Information
- Member: Scott A Melzer
- Studio: NoN.D.E.
- Title: Master And Servant
- Premiered: 1998-08-10
- Category:
-
Song:
- Depeche Mode Master And Servant
- Anime:
- Participation:
-
Comments:
This was my second video with Matt. Yes, still the same two vcr method, alas.
This video was ALMOST a drama video. Wait, let me explain. I had been listening to songs to come up with a video to enter into the Otakon 1998 contest. I had come up with the idea of using REM's "Losing My Religion" and I was thinking heavily about Eva. I had already started storyboarding and coming up with an alternate story that would fit the song. No mean feat,that! But then Matt Johnson came up to me with an idea, and I figured that I could just shelve mine because I really wanted to have Matt's help.
The video was entirely his idea. Well, the song and anime was. He had this idea of playing on the sexual tensions between the characters and making it a comedy. I thought, "Well, Eva videos are pretty cliche (even in 1998), so we need an angle." I came up with the idea of, "An Eva video with NO Evas." We'd concentrate on humor and sexual tension, rather than fights. NO EVAS at all. I hadn't seen it in a video before, but I haven't seen everything.
It was put together over the course of two weeks at my apartment. Fortunately, my roommate at the time had a night job, so he didn't go mad hearing, "Master and... master and... master and..." over and over like I did. Even though it was a twisted sexual comedy, we still tried to put lots of sick/subtle jokes into the video. The "Disposable fun" part elicited a "You're going to hell for that one" from a friend of mine. I wasn't worried. If shooting and stabbing C-Ko in last year's video ("Shiny Happy People") didn't get me a one way ticket to Hades, then showing Shinji picking out a love partner from a rack of Rei clones couldn't be that bad...
Work went pretty smoothly over the two weeks, but we hit a major snag. My insert-edit VCR (the same one that I'd done ALL my videos) on was dying. I was sad. We managed to finish the video, but it took me over a week to export it onto a submission tape. I hadn't realized that the tracking had wandered while the VCR was slowly putting its foot into the grave, so each clip had a slightly different tracking. I had to learn exactly how to twist the tracking knob to keep the video fuzz out, and I could only stand to do about 5 tries per night. But, it eventually got done and mailed out to Otakon in time for the 1998 contest.
To my absolute shock we won first place in the comedy category. To my chagrin, there was also an excellent Eva comedy video, James Kao and Gregory Marques' "I think I'm A Clone Now." There were no Evas in it. The video that won for the Drama section was, ironically, also an Eva video. It was Anthony Beard's "Losing My Religion." Was I ever glad I didn't do the video I had originally planned! Matt & I also received first place in the Action category for our "Live & Let Die" DBZ vide. Otakon was won that year by two Eva's and a DBZ. Who'd a' thought?