Please Teacher: You're In My Heart

WesW · Post by **WesW** » Sat Oct 11, 2008 7:36 am

Though this is pretty much a straight-forward romance, there is some background info you need to know in order for some of the lyrics to make sense.
Hopefully most of you will be familiar with the basic plot of Please Teacher, which involves a female half-human/half-alien who is sent to Earth to observe humanity, posing as a high-school teacher. While there, comedic things happen, and she ends up being forced to marry one of her students in order to keep from being fired and him from being expelled after they are caught in a compromising situation. Their union is kept secret from everyone except the school principal and the boy's guardians. The anime then attempts to take a fairly serious look at how such a relationship might develop, since I figure that it's rare in Japan for the wife to be older than the husband.
The song, Rod Stewart's classic <i>You're In My Heart</i>, was written for the 1981 film <u>Private Lessons</u>, which is about a Dutch immigrant maid who tries to seduce a rich kid and then blackmail him out of his trust fund. She ends up falling for him, of course, but the important thing about this is that the movie is directly referenced in the song lines "The big-bosomed lady with the Dutch accent", and "her ad-libbed lines were well-rehearsed". The movie is also referenced in the lines "Breezing through the clientele, spinning yarns which were so lyrical". This references a cocktail scene in the movie, and obviously since there is no corresponding scene in the anime I substituted her debut in the classroom, which I think worked out pretty well, since both refer to the first time the boy laid eyes on the woman.
The boys in the anime and movie had much the same personality, but the women were quite different in their attitudes toward marriage and sex, which is referenced in the lines "there have been many affairs, and many times I've thought to leave". Since I stayed true to the song, this means that the teacher isn't protrayed as being quite as innocent and pure as she is in the anime, which I think adds some needed drama to the vid.
There is also a line which I never understood until I printed out the lyrics to the song, and remembered that Rod is a huge soccer fan, "there's Celtic, United, but baby I've decided that you're the best team I've ever seen". Since team implies more than one, I think it's pretty safe to say that this line refers to her breasts, and thankfully there was a scene in the anime that was perfect for this section. The way the boy is hunched over, covering himself after she comes bouncing up is just hilarious. Also, watch for the scene where he's pumping the automatic pencil for some more sexual innuendo.
Overall, I think this is a fun, romantic vid which hopefully leaves you with a smile on your face.

Melichan923 · Post by **Melichan923** » Sat Oct 11, 2008 6:22 pm

Yay! I've been waiting for you to announce this video. I really enjoyed it the first time!

*Re-gets*

Loved it even more the second time through!

I read through your detailed description before re-watching and I'm glad I did. I've never seen the anime, but the details in the description show just how much thought you put into the video and how wonderfully the song fits. Every line was well thought out to fit with the anime or manipulated in a way that worked. As awesome as some videos can be with many effects, I really enjoy the more simple videos where you can feel the natural connection of the song with the video and see how everything flows together.

Also, The quality seems to have slightly improved from the version you showed me a while back. Your filtering looks amazing as usual.

Keep up the fantastic work, WesW. I hope to see more from you soon.

Vax · Post by **Vax** » Sat Oct 11, 2008 6:30 pm

It was good editing wise but lyrically and story wise, it was terrible. It never picked up. Also the editing was nothing special just crossfades. Though it was really smooth I dont know what you're capable of but im sure you can come up with something better than this

WesW · Post by **WesW** » Sun Oct 12, 2008 7:54 am

Melichan923 wrote:Yay! I've been waiting for you to announce this video. I really enjoyed it the first time! *Re-gets*
Loved it even more the second time through!

I read through your detailed description before re-watching and I'm glad I did. I've never seen the anime, but the details in the description show just how much thought you put into the video and how wonderfully the song fits. Every line was well thought out to fit with the anime or manipulated in a way that worked. As awesome as some videos can be with many effects, I really enjoy the more simple videos where you can feel the natural connection of the song with the video and see how everything flows together.

Also, The quality seems to have slightly improved from the version you showed me a while back. Your filtering looks amazing as usual.

Keep up the fantastic work, WesW. I hope to see more from you soon.

Thanks again for the kind words, Melichan. I'm glad that there are people like you who get and appreciate what I'm trying to do with my vids. I decided to post it as-is about a week ago, but I hadn't because I just didn't feel like doing the big write-up that I knew needed to go with it.
Good pickup on the visual quality, too. The master has almost perfect quality, but I noticed in the beta that some noise had crept in on a few short scenes, so I added a light temporal cleaner to the light spatial one that I normally use, and it seemed to do the trick.

For me, making videos is about taking a great song and setting visuals to it that fit perfectly, or as close to perfect as can be found. This is an important distinction, because the typical amv takes a song that most people here will already be familiar with, and tries to dazzle you with the visuals, often to the point that your mind can't really take in the song if you're not already familiar with it.
I admit that I don't know much about fx, but for this song anyway I think that fx would've been inappropriate for the song's tone and structure. This is an old-school soft-rock romantic ballad, and I think that trying to jazz things up with fx would've distracted the viewer from the story and the emotion of the song.

The editing, though using basic techniques, was quite difficult from the standpoint of staying with the rhythm of the singer's voice and the song's beat so as to stay in sync and make everything look smooth and natural.
As with the editing, my aim with scene selection was to bring a reaction of "well of course you'd use that scene for those lyrics", when in fact it may have taken a lot of work to arrange and re-arrange the clips so that they fell into place with the lyrics and overall structure of the vid.
I guess you could say that my aim was to produce a feeling of "effortless grace" in the blending of ballad and anime. Some people can appreciate how difficult this is to try and pull off, and unfortunately some can't.
I'm not saying that it's a perfect vid, or even close to it; I just want to point out to people like Junichiro that what I try to do in my vids is different than what most other people here do, and that to properly evaluate them you need to try and look at them differently than your typical vid.

Phantasmagoriat · Post by **Phantasmagoriat** » Tue Oct 14, 2008 4:00 pm

good stuff Wes,

lyrics matching was spot on as usual, and I dig the song, although it does get a little repetitive. I like the direction your amv's seem to be heading... they're more... hmm... sassy, if that's the right word...

the amount of boob jokes in the vid is win, while still being tasteful.