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Information

• Member: Phantasmagoriat
• Title: I Am Your Angel
• Premiered: 2010-11-06
• Categories:
  • Romance
  • Instrumental
• Song:
  • Pelican Sirius
• Anime:
  • Escaflowne - The Movie (movie)
• Participation:
  • AKROSS Con 2010, AKROSS Con 2010 (2010-09-15)
• Comments:
  
  Announcement Thread:
  http://www.animemusicvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=102445
  
  AKROSS Link:
  http://akross.ru/index.cgi?act=video;id=2120;l=e
  
  Plot:
  Hitomi is a care-free girl, who has the tendency to drift off into her own Dream World...
  ...in hopes of seeing her loved one Van...
  
  
  Additional Commentary:
  It's been a while since I wrote a long-ish description for one of my videos (heck, sometimes I don't even announce my videos), but this will be the exception.
  
  If there was ever a time when I wanted to make a slow, dreamy romance video, this would be it. I wanted it to be calm and atmospheric, so I chose the instrumental song Sirius from an awesome band called Pelican. It's not your typical instrumental-- as most AMVers think of orchestral-type stuff when they hear the word. Rather, Pelican is an instrumental Post-Metal/Post-Rock group, so their music has a lot of edge, while still maintaining a peacful sound. Check them out on metalstorm here: Pelican. I recommend their album "Australasia."
  
  The video itself is supposed to be simple and story-driven; perhaps not as clear-cut as some AMVs that beat you over the head with obvious queues to tell you "this is the story," but generally you can tell what's going on. Though I could be overestimating how much I can show in a ~4min AMV. The blurb above should be enough to clear any confusion. Basically, Hitomi drifts back and forth between her Dream World and reality in search of her loved one Van; sometimes forgetting what's real and what's not. And without spoiling the video, let's just say this can get her into trouble. Eventually, she does meet up with Van, and well... I guess that's why this AMV is categorized as a romance... although I *really* hate categorizing AMVs like that because it *completely* changes a viewer's perception and expectations of a video... which doesn't seem fair to the creator if you ask me. Then again, I do like to know upfront whether an AMV is a romance or action, so I guess there's not much that can be done... unless you want to categorize a video as Other... which I have done on a couple occasions.
  
  I gotta say, the footage in Escaflowne was pleasant on the eyes, especially in HD, and it was great for all the dreamy clips. I couldn't recommend the movie more... or if you have the time, watch the series first. (On a side note, I didn't like the name "Van," but it does grow on you...)
  
  There were a few subtle effects added to help with the story and atmosphere. Mainly the ripple and shining effect for the Dream World. The ripples were made in After Effects (BTW, this was my first time actually using AE for an AMV >.>). The composition in the beginning (with the tree and akross logo) was also done in AE. The shining effect was done with AviSynth and my own function Range() using Levels() (the same with any cleaning and color corrections). There was some brief masking at 1:07 done with the GIMP. All other editing was done with MAGIXMEP10 (because I'm oldschool, and the Magix interface is great for timing and raw editing)
  
  For those that claim internal sync is the end-all of editing, that would be virtually impossible in this case because of the slow pace and lack of motion in most scenes... though there is some. Expect a lot of longer crossfades and overlays because of all the rolling notes in the music; with a mixture of hard cuts for some of the more pronounced musical shifts. Because of this, you may notice the video follows a type of Bell Curve, which is very characteristic of Progressive styles of editing that I've been talking about since forever.
  
  Lastly, this AMV was made for AKROSS Con 2010, an online Russian AMV Contest that I've been participating in since 2008. I'm not Russian, but I find their community to be very vibrant, so maybe AKROSS will be an annual thing for me. We'll see.
  
  
  Technical:
  use CCCP [2010-10-10] for playback.
  
  Disclaimer #1: 720p.
  Please don't watch this in preview, or you will miss subtle details that are important.
  Grab the 720p version if you can handle it ;)
  
  Disclaimer #2: Spoilers.
  While the story is a bit different from the movie, this amv contains spoilers.
  Personally, that never stops me from watching an AMV, but I'll let you decide...
  
  Disclaimer #3: Boring.
  This AMV is an experiment in Progressive styles of editing (much like most of my work). But it's s slow type of progression, so I expect a lot of people to find it long and boring. I'm okay with that. In fact, there is an entire segment in the beginning that is designed to establish boredom. After the response on AKROSS, I found that people who allowed themselves to be absorbed by this generally like it, especially if they watched it until the end; but the majority of viewers were bored, which makes sense considering most AMVs these days are very overt about grabbing your attention. This video is not like that. Still, I encourage everyone to watch it until the end.
  
  
  As always, any feedback would be appreciated.
  
  ~Phan