Broken Star Studios

Broken Star is my AMV Studio. What is a AMV? AMV stands for anime music video. I'm sure you can find better explanation elsewhere but thats the bare bones of it. I'm fairly new to the AMV areana, I got my equipment late this summer and am currently in progress of my 5th official video. But actually I made my first AMV in the spring of last year. That video however did not bear the Broken Star Studios name and will never be seen online or anywhere else, though I may to a revised version one day. So thats pretty much it. I'm told I'm a prodegy but I'm not sure weather I believe it. And now I'm looking for servers with enough space to host my videos. So for now a list of videos will have to surfice, until i can find approriate space to host them.

*Updated System Stats*
To make my videos I currently use Pinnacle Systems AV/DV 7 capture card with firewire. My program was Pinnacle Studio Version 7 but I have just switched to Adobe Premiere 6.0. I have a Dell Computer with a Pentium 4 processor. It has 2.0gHz, 120 GB of space and 256MB of RAM. My new computer runs Windows XP, Home Edition.

Bent
Footage: Rurouni Kenshin
Song: Bent by Matchbox 20
Completed: July 24, 2002
This video was my first official video and pretty good too. This video was slated to go to Animazement 2003 for competition but got knocked out recently by my newest video. This is still a pretty good first attempt I think and I got across most of the things I wanted to get across in this video. Its a character anlysis of Seta Soujiro and how on the surface, much like this song, hes upbeat. But inside, like the lyrics to this song, hes really quite troubled. This might be considered and containing spoilers for Kyoto Arc but I don't really think so. This video took 8 total hours to complete.

Kryptonite
Footage: Rurouni Kenshin
Song: Kryptonite by Three Doors Down
Completed: July 30, 2002
This was my second video and probably my worst official video thus far. It just lacks that something that the other three have. But techinically its good and the idea is sound. It just lacks the "Shine" the other three have thatt makes them really great. But I do like this video none the less. This is my only romance video to date and features the best couple in RK (in my humble opinion), Kenshin and Kaoru. I thik it brings out the three-dimensionality of their relationship, how she loves him for what he is. And how he is uncertain about their relationship, and his dual-personality with the Battousai. This video was done on a complete whim, and was completed in only 5 hours. The lack of time may have been one of the reasons its not as good.

Hajime
Footage: Rurouni Kenshin
Song: Smooth Criminal by Alien Antfarm
Completed: August 30, 2002
This video was another video I did on a complete whim. I thought it would be really fun to do a video to this song using Saitou. The song really doesn't relate to him at all except for the words "You've been hit by...You've been struck by...A smooth criminal". A mostly chose the song for its beat. This was meant to be a serious video but when I had accidental lip-syncing and decided to stick with it, this video became a quite humerous. It still is a quasi character anlysis. I really liked how this one turned out, you can see in this one where I finally figured out the workings of my program and began to edit frame for frame. This turned out well both techinically and artisticly. It was overall a really fun experince. It took about 7 hours to complete.

1999
Footage: X the movie
Song: 10th Man Down by Nightwish
Completed: September 4, 2002
This video is truely the best I've done thus far. Its concept and exicution are the best and the most well thought out of all my videos. In this video I discovered that transparencies are just glorified fades but my program still severly limits that particular outlet. Four videos and I am already outgrowing my software. In this video I was aiming to showcase the brutality of war and the darkness of X' s story. X, in my opinion, is one of CLAMP's all-time best series. It has characters with real depth and a intriguing and deep storyline. And I believe I portrayed that very well in this video. I could talk about this video forever and this is my videop for Otakon 2003. I WANT this video to go head to head with the very best studios out there. It is a benchmark in my career and it has a lot of depth and meaning throughout the entire thing. This video was very well planned out and it was my first experiment in non-linear editing. The impressive part is this was done on a whim and was never meant for competition. There were actually two versions of the video, and the one I am releasing is 2.0. When I went through the "Various levels on Pinnicle pissyness" I had to reinstall a lot in the beggining. One thime ths file got corrupted, after I'd gotten through the second chorus. And I had to start over from memory. A lot of the origanal sequencing remains intact but there were changes because of faulty memory and I believe they, for the most part, for the better. This video took 14 hours to complete and the captured footage took up and grand total of 5 gigabytes on my hard drive.

Master of the Clow
Footage: Cardcaptor Sakura
Song: Future Girl by Smile.dk
Completed: November 17, 2002
This video was a lot of fun to edit, and very easy. Helped by the fact that almost evry second in the song there is a beat I could use this video went very smoothly as I edited it, and I didn't have to agonize over any one part. Its a cute high energy video and I made the best of my editing software. I finished this right before my exams and there was a ring of satisfaction to the completion. Using Yue and Final Judgement at the end of this video worked out beautifully, and there was some truely gorgeous footage at my disposal. I have always loved this series and it was a great joy working with it to this song, which I also love. I hope to use more Smile.dk songs in the future for other CSS music video. I believe that this video is about as technically strong as '1999' and from an artistic viewpoit is '1999's' polar opposite. This video also suffered from Pinnacle's pissyness. But I managed to recreate this one much better than the last. I really enjoyed the cuteness yet strength this series carries and how perfectly it relates to the song I used. I avoided all use of Meilin because, though I love her character, she is not in the manga and I was trying to present the story of CCS(first and second season) through a manga point of view. Though I didn't get to use all the scenes I wanted t due to shortness of the song I believe this video turned out well and I hope it will be an enjoyable experince for anyone who watches it.

On Love
Footage: Angel Sanctuary OVAs
Song: Hallelujah by Rufus Wainwright
Completed: December 31, 2002
This video is the first video in a new generation of AMV's for me. It i the first video I have ever used to Adobe Premiere 6.0 to edit. I beieve this an excellent and nessicary change for me as an editor. I stretched the bonds of what I could do artisitcly with Studio 7 to the limit with '1999' and 'Master of the Clow'. Although at first I felt like I might be over my head with Premiere I have now adjusted, although there are many things I must still learn. I think this is an excellent video for my first try with Premiere. I took the good advice of William Mulberry(Aluminum Studios) and did not use transparencies just because I could. I made an effort to use them only where they would be artisticly useful. I adore this series for its beauty and complexity of story. This story, while compressed in anime formatt, still strongly holds to the manga's message; People love who they love, regardless of race, gender, age, and blood relation. I have always believed above all things in love, and while they might not be my choices, I will never condem someone for loving where society says they shouldn't. This video is about soething I passionately believe in and I think represents this belief. Angel Sanctuary is prime example of love beyond societies bonds. The story of Setsuna and Sara, blood siblings, is to beautiful to be condemmed. How they gained strangth through their love while Setsuna's world was falling apart around him is incredible. Even with the supernatural crushing his already broken world, Setsuna holds onto the one thing in his life thats real and true, his love for Sara. And to love someone as much as he loves her, is a beautiful thing, regardless of everything society tells us. My personal qoute at the end of the video says it all I think. 'It's all about love anyway...'.

Black Rose (In Three Acts)
Footage: Revolutionary Girl Utena: Adolesence Revolution
Song: Paint It Black by Vanessa Carlton
Completed: Feburary 12, 2003
Another lovely art video. What can I say? Lovely lovely. I do a lot of art videos don't I? This movie is SO very artistic and incredibly beautiful. ITs also incredibly confusing the first time you watch it. You just sit there in the aftermath listening the music on the credits going "what the hell just happened?" and even after seeing it multiple times the symbolism doesn't quite sink in. In this movie, Utena enters Othori with a closed heart but still and innocent mind. She doesn't yet understand the differenc between the world of fantasy she lives in and the real world outside. As Utena begins to understand the deuls and the rose bride she learns to reopen her heart and begins to grow up. At the begining of this movie its Anthy whos more the adult one, but by the end its Utena who has grown up. She truely understands and is the one to take Anthy away from the closed world she's been living in. Even as this happens it presents a bleak outlook on the adult world. As does this song, bleak dark and unforgiving. It represents Utena's closed heart. Although the lyrics don't nessicarily say this I always felt hat the song was lightening up and opening up toward the end. It ends on a note that seems to say 'yes even though I still feel dark and downtrodden its not so bad when you're here with me'. And since Utena and Anthy's romance is very obvious in this movie thats what I wanted to get through. Technically this video is very good. Sound and fun, the slow artistic shots are used during the flowing parts of the song and fight scenes are use for the upbeat chorus. The one transparency scene worth mentioned is when Vanessa Carlton is humming the tune. The main layer keep the video moving as Anthy takes the Utena car to escape Othori. But the other layer looks back on parts of the movie that have mostly been ignored so far, such as the dance scene. This presents the story the same way the movie does, always moving but occasionally going back and explaining things.

I don't know what I'll work on next. I do have couple other videos that I completed that aren't listed here that'll be posting as I can. But right now I just wanna do something fun and inspirational to get my creative juices going again.