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i choose the sky
2010-09-28 11:35:30
In the fall of 2005, I started work on SH105, a project done out of eight discs of very bad Tokyopop print that would go on to take about six months to finish, wracked with technical problems, and come up slightly short of expectations. Now here I am five years later, starting on another eight-disc cut of a bad print, hoping that history is not going to repeat itself.
There are, of course, important differences; the song on the current project is less than half as long as the one for SH105, and the concept isn't going to require anywhere near that level of story-focus. The visual constraints are a little less tight as well, which is a good thing: if the previous print was "very bad", this one cannot be accurately described as less than "goatfucking awful". The transitions between animation cuts are horrendous, showing significant damage to the original film, and nearly every frame is fully interlaced -- all in all, this is the worst print I've worked with since I had to revive the PAL abortion of Pokemon for SH104. Fortunately, this isn't slowing down the clipping process a whole lot, because I have a magic formula against doing cleanup in this case: (deep breath) THIS IS A PUNK ROCK VIDEO THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS PUNK ROCK IN HIGH FIDELITY STOP JUDGING ME I BET YOU LISTEN TO NEW FOUND GLORY. If you wave your hands hard enough, you stop noticing the blended frames.
There is no progress indicator in this post because I don't know how far the hell along I am. I've ripped 1 of 8 DVDs, and processed 1 of 10 candidate VOBs on that disc. However, this doesn't actually mean anything; I know I don't have enough appropriate source yet, but in the interest of general sanity, I want to be sure that I do stop once I've gathered enough good source to do the video out of, and I don't know how deep into what disc I'm going to be when that happens. All I can do is keep crunching source, and the video will be done when it's done.
--Kai out
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there is a serenity
2010-09-27 00:04:04
After the planned INSO17 kind of fell to pieces Friday, I was at the point of declaring Shin Hatsubai over and done with, dead after nine years, four months, three days in the business......
....
....and then I ended up watching Bungaku Shoujo tonight, and accordingly have to take it all back.
It is still probably most accurate to refer to Shin Hatsubai in the past tense: this is not an alive studio and the four videos on the slate are probably going to come out as somehow posthumously published; I was comfortable with SH115 (Causality) as a capstone before, and at the time I made it, and I am still. However, the tiresome cliche at the heart of the transformation happens to still be true: that as much as I'm not an active AMVer any more, this is not something that needs to be put away, or even really can be put away. One way or another, this is a legit creative outlet, and if the well is dry now, it may not be dry in the future. I've thought more than once that I downed tools permanently as a musician, but now my guitars are lying around the living room out of their cases, and a stew of assembled and disassembled pedals sits in front of the amplifier.
Despite all the remaining projects being big projects, this is no reason not to work on them. Blasting out two novels in the space of a month in 2006 was a big project, but I sat down and wrote every day, and it got done. Despite a new Coelem full-length being a big project, and cross-oceanic collaboration being a big ask in and of itself, I'm still sitting on my floor dialing a sound in and writing stuff to eventually go on that record or some kind of Path of the Dead (working name, at least on my end) release. There's no reason that AMV is any different.
If SH116 happens, it will likely not be before the end of the year. Projecting anything further out is a fool's exercise. Due to popular demand, the demos will be going on local in the meantime, and I will finish publishing the SH catalog to non-local hosts. If Path of the Dead turns out to be a real band, or I finish the Coelem record, or even just reissue _Vexilla..._ for real, it will be noted here. Same goes if I ever finish writing the new content for the _Disassociated Pieces_ volume and somehow publish that.
To answer my own question from a demo video now pushing 10 years old, no, I am not in the same place I was when I started. However, that in no way makes this not a valid point of departure. The only way to determine something like that is to get moving, and look back on the results.
--Kai out
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waiting for the storm
2010-09-13 10:55:30
INSO17:
- Source rip: complete
- Music: complete
- Precleaning: complete
- Storyboard/planning: partial
- Clipping: complete
- Edit: 0:03/4:04
- Postproc: none
- Export: none
I finally got off my duff and set up the video in the editor this weekend. The new monitor makes a hell of a difference in conceptual plotting; I get 50% more timeline on the screen at a time, so I don't need to page back and forth as much.
More importantly, though, I was seriously debating doing a full render-out of the entire source video to Lags; I have more than enough diskspace, and in the planning process there were a LOT of sections where a 10+ cut extent was just lining up perfectly. I didn't do it, though; I'm not doing this video to repeat someone else's directorial work, and in the process of reassembling those extents, I may be able to get better cuts in where they need to go. Also, doing the planning after the cut, I was aware watching these things fit together that a lot of it was because the original video was just cutting on the quarter-second. When you do that, a lot of things seem to line up.
Video probably out by the end of the month; plans are for a SH video after that by the end of October and another INSO video by the end of November, but I need to kludge together something that supports hangul characters for that one....and some appropriate fonts, probably. We'll see how that goes.
--Kai out
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they will not take this place
2010-09-05 19:31:44
INSO17:
- Source rip: complete
- Music: complete
- Precleaning: complete
- Storyboard/planning: none
- Clipping: complete
- Edit: none
- Postproc: none
- Export: none
Cut's done, and now I've to do some planning and see how this one's going to go together. I have on the order of 300 shots to work with, and plenty of room for repetition, but the real test of this is going to be in the actual edit.
The next project, though, is already decided; I need to get back on track with a traditionally-cut source, not least because I cut this one the same way I cut Summer Wars for SH115, and there's not a lot of future for that method looking at the stuff in the pipe that's going to be coming from a larger source volume. It's nice to have every cut available, but it's not worth it on a large source pool, and I need to retrain myself to cut in the camera and just be sure not to take any of the garbage parts.
--Kai out
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you can always crawl
2010-08-31 11:07:44
INSO17:
- Source rip: complete
- Music: complete
- Precleaning: complete
- Storyboard/planning: none
- Clipping: none
- Edit: none
- Postproc: none
- Export: none
The sources are in and set up, though various commitments mean I probably won't get cutting until the weekend, which is the actual long weekend, not the fake long weekend that I thought was last weekend because I spend too much time on KDS and was inadvertently created by illness. It's going to be doable, but this is not the same thing as easy; the first minute is going to be verging on the fucking impossible, but I can see a way through that, and if I make it through that first minute without killing either myself or my source pool, the rest of the video should follow naturally.
The only problem is that I'm doing a 3:56 song with an 8:43 source pool, and some of that is going to be categorically discarded. As always I'm less than comfortable with less than 100% overage, but I think I can muddle my way through here. The first minute is going to be really important for this; if I can get through that without using up the iconic images and without making the video suck, the next three minutes are much less difficult.
The still-untranscribed tour report, following up on two show writeups that I need to finish, is going to take precedence, but I should be able to get back to pushing the catalog to mediafire sometime in the next couple weeks. I also may be getting the demos onto local in response to actual popular demand; I'm still uncertain about that, but it might be happening. Might not, but it's looking more likely that it'll happen than it won't.
--Kai out
JOURNAL: Kai Stromler (Kai Stromler)
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