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Information

• Member: MisterFurious
• Studio: Future Boy Digital Productions
• Title: Soarin'
• Premiered: 2007-09-22
• Categories:
  • Drama
  • Sentimental
  • Instrumental
• Song:
  • Jerry Goldsmith Soarin'
• Anime:
  • Barefoot Gen
  • Cowboy Bebop
  • Cowboy Bebop - The Movie: Knockin' on Heaven's Door
  • Cyber City OEDO 808
  • Escaflowne - The Movie (movie)
  • Fullmetal Alchemist (TV)
  • Grave of the Fireflies
  • Kiki's Delivery Service
  • Laputa, Castle in the Sky
  • Last Exile (TV)
  • Macross Plus
  • Memories
  • Metropolis (Rintaro)
  • Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind
  • Porco Rosso
  • Project A-ko
  • Space Battleship Yamato (Original, TV)
  • Wings of Honneamise
  • Yukikaze (OAV)
• Participation:
  • Anime Weekend Atlanta 13, AWA 13 Masters' Contest (2007-09-21)
  • Fanime Con 2008, Fanime Music Video Contest 2008 (2008-05-23)
• Comments: This video was made to pay tribute to my favorite film composer, Jerry Goldsmith, who died in 2004. Although more famous for composing the music for the "Star Trek" films, "Alien", and "The Omen" (for which he won his only Oscar out of 18 nominations), the source material here is not from a feature film per se, but rather from the score he wrote for the Disney ride, "Soarin' Over California."
  
  At first the project seemed easy. Because the ride consists of a series of flyovers of various California landmarks, the music is constantly changing rhythm and orchestration (though not main theme), making it a natural for a compilation video. However, it turned out not to be so easy, because I wanted to do more than just a montage of flying, which has been done so many times (even by myself in "Wings"), and I thought my favorite composer deserved better than a re-tread video for his tribute.
  
  For years, I listened to the cue on one of my many burned CD's containing songs to which I would love to make an AMV. Finally, in December of last year, something occurred to me. About 3/4 of the way through the song, there is a huge crescendo that starts out quietly, builds, then explodes into a re-stating of the main theme from the very beginning.
  
  I decided then that the video should certainly include a lot of flying scenes, but as a tribute to the human spirit of exploration, including the continuation of that spirit into space. The pivotal moment is underscored in the crescendo as footage of the rocket launch from "Wings of Honneamise" becomes a bridge from earth-bound flight to space flight - first in orbit, then leaving the gravity of Earth.
  
  Naturally, there is a lot of Miyazaki footage, since he loves flying and flying machines so much. However, I tried to include a variety of other sources that have flying in them, particularly "Macross Plus" and the previously mentioned "Wings of Honneamise."
  
  Unfortunately, because of the variety of sources, there is also a variety of image qualities. The DVD's for "Macross Plus" and "Wings of Honneamise" used the same one-inch videotape transfer that was used for their original VHS and LD releases, so the original source is sorely lacking in quality, particularly when put next to the pristine DVD transfers of more modern titles. Nevertheless, I decided that the storytelling was more important than the quality. Perhaps if better copies of the source material are released at a later date, I will go back and remaster this video. Until then, this is the best that could be done with the present source materials available.
  
  In addition, the various sources also had various aspect ratios - from 4:3 to 2.33:1. To make it all consistent, I chose to create a new mask matching the narrowest aspect ratio, and recomposed the 4:3 footage to fit as best as I possibly could.
  
  Editing was done on my MacBook Pro running Final Cut Pro 5. Extracting footage from the various sources took several weekends, and editing took two solid wall-to-wall weekends.