Disclaimer: These interviews are not associated with A-M-V.org or its administration. The Lip Flapper knows the anime. Do you know the anime?
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Description
Welcome to the Lip Flapper! Each week, we delve deep into the community and get a look into both individual members as well as group discussions on various issues that surround our hobby.
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This Week in "The Lip Flapper"
The Lip Flapper turns pink this week with Ileia!
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Interview Spotlight
Ileia is a long time member of a-m-v.org, a well respected and admired AMV editor, and just a generally nice person around the forums. She is two time champion of Project Editor, and acquired many VCAs/JCAs in her time. Some of her more recent notable works include RAH HEY, Zomboleo: Odorikuruu Strikes Back, How Fast and How Far, and Synthetic Heroine.
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The Interview
Q: Thanks for joining me today! How about you introduce yourself to the audience and tell us a little bit about yourself?
Well, I've been making videos for nearly 8 years, I've made a hundred or so AMVs in almost every possible category. I was born in Athens, Greece, but I live in Chicago, IL and quite literally all of my friends here are AMV editors that I met through the org, including my past and present roommates and my now-fiancé, Copycat_Revolver. I don't work at the moment, but I spend my days making AMVs, playing video games (Pangya!), harassing our new kitten, reading Star Wars books, baking cupcakes, watching Netflix, and just generally being a fan of all things pink.
My username is my real name and it's pronounced like EYE-LEE-UH. Don't forget or I'll get mad! (jk, I'm used to it, but I will correct you.
) My dad gave me my name, it's a mash-up between Lt Ilia from Star Trek and Princess Leia from Star Wars. It's pronounced like the former but spelled like the latter. Q: Thanks again for joining me Ileia. Let's start off with the typical question and ask about how you got involved into editing AMVs?
When I was in high school, I went over to a friend's house and she showed me some Final Fantasy videos set to Disturbed songs. I played around with her videos, I'd mute the audio and play other songs, try to see which ones I could get to work or not (I still love to play audio swap.
). When I moved in with some somewhat tech-savvy friends, I scavenged their computer supplies to build my own, just so that I could make AMVs. I started out on downloaded Inuyasha episodes and Windows Movie Maker and I made three videos just in the first day. Then I was like "What did she call these? AMVs?" I searched, found the Org and I've been here ever since.Q: Care to walk us through a typical editing process? Such as how you get started, what you do during the editing process and then wrapping it up?
Well, it starts with an idea, one that I usually get doing some mundane thing like showering or riding in the car. I get my footage into Vdub and subclip (basically, I process the footage in shorter 2-5 minute long clips. It's easier to keep track of what is where). Meanwhile, I listen to the song on repeat. Any given song I've made a video with I've easily heard hundreds of times. When I heard other people talk about storyboarding, I realized that this was essentially what I was doing, I was just organizing it in my head to the music while looking at the scenes. So by the time I'm done subclipping, I pretty much know what is going to go where and I just lay it all down on the timeline. I usually make a preliminary rough draft, which is all the same scenes, just not precisely timed or transitioned, then I go through again and add or fix what feels right. Then I get all antsy and need to upload and share it right away.
Q: What's your favorite and least favorite thing about the hobby of editing AMVs?
My favorite? When the audio and video match up so well that you think it was meant to be that way, like it was animated specifically for that song or that song was written just for that anime. If a creator is able to skillfully pull this off, I just can't stop watching!
Least favorite? Nothing really significant, though, one minor thing that occasionally gets my goat is when someone gets hated on for "making the same exact video all the time" like, for instance, Nostromo. Yeah? Maybe he LIKES making those sort of videos! (One would assume, since, y'know, he made them). No one has to like it (or even watch it), they're certainly welcome to comment that "Hey, I don't like this.", it's the "You shouldn't do this, do something else now." that gets me. Same goes for making multiple videos to the same anime.
Q: It's been mentioned a few times that you sometimes edit with anime that you've personally never seen/watched. Does this make it easier or harder for the editing process, and would you recommend this to others?
I wouldn't say it's easier or harder, actually, since the way that I find scenes is the same for both anime I've seen and ones that I haven't (refer to the question about my process). I only started doing it because I had to wade through a lot of anime that I soon discovered I didn't want to watch and it became kind of a time-suck, which then made everything less fun and more of a chore. I still wanted to make the AMV, though, so I figured out that I could skip that step if I didn't want to do it. Whether or not you want to do this is up to each individual person and what they want to get out of making their AMV. Do whatever feels right.
Q: You've made some pretty well acclaimed videos and had several successful VCA/JCA victories. Where does (in general) the inspiration for your videos come from?
Most of the time I'm just editing some random idea. I never set out thinking "HaHA! This will be video of the year and I'm gonna get editor of the year!" (You remember, Code, RAH HEY! was only made with Project NeoEditor in mind :p )
Sometimes I set goals for myself that help speed along the inspiration process, though. One year I decided I wanted to make at least one AMV to every category listed on the org within the span of that year. It was actually something that godix had suggested and it was a good idea that helped with branching out and learning to do different things. My goal this year is to try to send to more conventions, but if I do, to only send something if I made a video specifically for that convention. (I'm 4 for 4 so far! \o/ ) And they all have deadlines, so that definitely helps motivate me.
Q: You're a member of CDVV, which seems to be a successful studio in publishing popular videos (Lip Bomb, Blame it on 2009, etc). More than that though, you all seem to be very close friends and work well together. Care to give us a little history about CDVV, and what it's like editing with your group?
Not only am I a member, I'm the president!
Haha, well, it started out with just me. Corndog was the name of the file server I shared with my old roommates and I doubled the "vid" part just because I thought it was cute. I sort of gradually met other likeminded people on the Org and when I asked them to join at first they thought it was a joke. But eventually I bullied them into it, I mean...uh..they joined of their own free will. And since then, we've added to the pile. The only stipulation of joining CDVV is that you must prove that you think like we do. More specifically, you must say the same exact thing as I do and at the same exact time. We have, what, 15 members? And they've all done this. It usually came up in IRC or a skype chat, the others and I would catch it and be like "Aha! Now you're in CDVV!" Anyway, we're more of a group of friends who happen to all edit AMVs than we are a studio. We regularly hang out IRL (like I mentioned, Copycat_Revolver and I are engaged, Kitsuner is our roommate and Radical_Yue, Fall_Child42 and Otohiko were vacationing with us not too long ago), we skype, we play video games, watch movies together, that sort of thing. We don't really edit *together* per se (aside from a few collabs here and there) but we do encourage each other to edit, beta-test videos, and talk about things that are going on in the community.
Q: One thing that you do very well is audio manipulation. If your videos (Cyrus Virus, Synthetic Heroine and Zomboleo) are any indication, audio cuts or volume level adjustments sound incredibly natural and well timed. Where'd you learn how to do this, and what makes you enjoy using it?
Actually, I didn't edit anything in Zomboleo, that was the same edit from Odorikuruu. >_>
Anyway, I learned to do it from trial and error. Originally, I thought that you had to edit to the entire song, even if you didn't like it, which was really confining. Eventually I learned I'd make it easier on myself by editing out parts that didn't suit my needs. One of the earliest examples was for a video I made seven years ago called Date Rape. The song lyric's physical description of the character didn't match what character I'd chosen, so I edited it out......then the instrumental was longer than I had the patience to edit (my typical AMV back then was edited in roughly 3-5 hours), so I hacked that up, too. Now it's pretty much a given that I'll edit a song down. Videos like The Cyrus Virus are really just me fiddling with making the audio/video synch up in a more natural manner.
Q: Besides your Quickening videos, can viewers expect anything new from you soon?
New? C'mon, I've already released three videos this year. Isn't that enough? >_>
Haha, but seriously, I have one video that I could release now, I've just been too lazy, five that are currently in the works, and another five that are waiting for me to finish the others so that I'll have the harddrive space. Until then, the Quickening videos will have to suffice. :p
Q: As someone that has a lot of AMV editing experience, what would you recommend to newer editors in getting started on the right foot? Or perhaps what an editor could do to improve themselves?
Watch other people's videos. Watch a LOT of other people's videos and give them feedback. You'd be surprised at how much you'll learn from it. About once a year (or more, time permitting) I do a free opinion thread, which leads me to watch and critique about 25-50 AMVs. Sometimes I'm too close to my own videos to see what I've been doing wrong, (even if someone has already commented and told me as much) but seeing it in someone else's video gives me an "Ohhhhh" moment that no one else's feedback possibly could have.
Q: You've been a member of the A-M-V.org community for a pretty long time. What do you think of the community as a whole, and how could it be improved upon?
We're actually doing pretty well lately, the only thing I'd say is just for Org members to not be afraid to branch out to other AMV websites. I'm not saying go dive head first into those other communities, but it certainly doesn't hurt to pop your head in and see what they're up to, y'know?
Q: Well thanks again for speaking with me this week Ileia. As we end off the interview, how about you tell us 3 AMVs that every user of A-M-V.org should watch? (They don't have to be your own AMVs)
Well, if someone is looking for required viewing, I'd recommend going through the all-time 10% list or past VCA winners, but for now I'll just leave you with some classic favorites of mine. There's a lot of newer members who were never exposed to them and they're just a good watch.
Thank you for interviewing me, I hope I'm at least somewhat interesting.
inb4 someone says "Good read".
