Look After You - A HiruMamo MMV
Why hel-lo tl;dr! Here's a more detailed writing about the thought process into making "Look After You". It's pretty long so do bear with me on this! I really needed to put these thoughts down in writing!
It's been YEARS since I made any form of music videos, be it for animes or even mangas, so I have no idea what prompted me to make this.
In all honesty, using the song "Look After You" by The Fray was something I thought of initially before coming up with " Collide". So yeah, this was also a YEARS old idea which I dropped for a number of reasons. One, while I could figure out a number of scenes for it, there were a lot of blank moments and I didn't know which scenes would work, especially towards the end. Two, and this is something you'll notice in this video, the beat's kind of erratic, and I don't know whether to follow the beat of the singer's words or the beat of the drums or piano in the background. And lastly, the song's really cheesy. XD While it does fit HiruMamo somewhat, I found it overly dramatic for what I hoped to be something simple.
All in all, I dropped the idea... only to pick it up recently after going through my old notes where I wrote my idea down for this. My laptop had crashed then and suddenly the idea of using a sappy song for HiruMamo became appealing. I began to plan, write down more scenes, and the drive to see this come true got stronger.
Of course, there were the usual obstacles. Let me put it this way, Windows Live Movie Maker for Windows 7 SUCKS. I am NOT kidding. Everything about it sucks. I tried to download the Vista version of Movie Maker and even that gave me issues as the music tended to skip whenever I clicked around the timeline. I actually had to depend on a slideshow creator software to get this to come together and even THAT had its limitations.
It was pretty frustrating that I would've probably given up seeing as I had other projects to do. But I recently lost my drive to write stories anymore. It's a little more than writer's block and it does have something to do with what I'm going through in real life right now, but whatever it is... I would have a blank word document screen before me and nothing would come out. And it was devastating cause I was desperate for a project, something to do to keep my mind off of things.
In the end, this MMV was it.
It definitely wasn't easy. While the great part was I finally got to read Eyeshield 21 again (I STILL love this manga after all these years!), trying to find scenes to match the beat with this song was tricky... there was a lot of digging to do, and often I'll find myself stumped with what scenes to use (and even how to use them) cause sometimes the scene I had in mind isn't quite there, doesn't match the beat or I'm forced to move it someplace else.
But let me tell you something, there's actually a LOT of HiruMamo moments if you look carefully. I, for one, am amazed by the amount of times I found a panel of Mamori and Hiruma wasn't too far away from it, especially during the game. And I used this quite a bit in this MMV cause it just suited somehow.
Which now leads me to the overall theme of this MMV. Of course, while I wanted this to be balanced somehow, in the end this is mostly from Mamori's POV cause it worked a lot better that way. And while I thought this might turn out overly dramatic, the scenes I chose to use in the end showed a lot more strength and trust between Mamori and Hiruma than anything related to love. What I ended up doing was showing Mamori's journey the moment she joined the American Football Club and how she had not only grown (especially with relation to Sena) but began to be even more protective of Hiruma, following him until the very end.
Admittedly, the MMV is a bit messy. Sometimes the timing's not quite right with the scenes, and my scene selections can feel random. And oh my god, the titles I used looks so awful and I apologise for that! But I decided to stick to it until the end. While not my best work, it's a product of my struggles which I am rather fond of. Besides, it's good to be making music videos again. ^^
A big thank you to all the scanlators of Eyeshield 21! I probably missed out some in the credits, but I do want to let you know that I am very grateful for the amazing work you all did for bringing this amazing manga into our lives. Your hard work is most appreciated.
And also, a major, MAJOR thank you to all the people who supported me, be it those in the amazing HiruMamo fandom whose support has kept me writing for the past two years now. And even my best friends in real life, who never gave up on me even on the days where I gave up on myself.
Until my next contribution for HiruMamo!
Click to viewIt's been YEARS since I made any form of music videos, be it for animes or even mangas, so I have no idea what prompted me to make this.
In all honesty, using the song "Look After You" by The Fray was something I thought of initially before coming up with " Collide". So yeah, this was also a YEARS old idea which I dropped for a number of reasons. One, while I could figure out a number of scenes for it, there were a lot of blank moments and I didn't know which scenes would work, especially towards the end. Two, and this is something you'll notice in this video, the beat's kind of erratic, and I don't know whether to follow the beat of the singer's words or the beat of the drums or piano in the background. And lastly, the song's really cheesy. XD While it does fit HiruMamo somewhat, I found it overly dramatic for what I hoped to be something simple.
All in all, I dropped the idea... only to pick it up recently after going through my old notes where I wrote my idea down for this. My laptop had crashed then and suddenly the idea of using a sappy song for HiruMamo became appealing. I began to plan, write down more scenes, and the drive to see this come true got stronger.
Of course, there were the usual obstacles. Let me put it this way, Windows Live Movie Maker for Windows 7 SUCKS. I am NOT kidding. Everything about it sucks. I tried to download the Vista version of Movie Maker and even that gave me issues as the music tended to skip whenever I clicked around the timeline. I actually had to depend on a slideshow creator software to get this to come together and even THAT had its limitations.
It was pretty frustrating that I would've probably given up seeing as I had other projects to do. But I recently lost my drive to write stories anymore. It's a little more than writer's block and it does have something to do with what I'm going through in real life right now, but whatever it is... I would have a blank word document screen before me and nothing would come out. And it was devastating cause I was desperate for a project, something to do to keep my mind off of things.
In the end, this MMV was it.
It definitely wasn't easy. While the great part was I finally got to read Eyeshield 21 again (I STILL love this manga after all these years!), trying to find scenes to match the beat with this song was tricky... there was a lot of digging to do, and often I'll find myself stumped with what scenes to use (and even how to use them) cause sometimes the scene I had in mind isn't quite there, doesn't match the beat or I'm forced to move it someplace else.
But let me tell you something, there's actually a LOT of HiruMamo moments if you look carefully. I, for one, am amazed by the amount of times I found a panel of Mamori and Hiruma wasn't too far away from it, especially during the game. And I used this quite a bit in this MMV cause it just suited somehow.
Which now leads me to the overall theme of this MMV. Of course, while I wanted this to be balanced somehow, in the end this is mostly from Mamori's POV cause it worked a lot better that way. And while I thought this might turn out overly dramatic, the scenes I chose to use in the end showed a lot more strength and trust between Mamori and Hiruma than anything related to love. What I ended up doing was showing Mamori's journey the moment she joined the American Football Club and how she had not only grown (especially with relation to Sena) but began to be even more protective of Hiruma, following him until the very end.
Admittedly, the MMV is a bit messy. Sometimes the timing's not quite right with the scenes, and my scene selections can feel random. And oh my god, the titles I used looks so awful and I apologise for that! But I decided to stick to it until the end. While not my best work, it's a product of my struggles which I am rather fond of. Besides, it's good to be making music videos again. ^^
A big thank you to all the scanlators of Eyeshield 21! I probably missed out some in the credits, but I do want to let you know that I am very grateful for the amazing work you all did for bringing this amazing manga into our lives. Your hard work is most appreciated.
And also, a major, MAJOR thank you to all the people who supported me, be it those in the amazing HiruMamo fandom whose support has kept me writing for the past two years now. And even my best friends in real life, who never gave up on me even on the days where I gave up on myself.
Until my next contribution for HiruMamo!