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| Here’s a YouTube friendly version of the video: View at YouTube |
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Oh man, I spent a good two days making this AMV so do enjoy the video. Though it was two days, time flew by so quickly. Here’s a little quick summary of how I got all of this together.

The Song: “The Sweet Escape” by Gwen Stefani featuring Akon

I was listening to the radio on my way to work, as I do everyday, and this song started playing. I thought it was just some Xmas song at first, but after listening a little longer, I recognized Gwen Stefani’s voice. Radio stations rarely announce song credits these days, so all I knew was that it was a song from Gwen and I knew she had a new album out. The lyrics in the song for some reason reminded me of the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya because she mentions escaping and recreating her own world. The lyrics continue describing a personality that resembled Haruhi so much such as having affection for the narrator of the anime and so on. Just trust me on this one. So this was the first thing that pushed me towards making a music video.

The Software: Adobe Premiere

Maybe a month before I heard the song, I came across this program. I didn’t quite have a use for it yet, but I knew its potential. I already told myself that this program is what I will use for a future music video. I was going to use it for Advent Children, but this sudden inspiration for making the Haruhi music video outweighed it.

Preparation: Gathering the media

Clips:
Before I jumped into this giant mess, I had to understand what I was getting myself into. For one thing, I knew Premiere was not going to accept AVI files. I thought about converting all 14 episodes into MPEGs. I quickly threw out that idea because it would be too much useless content to sift through down the road. Instead, I went with going through each episode and cutting out scenes that I wanted to use. After cutting out some 80 clips, I had what I wanted. Anything else that I wanted I could come back to cut.

Music:
There was nothing I needed to do here. Had my mp3 and I was set.

Storyboard:
Like the novice that I am, I just kept the storyboard all in my head since I was the director and producer. I kind of drew out what I wanted in my mind with what I envisioned as I listened to the song. And I went from there.

Editing: Where all the magic is

It was basically my first time using the software, but I must say, it was ridiculously easy to use. I thought I was going to run into a lot of trouble, but it turned out to be as simple as drag and drop. The hard part was trying to figure out what scenes fit into which section of the song. I went through so many revisions. I’m sure I was cutting my clips left and right every 10 seconds. Throughout the whole process, I kept fearing that I might not have enough clips. Then there were times where I feared I had too many clips and not enough room for the really important ones. Miraculously, there were plenty of clips to go around. Unfortunately, I had to leave out a few.

I started everything on a Saturday afternoon and worked late into the night to complete a rough draft. The next day, (which is today that I’m blogging this) was mostly spent reviewing what I did and making minor edits. The biggest time killer was exporting the video. It would literally take up to more than half an hour for four minutes of viewing. I had no choice but to do other stuff while the exporting was happening. And I had to export more than six times because there were some super small blemishes that ultimately ruined the video if I left it in.

The Final Step: Getting it on the Web

As crazy as it would sound, just getting it online was as frustrating as the exporting. I ran into so many setbacks. The exported video came out to be slightly over 100MB in size (..for a 4 minute clip..). YouTube, only accepts 100 MB or LESS! So I first tried exporting at a lower quality. Nothing happened. So I tried exporting at an even lower quality. Still nothing. Then I thought maybe if I converted it into some other format it would help. And it did. 100 MB turned into 30 MB and that was good enough for me. So I went over to YouTube and submitted the file. Worked out just fine. About 30 minutes later, YouTube goes into maintenance mode and I can’t tell if my video actually uploaded. At this very moment as I’m posting, it’s still under maintenance. Good thing I still have my website to host a “better quality” version of the video.

Final Thoughts: Why make it?

There’s always a method to the madness. I made it because this was a new song that just came out. People are going to be looking around online for the song; especially YouTube. I figured I could use it to promote my website along the way. I like making media that people like. I try not to fail in that department. I gave it my all on this amateur video. Sadly enough, I didn’t have the raws for the anime clips, so the subtitles are getting in the way. Hopefully, I can be forgiven for this due to the lack of time to prepare for all of this.