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Information

• Member: CrackTheSky
• Title: ECS.02: Neo-Tokyo
• Premiered: 2018-01-29
• Categories:
  • Other
  • Serious
  • Instrumental
• Song:
  • Evan Marc & Steve Hillage Intention Craft
• Anime:
  • Akira (Movie)
• Comments: TL;DR This is basically my previous video on Ambien. If you don't like: ambient techno, long videos, slow videos, videos where not much happens, loosely-synced videos, etc., I would advise you not to waste your time. My feelings won't be hurt, I promise.
  
  With that out of the way, I'm going to get on my soapbox a bit here, so strap in. This is the next entry in my ECS series, the purpose of which is to focus more on the environment, setting, and mood of a given anime (in this case, Akira) than on characters or narrative. If you read the video description of the video linked above, you'll get a good idea of what you're getting into with this one. It all applies.
  
  That said, while I really do love that video, and I think it turned out about as good as I could have hoped, it wasn't exactly what I'd had in my head when I set out to make it. There was more sync and structure to the video than I had originally intended, and while it turned out great, I had really wanted to make something even looser and more...hypnotic, I guess? I don't know exactly the adjective I'm looking for here.
  
  This video, ECS.02, is much closer to what I had envisioned. It's significantly slower. There's a lot less sync. It will probably feel messier to most people. The sync patterns that are present are inconsistent at best, transient at worst. It doesn't "flow" and there's almost no action. All the usual scenes you're likely to see in a typical Akira video are either downplayed, robbed of their contextual significance, or absent altogether. And so on. Oh, and also, it's 11 minutes long. So, you know, there's that.
  
  Besides just fulfilling a vision, though, the editing choices I made in this video were often made in direct (over-)reaction to the 30-second (or less) videos that are really in vogue right now among the Instagram/Vine generation of ADD editors who can't be bothered to flesh out any idea into something truly engaging or worthwhile. I hate every little thing about these videos; I realize I may be just throwing a temper tantrum here but in my mind's eye they represent a complete bastardization of everything I love about AMVs as an artform, taking nothing but cheap shots while artificially inflating the egos of the editors who create them. These types of videos are, to me, a reflection of a lot that's wrong not just with, say, the anime industry, but with our culture in general -- a bigger topic than I'm willing to expound on here.
  
  So yes, this 11-minute behemoth of a video is not just an attempt to get closer to realizing an idea, it's my middle-finger answer to current editing trends. I'm almost 30 years old but there's still a little bit of rebellious spirit in me, as it were, and while I realize I sound like both (a) a cranky old guy who refuses to get with the times, and (b) a pretentious prick who thinks his opinions on AMV culture are somehow more pure than others', this is something I won't back down on.
  
  All that said, I'm not nearly naive enough to think that even those people who feel the same way I do about all this stuff are, by necessity, going to like this video. This is going to have very niche appeal by definition, and I realize that. I know that asking anyone, from any generation, to sit and watch an 11-minute AMV these days is surely asking a lot, so if what you've read so far doesn't pique your interest at all, it's probably best to just move on.
  
  If you do choose to watch this, though, there are a few things that may make the experience more enjoyable:
  
  (1) Turn off the lights -- it's a visually dark video most of the time, and you'll get the most if you can see all the little details in the backgrounds.
  
  (2) Wear headphones. Just trust me on this, the music is better with headphones, and you'll be able to immerse yourself in the atmosphere much more.
  
  (3) Fullscreen the video. I don't know why anyone wouldn't watch an AMV fullscreened, but in case you're one of those heathens, break that habit now.
  
  (4) Pay attention to the backgrounds, the colors, the details in the animation...one of the main purposes of this video is to explore the actual environment, so don't just keep your eyes on the center of the screen all the time. Trust me, most of these scenes will stick around onscreen long enough for you to take it all in.
  
  Whatever your feelings on the video, just know that pretty much everything you don't like about it was probably intentional on my part. I didn't set out to create a "typical" AMV, and so had to (forcefully, in most cases) silence that inner voice that would tell me "how" to edit to this and that part of the song. It was freeing in a weird way, but I also know that the result is not something that's immediately engaging or riveting.
  
  I will get back to more, uh, "normal" videos eventually. For now, I'm really enjoying exploring the deserted alleyways that this kind of style has been leading me down. Bear with me a little longer!
  
  Technical notes
  Edited entirely in Sony Vegas 8, just like always. Total time for actual editing was probably between 10-15 hours. I will note that, although this one seems a lot less edited than my last video probably does, I actually had to do a whole lot more little things all over the place, and so probably ended up being "more edited" than ECS.01.