"Iron Editor 2005 - Mission: Impossible"

This is our video that was made during Anime Weekend Atlanta XI (2005)'s "Iron Editor" contest. The theme for this year's competition was "exploration," so we picked the "Mission: Impossible" remix. Our competitor was Hsien Lee (Kusoyaro Productions), who has been the Iron Editor champion for many, many years. Somehow, we managed to dethrone him, which was quite a shock, considering how awesome his video was!

This video is pretty simple (didn't really have much choice, having to make the video in two hours, and all) with elements of action and a little light-heartedness. Having the "secret ingredient" helped spice things up a bit, and we thought it was fun to work with. Despite how short and simple the video is, we're both actually very proud of it. There is one massive mistake in the video, though. We accidentally used a shot from "Blue Sub No. 6" twice. Ooops!

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"Reflections of Styles 2"

This is the continuation of the Reflections of Style project that I headed last year. The project started off very small and was a huge success so i decided to try it again, this time with more editors, and more songs. The basis of the project is to showcase the specific editors involved and their unique editing styles.

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"Ready"

I distinctly remember getting the idea for this video in July 2005. During this time period, Mike (VegettoEX) and I were in the middle of working on our Kare Kano video ("Fake”) for the AWA 11 Pro contest. While this was going on, I had begun watching Kaleido Star via Netflix, and was instantly hooked on the show. I knew I had to find a way to make an AMV to this series… I just had to find a song I liked. Another reason I wanted to make a video using this series was because most of my videos use old source footage that looks like total ASS (DBZ, Kare Kano, Utena, etc.). For the first time ever, I had a chance to really sit down and edit with a nice, new, and gorgeously animated anime.

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"Fake"

This video was actually my original idea for AWA Pro X (2004), but for some reason or another, we just didn't go through with it. Instead, we decided to work on Meri's idea for Pro that year (Sex, Lies, & Roses). This idea remained in the back of my head for the entire year, though. I definitely wanted to get around to it, but just didn't.

We were undecided on an idea for AWA Pro XI (2005) until very late into the year. We had a few ideas kicking around, but either didn't have the right source footage, didn't have the right audio, or both. Taking a look back on the video ideas, this one stuck out, so we went with it! Since the idea was comparatively old, I don't quite remember how it came to me. It was either in a car or on the way to class (back when I had not yet graduated). The lyrics in Dashboard songs tell such fantastic and relatively literal stories, that coming up with two anime characters to fit the male/female characters in the song was almost no work at all.

Hopefully, the story in this video is extremely straight-forward and obvious. As mentioned, the song does a great job of being extremely clear with its presentation of two characters and their own internal faults and insecurities. In essence, that somewhat makes us extremely lazy... the video nearly edited itself! Arima and Miyazawa were just such perfect fits, especially considering the gender-opposites the song speaks of.

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"I Walk Alone"

Driving back from Denino's (the super-mega-awesome pizza place on Staten Island) sometime in the Fall or Winter of 2004, we were listening to Green Day's American Idiot album, when the idea hit Meri -- grand scale shounen angst. The song in and of itself is pretty basic and straightforward -- it simply oozes angst. Wanting to slap some dramatic scenes of our favorite shounen heroes on top of this song was pretty much a given. The two of us love Green Day, love their new album, and also love the song. When Meri pitched the idea to Mike, it was more or less an easy sell.

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"Resilience"

The video itself is a character profile video focusing on the series protagonist, Tsukushi Makino. At her super-elite school, she gets bullied by all the rich kids simply because she’s poor. The video shows her having to deal with these trials, and then overcoming obstacles so she can finally learn to be happy just being herself! Like I said, it’s a simple video (and yet another entry in the line of “female empowerment” videos that I seemed to have accumulated under my belt the last few years).

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"Love is Another Word for Regret"

I think I’ve been heavily into Hana Yori Dango for well over a year, now. Since then, I’ve been itching to make a video to this shoujo angst-fest series. I had several songs that I thought about using. One day, I randomly had the radio on (a pretty rare occurrence these days) and heard “The Reason,” by Hoobastank. Despite knowing damn well how over-played the song is, and how over-used it’s been in AMVs during 2004, I couldn’t help but immediately associate the song with Hana Yori Dango’s male protagonist, Tsukasa Domyoji. One CD purchase and one session of DVD-ripping later, I was well on my way to editing this video.

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