Vid: Mickey (Hana Kimi)
Title: Mickey
Artist: Toni Basil
Vidder: bunniqula
Fandom: Hanazakari no Kimitachi e (Hana Kimi, live action)
Pairings: Nakatsu/Mizuki, Sano/Nakatsu
Link: [20.3megs, 624x352 DivX] or [58.9megs, 704x396 XviD] or [YouTube]
Summary: Sometimes, the boy doesn't get the girl dressed as a boy; sometimes, he gets the boy dressed as a girl.
Notes: The version shown at VividCon's Premieres vidshow is somewhat different from the online file. I was *exhausted* and rushing to meet the submission deadline to test audio format. This file has several changes from the one shown at VVC, for better or worse. Since I was tired but also had familiarity with the clips, my awareness of each clip's length was odd as I tried to estimate appropriate time to both read the subtitles and see the scenes. Thanks to the SARS team for the translation, which this vid includes their encoded hardsubs for certain scenes. I do welcome vid critique over the internet. I *definitely* would welcome a beta for any additional revisions. A special thank you to talitha78, who figuratively 'held my hand' during Premieres and also didn't say 'want some cheese' with that whine, afterwards. {g} Even with my disappointment over not resolving the audio, so far, I'm having a wonderful time at Vividcon! I've got awesome roommates and folk have been really nice.
Also, part of why I ran out of time to meet VVC's deadline was from watching Toni Basil's Mickey video, and I got curious about the outline effect seen in the video's intro and end. Hana Kimi's choice of colors and lighting felt 'retro' to me, and I wanted to tap into that 80s vibe. Over the years, I rarely use Adobe After Effects for video editing, but I did experiment and found a similar outline effect... which I ended up not using this effect at all. I may or may use the effect for another project, but for those that may want to tinker with the effect, I've got the instructions under the LJ cut. I was using After Effects 7, but the CS versions should also be able to do the same thing. It's possible AE, under the new CS5, may be able to do this better, I don't know.
It's probably best to experiment around and adjust Levels/contrast in each clip to smooth out texture. Some clips manage to look acceptable without vid prep, while others look like the characters have some sort of flesh-eating virus. Less action in video is preferred. This effect can be combined with others such as mattes, etc.
1. Start a new composition and drop in the video or Premiere project file. The linked video shows dropping files in the preview panel, but I prefer dropping them in the timeline panel, especially because I'm familiar with editing in Adobe Premiere (still using version 6.5).
2. Duplicate the video track (Edit then Duplicate).
3. Set the new layer's Blending Mode to Darken. Apply a Gaussian Blur, set to 10,00 at least.
4. Duplicate the darkened and blurred layer and set Blending Mode to Difference.
5. Edit then Select All, and then Layer then Pre-compose.
6. On the precompose track, Effect then Channel then Invert.
7. Duplicate the track and set Blending Mode to Multiply.
8. Keep on duplicating the track until the clip is how you want it.
9. Edit then Select All, and then Layer then Pre-compose again.
10. Add to Render Queue and change Output Module to '256 greys'.
11. The exported file should somewhat resemble a B&W sketch/outline video.
12. Start a new composition and drop in the original video file (#1 track) and then the B&W outline video (#2 track).
13. Change Blending Mode to Color and adjust opacity, depending on how much color is wanted in the lines.
14. If reversing the order of video tracks, Blending Mode of Luminosity can also be used for 'water color' effect, but I think this looks more like 'muddy' colors. The first image, at the beginning, used this effect to give you an idea on color.