Busters 3

Video Information

Information

Member: E-Ko
Studio: Manic Expressions
Title: Busters 3
Premiered: 2003-04-04
Category:
- Fun
Song:
- School of Fish Three Strange Days
Anime:
Comments: This video was created specifically for the opening ceremonies of a convention. Since the video was made for a specific time, purpose, and event, it does not stand up well on its own - it will likely confuse folks who watch the video outside its original context. For example, the song repeatedly refers to “Three strange days.” At the outset of a convention, this reference makes sense.

A few setbacks were encountered during the creation of the video. I started it two months before the convention. About a week before the convention, the hard drive containing all of my video footage died. Luckily, I had already sent a mostly finished version of the video to representatives of the convention. With an acceptable copy of the video at hand, my hard drive woes did not impact the convention. I was also fortunate in the sense that the still images (Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop) and project files (Adobe Premier, After Effects) were stored on a separate, healthy hard drive. This made re-ripping and replacing the video footage straightforward (though it was still a bit tedious, especially when I realized I was still working on a video for a convention that had ended over a month ago). As I replaced the footage, I made a few minor changes and improvements. The gist and structure of the video were left unchanged.

Originally, the video contained titles specificly designed for the convention. In an effort to protect the convention from liabilities, direct references to the convention were removed before the video was distributed. For example, the name of the convention was replaced with the words "B-U-S-T-E-R-S 3" . Though the name of the convention does not appear in the video, some less-than-subtle, indirect references remain. With minimal research, one can easily find out where the video premiered.

The same petal shape was used for a majority of the transitions and graphics.

The photographs featured in the video include:
The Space Needle
The Pikes Place Market
The Seattle Mariners celebrating
The endzone of the Seatle Seahawks Stadium
A ferry boat on Puget Soundat sunset
The Hammering Man sculpture outside the Seattle Art Museum

Soon after the video begins, some seemingly random footage (Jubei-chan, Hand Maid May, X, Bubble Gum Crisis Tokyo 2040, Revolutionary Girl Utena, Amazing Nurse Nanaka, and Fruits Basket, to be precise) is shown as the characters "B" "U" "S" "T" "E" "R" "S" pop onto the screen. Though the choice of footage seems haphazard, it isn't. These scenes and characters were intentionally selected because they paid homage to the guests of honor at the convention. That is, the scenes WOULD have paid homage to the guests. Due to the war in Iraq, several of the Japanese guests could not attend the convention. I didn't learn this until after a copy of the video had been sent to convention representatives.

"Busters 3" is a pretty cheesy name. Why is it called "Busters 3"? Two reasons. First, the video was made under circumstances similar to those of surrounding "Busters." That is, it was made specifically for a con. The second reason? "Busters 3" contains 8 characters. This corresponds with an 8 beat drumroll which arises early-on. Other titles I considered included "Whatever" (though it would tie in well with the out-of-context, "What the heck is this?" reactions to the video, I thought "Whatever" would be too toungue-in-cheek) and "Together" (which is an altogether awful title).

All of the video footage used in this video was ripped from legit region 1 and region 2 DVD's. No bootlegs or digisubs were used. The following method was used to obtain video fotage:

1. Rip DVD’s, create d2v files, and create avs files as described in the guides at
www.amv.org.

2. Sift through the avs files and render desired scenes as Huffyuv avi files (I
used virtualDub to do this - in hindsight, it probably would’ve been easier to
use Premier). Why Huffyuv avi rather than avs files? Two reasons:

Reason 1: Conserve hard drive space. In all cases, I only needed a few seconds from a
particular anime, not the whole series nor an entire episode. For a whole-big-bunch-‘o’-
different-anime video such as this, 10-second Huffyuv avi files are more practical and take
up less space than 30-minute avs files.

Reason 2: Software compatibility. After Effects likes avi files. It doesn’t like avs files, at
least not yet. I like to work on videos in Premier and then import the Premier project into
After Effects. Using avi files allow me to do this.

The song was edited. A few verses were removed to shorten the song and make its meaning more ambiguous. The edits were all linear, so nothing mind-blowing. The uncut song lasts longer and makes more sense.

Why was Taxi Driver footage included? Mostly to make people wonder. A lot can be read into it.

How were so many squeezed in? Where are they? The answer lies in the 27 X 27 mosaic at the end. The mosaic is made up of 729 separate scenes. Though you may not see "Shin Getter Robo", it's there.

As the video premiered during the opening ceremonies of the convention, I realized that I had made some misjudgments. When watching a video such as this, fans like to see and cheer for their favorite characters and shows. Though I made an effort to include a lot of different characters and shows in the video, I failed to provide ample time for the crowd to respond. By the time people recognized what they were watching, the video jumped to a new scene. Live and learn, I guess.

This was the first XviD encode I've ever performed. Hopefully it turned out O.K. It played on my computer with no issues. When we tried to play it on a friends computer, we had problems. If someone else has a problem with it, let me know via e-mail at ekobet@juno.com.

Opinions (35)

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9.52

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Link Format Bitrate Codec Duration Filesize Link Check Information Comments

Local AVI 3566/32 DIVX/MP3 3:08 82.9 MiB

Local File	Busters 3.avi
Duration	188.12 seconds
Video Track	3566.264 kb/s DIVX [DIVX]
	480 x 352 @ 24 fps
Audio Track	MP3 @ 32 kbps
	48 kHz, stereophonic sound

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