How you got into AMVs:
Back to 2000 I was surfing the net for anything Dragon Ball Z related and came across a website called "The Super Saiyan Ghetto". Somehow or another I stumbled into their Music Video section and found Super Android 17 video set to the song "The Great American Sharpshooter" by Less Than Jake. I was INSTANTLY hooked and had to find more videos! So I scoured the net for Dragon Ball Z music videos and eventually stumbled onto three video editors and their respective websites that found there way to the top of my favorites list: Danny Poo of DBZWarriors.com, Neo Gohan of NeoGohan.net and Majin Mebs of Majin Planet. I became obsessed with these videos and spent countless hours trying to figure out how I could make these things. (The simple concept of e-mailing them to ask never once occurred to me.) There was even one ridiculously long (and embarrassing) experiment using Microsoft Power Point as a make shift editing rig. Finally I stumbled upon the sister site to Majin Meb's Majin Planet... Corrupted Avatars Saiyan Thunder. He had tutorials on how to use Adobe Premiere and the rest was history.
How you came up with your screen name:
In late 2000 I had created my first website, Vegeta's DBZ RPG. It was a roll playing game based in AOL chat rooms and the character I played was Future Trunks. The guy who played Brolly in the RPG would always refer to my character as "Prince Trunks," which got very annoying very quickly. Well at one point or another the story in the RPG developed that I had "turned to to the dark side", so to speak, and became a Majin. Thus Prince Majin Trunks was born. I didn't necessarily like the name, but it stuck.
How you discovered the Org:
I actually don't remember exactly how I discovered the Org. If I had to guess I would say it was the fault of Z? aka "Hot Ice Hilda" or HIH for short back on the old Majin Planet Forums (proboards.com days). He was sorta of the Anime Music Video snob on a form full of DBZ Music Video creators (I say this of course in a loving way should he stumble upon this post.) I could very easily picture him have pointing out videos from a-m-v.org as a way to prove one point or another.
Tell me about your studio, like how you joined/created it, etc... (If you're not in a studio, say why )
I'm currently not associated with a studio as I haven't made a Music Video since late 2008. My first two "studios" were really nothing more then the websites I was associated with, Trunks Hope and Majin Planet. While there is a back story, the reality is the back story focuses more on the individual websites than with the world of AMVs. So in turn I will tell you about the first "real" studio I was a part of... Cryptic Aura Studios. In either late 2005 or early 2006 (my memory is a little foggy), after I had shut down Majin Planet, myself and Breeman decided it would be a fun idea to create our own studio. I created the website, and we got our videos online.. but we weren't really a team. It was more just a new website featuring videos. Then along came DaCoolGohan and changed the hole dynamic. He was the backbone of the group, and the only one of us producing consistently. Eventually we added Turunkusu and The Fungus to the group to round it off. Cryptic Aura Studios is long since gone however.
Favorite genre to edit and why:
I'm going to go with short, action videos. A) They are more fun. B) I'm lazy and long action videos are too much work. Lol. Though, I feel I've had more success (if you can call anything I've made successful while keeping a straight face) with slower paced, more story driven videos.
Favorite newbie mistake you've made: (Give us a good cringe-worthy one!)
The way I completely ruined the encode of Majin Mebs' first non-DBZ music video. After a exhaustively long hiatus from anything related to making music videos, Majin Mebs was set to make his epic return to Majin Planet. A long with that, he produced his first non-DBZ AMV (or MVID if your from the Majin Planet side of the world) ever. The video was My Angel set to the series Cowboy Bebop to a song by Massive Attack. He sent me the uncompressed, perfect DVD qualify version of the video and asked me to encode it for him and get it online. However up to this point every video I had put online was using the classic Real Media format. I knew with this video it was time for a change, but I didn't know how. Long story short a great video ended up with the quality being ruined by somehow trying to encode it who didn't know how. I would since learn, but I still regret not handing the thing over to DcDeveloperX or Xnod and asking them to do it for me. I think if it were a higher quality, the video would of made a bigger impact. Regardless, that was Majin Mebs' last video.
First contest experience:
Majin Planet's first Fight Club. The same legendary Fight Club that saw "Set Aside The Pride" by Danny Poo just barley edge out "What You Got" by Neo Gohan in the finals of the competition. I didn't make it in the contest. Rightfully so, I absolutely sucked back then. Though, one could argue that I always sucked lol. Regardless I worked for months on that video, trying to make something that would be good enough to be featured on my favorite site. When the deadline came, I sent in my video. I would later find out that Corrupted Avatar (the man behind the Fight Club competition) never saw the video. When he went to download it, the bandwidth on the server I had it on had been exceeded... I never had a chance anyways. In retrospect it's probably a good thing he never saw that video.
Best experience you've had thus far with the community:
I've made some great friends in both the AMV community as well as the Anime Web Community at large over the years. The editing part is fun, as were the websites, but the people are what I remember from all of it.
Worst experience with the community:
Like anything in life, at some point it all becomes a popularity contest. That's all I'll say on the subject.
Why you edit: (If you don't edit anymore, explain yo'self!)
I stopped editing back in late 2008. Though, not on purpose. Life got in the way. I got a job, I finally got promoted to Shift Manager... then Assistant Manager... then Store Manager... now I'm an Assistant District Manger. I've been so focused on work that before I knew it more than five years have passed. When I did edit, I did it for different reasons at different times. Sometimes for fun, sometimes for the comradery with other editors, sometimes to challenge myself, sometimes to prove a point.
Future goals: (Editing, non-editing, whatevers)
To enjoy life.