AMV Salad 4: TV Dinner (next stop - Nekocon)

[Squancho]

Honou_Miko: If you could render to mpeg2, we'll see if that fixes the sync problem. Otherwise, if it's just a matter of lag, I can separate the audio track and move it over a smidge until the audio matches the movements. Either way works for me...

[InspZenigata]

So I've officially listed the "Barry the SlapChopper" clip as one of my favorites of all time. That and the Sony POS news segment. I love it.

MORE!

[Gaelstrom]

Ohhh. Trust me, there is a huge joke in here and it's kind of irreverent. XD The series is Ouran High School Host Club, and the source audio (That 70s Show) actually has very little to do with the comedy. The comedy is that the blond guy is an illegitimate child, and was forced to leave his mother and live with his grandmother so that he could be recognized by the family (and so that his mother could receive financial support for a chronic illness). And he's kind of obsessive about making everyone happy.

I've seen Ouron, but I'm sorry to say I just didn't quite find it as amusing as it could have been. I watched the Hallmark clip from this perspective as an audience member, bear with me: The timing for a punchline was set up for after "3 years later..." because he sets up this setting for a joke in the context of "I'll hang out with grandma... whaddaya say?", setting up some type of failure with hanging out with grandma or some joke, and then he says "I'm not gonna make it" without a punchline set to joke timing which people have come to expect by then. If you look at it from the narrative context, without even without a joke there, it still lacks sense of context to me as an audience member. I'm thinking "Not going to make it to what? What did that have to do with 3 years later? What was the point of the first scene in this context? Was that the joke?" that was my first impression.

My thoughts on it are this: If you're relying on the audience's knowledge of the anime to begin with, then the setup is superfluous and I think actually harms the Hallmark joke in regards to the King's family. By the time the actual joke was there, I was wondering what I should be focusing on. Consider having some other anime fan friends of yours look at it and ask them how they felt about it honestly. Personally I stick with my suggestion that you'd land the joke cleaner starting with the scene after "3 years later..." and even cutting out some lines that have other contexts so its an 'air-tight' clip and requires as little outside knowledge as possible. Off the top of my head, I would suggest you started it at "I want to keep peace in the family" (cutting off the 'no' at the beginning) and I think you'd find yourself with a more unified clip with the joke focus on the actual Hallmark aspect. Because him wanting to keep peace in the family is also an aspect of his character, so it maintains context.

Your Death Note one has none of those issues on the other hand. You did such a great job using the scene. It was long, but of course Family Guy lends itself to multiple punchlines to maintain interest and the anime itself using that specific source lends itself to several inside jokes for audience members who know the visual source. And best of all, those who know neither source (if that's even possible in the con audiences) can still find enjoyment in the context in and of itself. In this regard, this clip is exceptional, and covers at least some level of all aspects of the audience.

So I've officially listed the "Barry the SlapChopper" clip as one of my favorites of all time. That and the Sony POS news segment. I love it.

Hah, glad you enjoyed them. And I think you just gave the rap chop clip its name I want to polish off some timing in it though that I picked up now that it's been a little while since i looked at it. In fact I should give all my clips another look through to see if the timing still feels right.

[Honou_Miko]

The timing for a punchline was set up for after "3 years later..." because he sets up this setting for a joke in the context of "I'll hang out with grandma... whaddaya say?", setting up some type of failure with hanging out with grandma or some joke, and then he says "I'm not gonna make it" without a punchline set to joke timing which people have come to expect by then.

Okay, I totally get you. I like the suggestion of starting it off with "I want to keep peace in the family." I think the biggest problem is the slowness of the source audio... like you mentioned, Family Guy is fast-paced and doesn't allow much time for "all right already..." XD So yeah, I'll see what I can do - maybe even see about editing some dead audio time if need be (I've done that before... works like magic for timing's sake). It's one of those things that would work as a video clip on its own for people who are searching specifically for Ouran, but you're right - I'd be pretty confused if I didn't know what was going on.

Honou_Miko: If you could render to mpeg2, we'll see if that fixes the sync problem. Otherwise, if it's just a matter of lag, I can separate the audio track and move it over a smidge until the audio matches the movements. Either way works for me...

Okay, I'll give it a shot... in Vegas, it asks you what you want to render to, and under mpeg2, DVD NTSC is one of the options. I've chosen it in the past because it seems to be the best visual quality for mpeg files... the problem with that is that you can't customize it (frame rate, etc...). I don't think it's lag; I have a feeling it's a frame rate issue, because there were some quick lip movements that I saw ended up being stuck in one mouth position. So it wasn't picking up on some frames in between.

So, I shall work on these. Yay for school being out... and not having a job...... no, not really yay for the latter. T_T

(Also, Gaelstrom, I am SO glad you did a violent Slap Chop clip. I actually had the idea of doing something violent with Slap Chop, but I couldn't think of any good violent scenes that could go with it. But I just saw the significance of the name - seriously, awesome. I have to get around to actually watching FMA like my friend keeps telling me to... hah.)

[Gaelstrom]

Okay, I totally get you. I like the suggestion of starting it off with "I want to keep peace in the family." I think the biggest problem is the slowness of the source audio... like you mentioned, Family Guy is fast-paced and doesn't allow much time for "all right already..." XD So yeah, I'll see what I can do - maybe even see about editing some dead audio time if need be (I've done that before... works like magic for timing's sake). It's one of those things that would work as a video clip on its own for people who are searching specifically for Ouran, but you're right - I'd be pretty confused if I didn't know what was going on.

I think really the timing's solid with your good cutting and footage use after that section. It really is just the beginning that has any dead space. But in rewatching it, I realized one scene that confused me was the 'to my mother in law on this beautiful sunday..." etc. you took a long shot on the picture frame. Since it has been a while since I DID see Ouron, and I don't fully remember the instances of his family, if there's a way you could show clips of relevant characters for those lines, I think it'd help quite a lot. You could use the picture for "has made my home a happy place" to punctuate it, but if you know of any decent footage for the characters speaking, that'd help the audience I think. That's pretty much all I have, otherwise you did a wonderful cutting job and good footage choices.

Heh, although objectively I'm curious about the black faces ^^ You may run the risk of making it a racial joke, and I don't sense that's your intention

(Also, Gaelstrom, I am SO glad you did a violent Slap Chop clip. I actually had the idea of doing something violent with Slap Chop, but I couldn't think of any good violent scenes that could go with it. But I just saw the significance of the name - seriously, awesome. I have to get around to actually watching FMA like my friend keeps telling me to... hah.)

Make sure to watch both FMAs ^^ The original anime may not be fully canon, but I actually enjoy its delivery considerably, and FMA Brotherhood actually assumes you've either seen the other anime or read the manga, so it's a good reason to watch the other one as well.

As for the clip, it was HARD. That scene only constitutes 3 minutes of the entire series at best, and I have a tendency to make up footage in my head that didn't exist, so I was boxing with that clip for a while, trying almost everything for each line to see which fit best. Not even sure I got the best iteration, but I ended up having to call it 'done.' I consider it one of my weaker clips personally, but the concept was fun enough to me that I took the risk. Plus his name is Barry the Chopper, and he looks like Vince Offer from his mug shot, so I couldn't help it.

As long as people are amused by it at least, that's all I wanted. That InspZenigata liked it that much is honestly a surprise Then again I couldn't believe last year's reaction to "Oh my god, we didn't learn any songs!" so I'm not the best judge I guess.

[Honou_Miko]

Heh, although objectively I'm curious about the black faces ^^ You may run the risk of making it a racial joke, and I don't sense that's your intention

Ohh, that's how they were in flashbacks! They were blank and only had mouths, if they spoke... I added the eyes and mouths my way for humor's sake, and so that they weren't totally dead visuals. XD

And yeah, the reason I had the picture frame at that point was because of the lack of footage of Tamaki's mother actually TALKING... (basically, there is absolutely none of it - also why I had to add mouth movements to the black faces). Wonder if I can weasel my way around that through doing something else interesting. I'll work on it!

[Gaelstrom]

Oh yeah, now I remember that... had completely forgotten about the flashback faces. It's been so long since I've seen it, but my memory sucks, so it's not a big deal. What I thought was that for those who haven't seen the show, with the eyes at least, it could come off as a racial jab, like white people were the first example, black people are the second. Dunno if that's a potential issue or not but... whatever, who cares, let 'em be offended if they wanna be.

As for the mother, I know it's going a bit above and beyond, but if there's any shots of her at all, I'm sure there's a matching shot of Haruhi talking somewhere where you can hijack the mouth ^^ But then it'd get into skin tone adjustment and... well something akin to the crap I had to do with the Last Exile Pedobear clip which thank god was a short clip... I totally have to find a way to make him look less creepy in that final shot. He's MEANT to be stunned at the scream, but for every millisecond I see that image, my mind is totally unable to decide if he's creepy or stunned... or both... maybe if I closed his mouth it'd help I mean... he is pedobear, so creepy is appropriate, but... I love Alvis so I don't wanna scare her like that ^^

[moonbunnychan]

Oh yeah, now I remember that... had completely forgotten about the flashback faces. It's been so long since I've seen it, but my memory sucks, so it's not a big deal. What I thought was that for those who haven't seen the show, with the eyes at least, it could come off as a racial jab, like white people were the first example, black people are the second. ^

That was MY exact first reaction when I saw it, and it took my brain a couple of seconds to catch up and realize that no, it wasn't a blackface racial joke.

[Gaelstrom]

That was MY exact first reaction when I saw it, and it took my brain a couple of seconds to catch up and realize that no, it wasn't a blackface racial joke.

...if that's true, it may be worthwhile to consider the possibility of removing the eyes. If it's simply shaded faces like the anime, then that could alleviate it, since it's directly from the source and has a preset context. But if you caught it that quickly too, it might adversely affect the audience. I don't know. It seems to come up because the source audio is comparing families, and white faced family vs. black faced family is what the audience seems to be unintentionally guided toward. There's quite a few black people in the audience at Otakon too, so as sad as the prospect is that it would occur that way, it might be smart of us to take that seriously.

Also, moonbunnychan, have you looked through any footage for stills for the geico Money to go on? We spoke of it earlier, but I wasn't sure if you wanted me to look through Haruhi footage like I offered or if you wanted to handle it yourself since they're your clips. I'm reaching a point where I'm going to finish off all the various 3D logos I'm working on soon, so I can hop in to help whenever.

And Deuce, if you agree that one or two more clips would be appropriate to solidify the running gag, I'd be happy to help out with that too.

One thing I neglected to bring up earlier unfortunately: Since I hadn't looked at it in a few days, I glanced at the beginning of AMVS4 again with fresh eyes to see how I could work with the timing of the clips with the logo and I remembered. The first Slap Chop clip doesn't seem to work very strongly. There doesn't appear to be a major effort to match the lip-sync and the motions to the timing, and there doesn't appear to be any real references to the source audio. I'm not sure whose it is, but I would honestly suggest since we have some time left until the final is due that that clip get more work in lip-syncing and even finding some new relevant footage to match the upbeat timing of Vince's dialogue, and maybe match the context of the slap chop more. I'll admit my biggest worry is we have two slap chop clips, and I know one of them is mine so it feels strange saying this. Whichever one goes first will harm the other one I think no matter what we do considering it's not a joke that lends itself to a running gag (unless we used the same character). As objective as I can be with this, my honest opinion is if it's not at least reworked to be much stronger, it probably should be cut.

[moonbunnychan]

Also, moonbunnychan, have you looked through any footage for stills for the geico Money to go on? We spoke of it earlier, but I wasn't sure if you wanted me to look through Haruhi footage like I offered or if you wanted to handle it yourself since they're your clips. I'm reaching a point where I'm going to finish off all the various 3D logos I'm working on soon, so I can hop in to help whenever.

And Deuce, if you agree that one or two more clips would be appropriate to solidify the running gag, I'd be happy to help out with that too.
.

I was actually working on that tonight. I also made made another, in which our beloved money comes to a fiery end via Charmander in particle illusion.
So I've got the demise covered, but if he's cool with it, I'd love to see what stuff you could come up with.