewinded the people backwards with the Beat.
  00:48 -- quick Height change, then more blurring
  00:55 -- I'm sure the light flash [shaped like a Bird] would be easy in After Effects, but for Magix, I had to take a snapshot of the scene, put it into MS Picture it!, delete everything except the outline, add some Gamma, Gaussian Blur, save as a .png, import into Magix on top of the scene, slightly but quickly zoom in then out, while fading.
  00:58 -- for the bell, simple chroma-keying in Magix since the background of the bell was black.
  01:01 -- overlays using a chroma-keyed clip of a box-outline moving over the scene, this makes the 'outlined Connection' between Ayane and the Birds
  01:09 -- I love to sync blinking eyes
  01:11 -- this was really annoying to do, since the power lines weren't originally moving, and I don't know how to use programs like Blender or After Effects. I ended up exported the scene at 160x120 resolution which distorted the lines, and luckily added the movement the way I wanted. Then I ran the clip through an Avisynth script in vdub to blow it back up to 720x540 and make the lines more defined. Threw this into Magix ontop of the scene, blurred it, and faded it in and out.
  01:17 -- I made the same scene overlap with itself, except shifted a couple frames
  01:24 -- I'm a little displeased with the framerate here, but speeding up the clip 7x worked well enough.
  01:34 -- more blur-fading
  01:49 -- for the eyes, I took a snapshot of the scene, cut out the eyes in MS Picture it!, increased the saturation slightly, overlayed that as a .png ontop of the scene so that it would stay showing as the rest of the picture fades out. I hope people don't find this ending cheesy, but then again it's kinda subtle, so the people that would find it cheesy probably won't notice.
  
  
  I would greatly appreciate any feedback :)