Naming the Studio - Harder Than it Sounds

New post time. Going back to the AMV obsession, I spent a little more time on the "background" aspects - namely production and studio names. ^_^
Ok, so this little relapse is thanks to Peter. He came to visit Celia and informed me that he discovered an AMAZING song off of the game Left 4 Dead 2. The song is called Re: Your Brains. EPICNESS! ^_^ Well, I instantly fell in love with this quirky song about the head of the zombies trying to negotiate with his former co-worker who has the surviving humans locked safely inside the local mall. I think my favorite lines are "We're not unreasonable, I mean, no one's gonna eat your eyes" and "and I plan on eating you slowly." Anyway, where I'm going with this is that I noticed that the singer/songwriter for Re: Your Brains is Jonathan Coulton, who is a very funny songwriter, but is most well known for a little song called Still Alive. Yup, that little ditty used as the end credits to the gaming phenomenon known as Portal. The story of Still Alive - for those who somehow don't know - is that you just completed the game and the game's antagonist GLaDOS sings about her achievement in you. The song contains some spoilers about how to actually win the game, but it's sort of easy to figure out how to kill GLaDOS anyway, so go ahead an take a listen if you haven't yet. ^_^ In fact, go ahead and check out the end credits... which includes the song lyrics on the left side.
OK, so now that you're caught up with the song Still Alive, I started thinking about the character GLaDOS and how she's sort of a female version of HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey. I also used to have major malfunctions with the computer I had in college, and so I "lovingly" called it HAL in reference to said Space Odyssey character. Well, for the most part, my new computer has been "behaving"... but it's starting to act funky lately, so I have been teasing that perhaps I should call my new desktop GLaDOS. OK, I know this seems like rambling again, but I want you to follow my train of thought here...
OK, so to quickly recap, Peter took me to Re: Your Brains, which led me back to Still Alive thanx to the common songwriter, which led me to thinking about how I should call my new computer GLaDOS, due to the similarities between GLaDOS and HAL and how I called my old computer HAL. Everyone caught up now? Everyone understands? Ok, good, moving on. ^_^
I started thinking how funny it would be if Mina and I used "Still Alive" in our production bump somehow, but it made no sense for the name "In the Fridge Productions". Need a recap on that topic? OK, so then I thought, "OMG... all major movies have both a production team AND a studio, so why can't AMVs?" Mina and I thought of the concept for the AMV we want to submit - so we are collectively the production team of In the Fridge Productions. However, the AMV will be put together on my computer - the "studio". Therefore, I now have the excuse to use Still Alive as a bump - the "Studio" name! ^_^ So now I've decided that all AMVs made on my current computer will be "Still Alive Studio". I even know what I want the bump to be - but it will be tough to do with InkScape/Paint and Windows Movie Maker, so here's hoping I do go insane trying to animate it! >_< GLaDOS' "cores" slowly twists upward to reveal the "eye" and then either a zoom out to reveal the core is the dot above the "i" in Still, or the words "Still Alive Studio" will slide in from the left... We'll see. I'll post when I ever finish it.
The only other thing - and the reason this belongs in a blog about obsessions - is that now that I thought of two different "production" names - one for a production team and one for a studio production - I'm now thinking of different names all the time!
A little history lesson before continuing with this....Back about six years ago I was in a Basic Video Production class in order to teach us how to edit film we were given a project entitled Bright Wolf. It was a made-for-tv BBC werewolf movie that ended up so horrible that they decided to scrap the project even after the finished edit. In order to make back the money put into the film, BBC decided to sell Bright Wolf as an editing training video. It came with the first half of the movie edited together and the students were tasked to edit the second half. We were provided with all of the raw footage and the script. Seems simple, but each shot had multiple takes and multiple angles and it takes roughly one hour to edit one minute of film - we had to edit 10 minutes worth. Here's another Blogger's take on the subject. And so EVERY electronic media student who had taken this class held one line very close to our hearts: "Chaos. All is Chaos. I am lord of Chaos!" It is the last line of Bright Wolf and once that line was uttered it meant you were FINALLY done! We would routinely use that line throughout the rest of our college career as sort of a camaraderie statement. Don't believe the movie was that bad? Here's just one student's edit of the "glory" that is Bright Wolf - and this is one of the BETTER edits (as opposed to this one...)!
Anyway, history lesson over. My point in all of this is my thought of using "All is Chaos Productions" as another name instead of "In the Fridge Productions". I have "ILR Productions" as my own personal name, and so I wouldn't use "All is Chaos". However, it wouldn't feel right to use it with Mina since she didn't even go to the same college, and doesn't know the backstory to the phrase. I then thought that I could use it for when I do a collaborative AMV effort with Remy, since he lived through me going through the "chaos" and we do have pretty chaotic adventures. It seems fitting, but then I thought of yet another hallmark of my college years.
This history is slightly shorter. Remy's group of guy friends - four in total, that's important - wanted to come up with a name for their little group. This was during freshmen year, and so it was shortly after the movie Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back came out. In the movie, there is an organization called Coalition for Liberation of Itinerant Tree-Dwellers. Well, obviously the acronym was a hot topic of college boys, and Remy's group wanted a similar type acronym for the name of THEIR group. Well, one of Remy's friends was a huge Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy fan. The series was originally just a trilogy, but Douglas Adams ended up having more story to tell, so the series ended up being five books long. On the cover of the last book in the series is the statement "The fifth book in the increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhiker's Trilogy". And thusly, the group was named The Inaccurate Triad. Go ahead, figure out the acronym... got it? Ok, moving on. Well, Remy's group used The Inaccurate Triad as their college radio show name - which I then inherited sophomore year. And so, since I was assimilated into The Inaccurate Triad, I would think any collaborative effort with Remy would HAVE to use that title.
But then again, Remy already came up with a production name for the LARP he plays called Vampire: The Masquerade. His one character was a movie producer who owned - aptly named - Masquerade Productions - which would also work well if we ever did any vampire-themed AMVs...
OK, I think that was the end of my train of thought on the subject. And - as usual - looking up all of those helpful links in my posts distracted me and this post kept me about 7 hours to complete >_<

What the Fridge!?

Ok, so as mentioned in an earlier post (*cough* yesterday *cough*), Mina and I are trying to come up with a name for the collaborative production company we are creating for our AMV making. I had suggested that we use an inside joke, but alas, we don't really have too many that can be summed up in a short enough phrase to be a studio name. The closest I came was based on a quote of hers from about a year back. You can see our family's American Flag from my bedroom window, and once when Mina was visiting I happened to have my blinds drawn and she could only see the silhouette of the flag flapping in the wind. She called out, "Oh my god, it's a stalker! Oh wait, it's your flag." I found it hilarious. Anyway, I had suggested Stalker Flag or Flag Stalker as possible production names. Not the greatest, but better than others I came up with.
Well, I think we had a breakthrough today. A new girl started working today and our boss was showing her around. There wasn't really anything for Mina or I to really do, so we just wandered looking for busy work so our boss wouldn't yell at us. One of the things I decided to do busy-work-wise was to check to see if we needed back-ups of any of our food products. After a brief moment I turned around and rejoined Mina out front. She commented on how quickly I checked on the back-ups and I responded with "Yeah, the fridge door is slightly open. Sal must be showing her the fridge layout." Mina then laughed and replied "so that's what they're calling it these days." We laughed and quietly joked about being "in the fridge" for the next few minutes. Finally, I turned to Mina and said, "That should be our production name! In The Fridge Productions!" And she actually agreed with me! So there you have it. I think we officially named our AMV studio "In The Fridge Productions" ^_^
I went home and quickly googled "In The Fridge Productions" in an attempt to see if any other AMVers had taken the name yet. Strangely enough, I actually got 3 hits! On professional production companies no less! Granted, none of them were specifically "In The Fridge" productions, but still. Check them out! On the plus side, no one with "fridge" in their studio name showed up on AMV.Org... So I think we're still good on the name ^_^
Anyway, my next task after verifying the production name was to start working on the logo bump. I started with some simple refrigerator clip art, but then I remembered that a lot of AMV studios actually use anime clips as their bump. So I hopped on to YouTube and searched "Anime Fridge" and stumbled upon something awesome. Cowboy Bebop had an episode where they were invaded by something from their moldy fridge and there were a few AMVs about this episode put to "Weird Al" Yankovic's song "Livin in the Fridge". I had forgotten Weird Al did the song Livin in the Fridge. I was originally going to use a royalty-free song off of KillerTracks, but Weird Al typically has no problem with his fans using his songs for fan-vids, so perhaps I'll grab a copy of the song from Remy and use that for our production logo bump....
In the meantime, I'm waiting for Mina to navigate her way through the invasion of her sister and 2 friends coming home from college, get to her computer, and answer my questions about using cowboy bebop and/or Weird Al... Update posted soonish I'm sure. ^_^

AMVs = Fun+Craziness+epic time consumer!

OK, first AnimeNEXT-themed post (Already!? Yeah, I know... >_<) As do just about all anime conventions, AnimeNEXT has an AMV (anime music video) contest (as well as a non-competition screening). So naturally I MUST submit something to the contest! I’m still on the high of doing so well on my movie trailer (see below post) – even if only one person voted (Thanx Remy since I’m sure it was you! LOVES!) and one person commented. ANYWAY, the high off of that, plus still feeling pretty good about my Helsing AMV “Bloodsucker Alucard” that I edited in time for last year’s Halloween (I think…). I also felt like I did well for my two Game Destroyers (webcomic, see below post) promotional videos: the teaser, and the music video. I’m on an editing high right now and I think I could pull off a really kick ass winning video. But what to do!?
Well, Mina had previously expressed wanting to learn how to make an AMV (or something of the sort), plus she can actually get footage – as opposed to my method of downloading a crapload of AMVs off of AnimeMusicVideos.org, slicing the AMVs apart, and then re-assembling them as my own work… ANYWAY, Mina can get the footage, and the music, and she wanted to learn how to make an AMV, and she introduced me to AnimeNEXT in the first place, AND SOOOOO I decided to have her help. We’re gonna collaborate on an AMV to submit. If Remy or Celia want to join in on the efforts they can, but it’s mostly us two girls (me and Mina).
I’m super excited about this effort – maybe obsessively so *blush*
It’s a good thing we work together, because any chance I get I harass her about something new about this AMV that doesn’t even need to be STARTED until April… First, it was wondering on the musical choice. We decided on upbeat because it’s more fun that way, and it would appeal to the male viewership a lot easier. Next, Mina commented that she loved “Bloodsucker Alucard”, and that it was a shame I couldn’t submit it to the contest because of the watermark logos and opening credits I have in the video (stupid contest rules!). She said she loved that the video not only had a song that fit really well with the feel of the anime, but that it was a song she was unfamiliar with. She informed me that one of the main reasons she watches AMVs is to get introduced to new songs. Based off of that, and both of our love of the song I used in the end credits of “Bloodsucker Alucard”, we decided on staying with the vampire theme and use the song “Deception” by the Cruxshadows. We then talked about WHICH vampires to use and decided on D from Vampire Hunter D. It doesn’t hurt that Mina has both of the Vampire Hunter D movies.
OK, so we have a song and an anime to use, we’re on a great start. Now I needed to research my competition. I went back to AMV.org and downloaded all of the videos that claimed to have submitted to the 2009 AnimeNEXT AMV screenings. There were 27 hits, and only 5 I couldn’t download for one reason or another. Most weren’t uploaded as .wmvs, and so I had to convert them. Thank you NCH Prism Converter (see below post)! Problem being, that apparently what I had downloaded was a free trial, so now I had to decide on whether or not to buy the program. Eh, it was on sale (until the 15th – that’s today, folks) for like $30, and I already used it an insane amount of times, so *shrug* why not. Purchased! Wait! I get an additional 10% off if I purchased something else within the next 4 hours!? Well, might as well get the full version of the FlashLynx download program (see below post). That was only $14 with the added discount. Sweet. Purchased! Then I debated to do the hat trick and just purchase the Debut Video Capture software (see below post), but I decided to wait until I actually put my latest paycheck into the bank…
AAAAANYWAY (I segway a lot, don’t I?), I downloaded and converted all of those AMVs, and then went through AnimeNEXT’s list of competitors/winners. I have a winner and/or runner up for every category at least. That’s when I started getting nervous. Most of them were REALLY good. At least two of the emotional ones made me tear up. Thank god Mina and I decided to NOT do sentimental >_< $800 on a copy of Adobe Premiere, so I’m stuck editing with friggen Windows Movie Maker! Yeah, I can do some mean edits with that crappy program, so just imagine how good I'd be with a professional one, but still… It will be tough to be any sort of competition with friggen WMM! Worst part about the program is that you can only move 7 frames at a time! I can’t cut something down frame-by-frame, and that hurts a lot of stuff – especially dubbing. It’s also hard in WMM to re-edit the timing of the video (like I MAJORLY had to do for “Bloodsucker Alucard”). It’s definitely gonna be a hard-ass battle to get up to par with these videos! Strange thing though, the ones I thought were AMAZING didn’t even place in the competitions, and most of the winners I was like “eh” when I watched… so who knows how the audience is gonna feel that day. *shrug* Great, 8 months of stressing about this damn AMV! >_<>