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Information

• Members (7): Kusoyaro, Akimbo, Brad, Nessephanie, Nightowl, gambitt, moooooo
• Studio: Jamming Kryptonite
• Title: Novem
• Premiered: 2006-09-22
• Categories:
  • Drama
  • Other
  • Fun
  • Serious
  • Sentimental
• Songs:
  • Novem Bridges to the Sun
  • Novem Calling My Name
  • Novem Coyote
  • Novem Eyes of a Child
  • Novem GTO
  • Novem Love, Love
  • Novem Peace of Mind
  • Novem So Long Love, Goodbye Friend
  • Novem Too Bad
  • Novem Wake Up the Moon
• Anime:
  • BECK, Mongolian Chop Squad
  • Black Heaven
  • Flame of Recca
  • GetBackers
  • Gravitation
• Comments: Novem: an AMV film written and directed by
  Nathan Bezner (Nightowl) and Hsien Lee (Kusoyaro)
  
  Cast:
  Brad Backofen (AtomX) as Marty DeGarmo
  Brian Palacios (Akimbo) as Terry Weiland
  Liz Struck (Nessephanie) as Siouxsie Flekman
  Mike Marino (moooooo) as Nigel Neil
  Samantha Gellar as Jann Boyd
  Michael Bramley as Chester Bangs
  
  Graphic Design:
  Jeff Heller (gambitt)
  
  It all began at the 2006 Maryland Film Festival, where we (Nate and Hsien) saw a film called 'Novem', a fictional documentary about the rediscovery of a collection of songs recorded by a group of friends in the 70's who died in a van crash mere days after completing the songs. We were blown away by both the film and the songs, and we immediately began brainstorming ways to work it all into some sort of AMV form as an homage. BECK was the perfect anime for the job.
  
  The original title of 'Novem' (meaning "nine" in Latin) came from the fact that there were 9 friends in the film. We couldn't really do that using BECK, but we managed to keep the title anyway...how the title still fits is kind of a spoiler, so I won't give it away here.
  
  We gradually developed our own storyline, which departed from that of both the film and the anime. We kept the love story and most of the characters from BECK, and the documentary format of the film, but almost everything else was changed. At first, we were going to have interviews with the band members and have them talk about their experiences in the band, but we eventually decided it would be more interesting to create our own characters and have them tell the story from the outside looking in. Thus, we picked characters from various other music-related animes and gave them new names and personalities (can you spot all the music references?). Haruko from FLCL was originally going to be a character, but there was absolutely no footage of her just sitting still and talking, so we replaced her with Fuko from Flame of Recca, even though that's not a music-related anime.
  
  Novem is fully voice-acted, and most of the cast is comprised of various friends from the AMV community. Our voice actors recorded their lines using whatever PC mic setups they had, so you'll notice some difference in the audio quality between characters. We did our best. The dialogue in the video ended being a combination of both scripted and improvised lines. If we get around to making a DVD version, we've got plenty of unused material for a fun bloopers/outtakes reel.
  
  Novem was edited on both a Mac and a PC simultaneously...at times, the two of us were on opposite sides of the world, with a 13-hour time difference, and at times, the two of us were sitting about 15 feet apart. A lot of blood, sweat, booze and cigarettes went into this video. It was easily the best editing experience either of us have ever had (so far!).
  
  Anyway, enjoy! It's Barranti!
  
  
  Special thanks to AtomX for providing us with shiny R2 DVD Beck footage (which we then filtered all to hell :D). Thanks to Netflix for all the other footage!
  
  Thanks to trythil for the sexy h.264encode! (available via Direct download)
  Note: To view the h.264 version of this video, you may need to download and install CCCP. The h.264 is a smaller filesize with better video quality, but the Local copy is an XviD, for greater overall compatibility.
  
  For information on the original film 'Novem', and for information on how to purchase the soundtrack, the website is www.novemsongs.com (we are in no way affiliated with them).