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Information

• Member: Scott A Melzer
• Studio: NoN.D.E.
• Title: Big Time
• Premiered: 1998-08-10
• Category:
  • Comedy
• Song:
  • Peter Gabriel Big Time
• Anime:
  • El Hazard: The Magnificent World (1st OVA)
• Participation:
  • Otakon, Otakon (1999-07-02)
• Comments: My second El Hazard video. I must like this show. STILL two VCRS. Well, it was the LAST of those.
  
  I made this video for Otakon 1999, right after finishing "Two Thousand Years." I was told, "Sure, go ahead! Make a second one!" as they'd received only 7 videos, and so I did in about a week and a half. I was "in between homes" and was living with friends for a few months. As I didn't want to annoy them, I lugged my VCRs, a borrowed LD player (which broke before we could use it. Gomenasai, Russel-san!), and all the dubs of El-Hazard I had to Matt Johnson's house. Sadly, Otakon received so many submissions that they had an "overflow" tape that year, and limited submissions to just one per creator. This video was put on the "Overflow" and wasn't a part of the contest. My first video that wasn't shown at a contest. Well, at least it was shown.
  
  I had had this idea "burning" in my brain for about a year. I had been listening to Peter Gabriel's album "So" (one of the best albums ever, and wonderful for music videos) in the car. I thought, "This might be cool..." but I couldn't figure out any way of doing it seriously. So, failing that, I began to think of parody. What if the guy in the song was a jerk? What if people really didn't like him, but the video made it seem like they did? With clever editing, you can do anything. I'm not sure what made me think of Jinnai, but as soon as I did, I HAD to make the video. Things were incredibly busy for a long time, and it wasn't until I had finished 2000 years, and Otakon told me that there was room for more vids, that I decided to really push my luck. It would be a pretty silly video and not long on plot or story, so I figured I could put it together in a week.
  
  It was a week of hell. We worked EVERY night until way in the morning, and Matt's got a real job so he had to leave early. I crashed for about 3 hours a night and got to work late every day. The night before the video was due we stayed up all night and finished the video around 8:00am. Matt ran to work, I went back "home" and made the submission tapes. Somehow I was only about 45 minutes late to work, but I was in a daze all day. And fridays are the hardest day of the week there.
  
  The video iteself was a twist on Jinnai. He's made out to be the hero, instead of the villain. Everyone loves him. It chronicles his coming into power from his humble starts and... Well, maybe not EVERYONE loves him.
  
  There's a big in-joke in this video. Whenever we were stuck during the creation of "Two Thousand Years" I'd say, "Let's put Pretty Sammy there!" Check the writeup on that one for the explanation. Lukas would always get upset. In this video (made only days after TTY was finished) I managed to sneak in a shot of Pretty Sammy (see if you can find it). I showed the video to Lukas the delirious day it was finished. He liked it. Then I showed it to him again and freeze framed on Sammy. He was puzzled, then his eyes lowered, then he hit me. It was worth it.
  
  I wanted to concentrate on movement and keeping things upbeat and lively. We wanted dancing Bugrom. Lots and lots of dancing Bugrom. And facial expressions. Crazy facial expressions. Many of the words were repetative, so the video needed to stay new. We tried to get ALL the characters involved. Most of them went kicking and screaming, but we finally got everyone to love Jinnai.
  
  I'm pretty proud of this one. It moves along nicely, and there's a lot of lip-synching that's appropriate (because Jinnai is actually the narrator, he can sing his own song!), even though we just had the two-vcrs.
  
  Okay, I'll now officially stop complaining about that!