Vidding attempt #3 - Sentimental

[absolutedestiny.livejournal.com]

As promised, here is the video I've been working on.

Video Title: Realise
Footage: Dead or Alive 2
Song: "Do You Realize??" by The Flaming Lips

High Quality: AbsoluteDestiny-Realise.avi , 39mb divx5-compatible
Low Quality: AbsoluteDestiny-Realise.rmvb , 15mb RealVideo 10

This video is about cherishing childhood, re-embracing long-lost friendship and finding joy.

The Movie
The movie is Dead or Alive 2 by the immensely talented Takashi Miike which, for those who havent seen it (most people here), is one of the most charming movies about youth and friendship there is. The basic story is that two yakuza hitmen are paid to do the same job, one gets there first and the other recognises him and follows him as he goes on the run. These two men were childhood friends and havent seen each other since they were young and when they meet each other again they return to the island they grew up on and discover what it's like to be young again.

There's all sorts of symbolism that people who haven't seen the film may not get - but that's ok, a lot of it isn't fully understood by people who HAVE seen the film either. It's got the typical qualities of an arthouse film so there are a lot of long static shots. Most of the character expositions in the movie are quite minimalist.

Lyrics
Do you realize that you have the most beautiful face?
Do you realize we're floating in space?
Do you realize that happiness makes you cry?
Do you realize that everyone you know someday will die?

And instead of saying all of your goodbyes
Let them know you realize that life goes fast
It's hard to make the good things last
You realize the sun doesn't go down
It's just an illusion caused by the world spinning round
Do you realize?

Do you realize that everyone you know someday will die?
And instead of saying all of your goodbyes
Let them know you realize that life goes fast
It's hard to make the good things last
You realize the sun doesn't go down
It's just an illusion caused by the world spinning round

Do you realize that you have the most beautiful face?
Do you realize?

Editing Notes
I've tweaked it about as much as I know how - there are some weak parts but I can't really find anything better for those parts, so I'm calling this video "done". The movie is only 97mins long and there's a lot of other things in it that just wouldn't be appropriate for this video - anyone who has seen it will agree that this movie has some pretty diverse subject matter. The video focuses on the heart of the movie. The opening and closing phrases are taken directly from the western movie print.

This video was quite challenging for me but I'm certain it's an improvement over my last. You may notice that I've named the video "Realise"... I just couldn't bring myself to use the American 'ize', even though it's spelled that way in the song title. Sorry :)

Technical Notes
The source footage was obtained from the Region 1 release of the movie. The print isn't the best reproduction ever (the DVD was single layer for starters) and has noticable dot crawl in a few scenes. The film stock isn't massively high quality either so everything has a slightly yellowish tint which is common of this kind of film stock... not that you would have really noticed had I not pointed that out of course :P The DVD was ripped to vobs and edited in Premiere 6.0 via DGMpegDec and Avisynth 2.5.6a scripts. The final avisynth script used for producing the internet distribution was as follows (although the crop and resize was done in post production and there was some 24fps/23.976fps shuffling):

mpeg2source("L:\realise\da2.d2v",ipp=true,cpu=4)
telecide(1)
decimate()
converttoyuy2()
pixiedust(2)
converttoyv12()
limitedsharpen()
colormatrix()
dctfilter(1,1,1,1,1,1,.5,0)
crop(8,0,-8,-0)
lanczosresize(640,352)

The video was encoded with XviD 1.0.2 at constant quantisers 2/4 I,P/B. The audio was encoded as Lame MP3 via BeSweet - alt preset 224kbps cbr. These were muxed together with VirtualDubMod 1.5.4.1

I hope people enjoy this. Feedback is very welcome as I'm still very much a beginner with this whole vidding thing :)

Comments

[smutcutter.livejournal.com]

I've not seen the movie - but the vid was beautiful... the images you put across worked perfectly - the one thing (well, my theory anyway) is that you can present a vid from something that no one has seen and if its done well, the point still comes across - you totally achieved that - this was really wonderful - thanks so much for posting it :)

[absolutedestiny.livejournal.com]

Thank you! Glad you liked it :)

[absolutedestiny.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[dualbunny.livejournal.com]

Very pretty visuals. Everything moved along effortlessly. Haven't seen the movie, but I thought this vid was lovely.

[brokenbacktango.livejournal.com]

Very nice vid. I was a bit perplexed at certain points, but it only made me want to go out and find the movie for myself. Thanks for sharing this! It's very good.

^^

[(Anonymous)]

Good stuff. Really enjoyed that. :)

[nzlaura.livejournal.com]

Hey, this was really beautiful - I liked that the editing was quite subtle, so it all flowed quite naturally. I really want to see the movie now.