[vid] A Dish Best Served Cold (...and live... and wriggling)

[absolutedestiny.livejournal.com]

After tears of hot magma, this video is finally complete. A complete and utter departure from all my live action videos prior to this, this is a fast-paced action video.

Footage: OldBoy (2003, Korea, dir. Chan-wook Park)
Music: "The Gentle Art of Making Enemies" by Faith No More
Length: 3:02

Big version:
Size: 41.2mb
Codec(s): xvid (divx-5 compatible encode), mp3
Download here: AbsoluteDestiny-TheGentleArtOfMakingEnemies.avi

Little version:
Size: 16mb
Codec(s): RealVideo 9, 128kbps aac audio
Download here: AbsoluteDestiny-TheGentleArtOfMakingEnemies.rmvb

The Movie
Again, this is a movie that I'd be surprised if anyone here had seen yet... but it's a movie that MUST be seen, for several reasons. First of all, the movie won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes this year. While a rarity for a movie as violent as this one, I'm guessing Tarantino's presence on the Jury assisted this award. The second reason is that it's being remade by hollywood and I cannot for the life of me imagine how this incredibly shot, phenominally acted adrenaline charge of a movie could be bettered. I'm imagining a vast amount of watering down, so see the movie before they remake it. It gets a very limited US cinema release in February but personally I'd go and buy the Korean DVD (which has english subs), de-regionify a DVD player and enjoy.

OldBoy is a gritty tale of revenge that is in equal parts action-packed, dramatic, comic and poignant. Directed by Chan-wook Park (of Sympathy for Mr Vengence fame) this movie, in contrast to 'Sympathy..', is superbly upbeat and handles all the different aspects with ease. This video focuses mostly on the gritty action elements of the movie.

Oh-Desu is a man who is held captive in a makeshift prison for 15 years. He does not know who his captors are, nor why they have chosen to imprison him. In his hotel-room-prison he has only a TV for company and on it discovers that his wife has been murdered and he is framed for the murder. After 15 years he is finally free and is determined to seek out those responsible and reap bloody revenge.

The Video
This video, until the difficult ending, was much easier for me to edit than the last two. With a greater focus on internal motion and a wonderful variety of excellent footage to use, editing was a treat (for the most part). The surprising nuances of live action are still, in my mind, slightly out of my reach but I think I'm beginning to learn about what works and what doesn't. You can still see in this video that I'm used to a very strict and harsh rigidity in cuts and scene interpretations which is typical of an anime vidder. Thankfully, however, this video offered me the kind of editing experience I've never had before which is exactly why I wanted to get into live action vidding in the first place.

There were far fewer large revisions in this video, in many cases I had a pretty clear idea of how it should look and I think the video is tighter (in places) because of this. Unfortunately, mostly because I wanted to avoid really big spoilers, I ran out of footage after the final verse which meant I had to trim the audio down because there was no way I was going to be able to fill more of the timeline than I already had. For this reason the ending seems abrupt (well it does to me) but there wasn't really anything more I could put in the video without ruining things in other ways.

The Lyrics

The words are so familiar -
All the same greats, the same mistakes
It doesn’t have to be like this.

If you don’t make a friend, now
One might make you -
So learn
The gentle art of making enemies

Don’t look so surprised
Happy birthday...fucker
Blow that candle out,
We’re gonna kick you

(don’t say you’re not because you are)
(don’t say you’re not because you are)
(history tells us that you are)
(history tells us that you are)

All you need is just one more excuse
You put up one hell of a fight
I wanna hear your very best excuse
Never felt this much alive

Your day has finally come -
So wear the hat and do the dance
And let the suit keep wearing you.

This year you’ll sit and take it
And you will like it -
It’s the gentle art of making enemies

I deserve a reward
Cuz I’m the best fuck that you ever had
And if I tighten up my hole -
You may never see the light again

(there’s always an easy way out)
(there’s always an easy way out)
(you need something wet in your mouth)
(you need something wet in your mouth)

Never felt this much alive

Movie Trivia
- The words in korean on the painting during the lyric 'the words are so familiar' read "Smile and the world smiles with you. Weep and you weep alone."
- The actor for Oh-desu had to train as a fighter for months (losing 20 pounds in the process) and did all of his own stunts.
- The squid being eaten is a real live squid. 4 ended up being used in order to film that particularly grotesque scene.
- The corridor fight scene is actually a continual shot lasting for minutes. It took four days to shoot and months to practice.

Technical Details
The Region 3 DVD for OldBoy is a fantastic print, as I'm sure you will all agree with the encode I've made here. It required very little processing other than cropping, resizing, color matrix compensation and so on. LimitedSharpen() in avisynth was used on the footage to really bring out the detailed textures in this film and while nearing 'too sharp' I think it looks pretty nice. The video was edited in Adobe Premiere 6 on win2k. The audio was ripped from the CD of "King For a Day, Fool For a Lifetime" using Exact Audio Copy and the audio in the net distro was encoded with Lame using BeSweet - 192kbps alt preset cbr profile. The video was encoded using xvid 1.0.2, two-pass, ending up with an overall average p-frame quantiser of 2.14.

Thanks:

A big thank you to permetaform and lierdumoa for all the help beta testing the video. The advice was invaluable - thanks for taking the time to help me out, you guys rock.

Comments

[absolutedestiny.livejournal.com]

I was trying to think up some idea for Attack the Gas Station but haven't come up with any yet. My Sassy Girl might be fun to do, too.

[raislak.livejournal.com]

I'm downloading the Vid and will be watching/posting later, but at least wanted to say I have seen the movie about 9 months ago.

I'll never be the same again. Both positive and negative.

Raoul

[sixteenbynine.livejournal.com]

STUPENDOUS PROPS FOR OLDBOY WIN.

[ex-akemi42.livejournal.com]

This was wonderful. I love this film and the vid was brilliant.

I have also done one Olboy vid (http://www.akemi42.com/cake/vids/view/29).

[lindaross.livejournal.com]

Thank you for sharing