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Information

• Member: SarahtheBoring
• Studio: Ultraviolet Light Productions
• Title: The Acceptance Speech
• Premiered: 2004-10-28
• Category:
  • Comedy
• Song:
  • Avenue Q If You Were Gay
• Anime:
  • Gravitation
• Comments: This video made it to the 2005 Viewer's Choice Awards semifinals for Best Comedy. Oh dear, what have I done. Thank you, everyone.
  
  
  Summary: True friendship survives all obstacles. What obstacles? What are you talking about? There aren't any obstacles. Not a thing! None at all. Nope.
  
  Warnings: No spoilers, stands alone from the series. Pointless, quick goofiness.
  
  
  Concept:
  Originally this song reminded me of Hiro's Stalwart Hetero Best Friend speech on the motorcycle in episode 3, but Hiro's screen time was too subdued to work with this sort of video. However, one day the line "I'd shout HOORAY!" reminded me of Ryuichi, flailing his bunny around (the shot now lined up with "And here I'd stay"), and the idea suddenly seemed doable. The song still matches Hiro and Shuichi more than Ryuichi and Shuichi, but you work with what you have... the video got more and more random and goofy as it went on, because of that, but I like that direction.
  
  Once it started being put together, it cracked me up. The song is funny, the show is loopy, it was fun trying to make the normally genki Shuichi look aggravated; it's just fun. Once again, find a good song and run with it.
  
  
  
  Song:
  Avenue Q is a musical about scraping by after college and figuring out what to do with yourself. Featuring puppets. It's a little like a grownup Sesame Street. Okay, kind of a lot. The two characters in this song, Rod and Nicky, are roommates in the Bert-and-Ernie mold: a straightlaced, obviously closeted stockbroker and a happy slacker.
  
  One note about the lyrics - there's one line that doesn't make much sense in this. Rod (the denying guy) mutters "High Button Shoes, Pal Joey..." - It's explained in the dialogue leading up to this song that he's reading a book called Broadway Musicals of the 1940s before the scene starts, so his reading musical titles out loud would be an attempt to block his friend out. (There are a few other mentions of trying to read earlier in the song.) I didn't want to include all the lead-in dialogue, because it's fairly long and Ryuichi's screen time is limited as it is, but that line gets lost without it.
  
  Just a great comedy tune, that's that.
  
  
  
  Technical:
  All about lipsync (this is the most lipsync I've ever done) and stretching Ryuichi's actually not that frequent screen time. And attempting to make Shuichi look halfway serious (ha!). According to my test files, this took around four days throughout October '04, a few hours per day... well, it's a quickie. I have a serious Gravi video to work on that, hopefully, will be more polished.
  
  Not that it matters much, but in case anyone wonders, "Effects" is checked because of a couple of overlays (can't miss 'em) and some garbage mattes to make the lipsync work - which you probably wouldn't notice unless you know the source frame for frame ANYWAY, but the rules say to check that off if anything other than cross-dissolves are used. So, that's why that's there.
  
  ---
  
  And that's that. Enjoy.
  
  Note on versions: The local version, which is XviD, was giving some people trouble, so I've also put up an MPG version on direct. They're the same otherwise, although the MPG is a bit larger. Thanks.