AbsoluteDestiny
| Fan | |
|---|---|
| Name: | AbsoluteDestiny |
| Alias(es): | Ian Roberts, Absolute Destiny |
| Type: | fan vidder, convention organizer, anime vidder, vidder, VJ, vid critic |
| Fandoms: | anime & live action vidding |
| Communities: | |
| Other: | |
| URL: | http://www.absolutedestiny.org https://absolutedestiny.livejournal.com/ http://absolutedestiny.imeem.com/ http://old.absolutedestiny.org/ http://www.derivativeart.org (via Wayback) |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
AbsoluteDestiny is a notable anime and live action vidder. He is frequently called upon to give panels and talks as both a critical and technical expert, and is the VJ for Vividcon's Club Vivid as well as the inventor and moderator of vid karaoke at the con. In xxxx he joined the Vividcon concom.
AbsoluteDestiny was the focus of December, 2009's Vidder Profile on the Vid Commentary community; the documentary about him was directed by bradcpu and is available for download. In that documentary, he describes his early work as an amv artist as well as his discovery of live action vidding: "It was like coming over the hill and finding this big city that was just around the corner and you didn't know." He also made a visual dvd commentary for bradcpu and Laura Shapiro's vid Hard Sun for the Vid Commentary community in October, 2009.
AbsoluteDestiny contributes to Fanlore as User:AbsoluteDestiny.
Notable Works:
- A&E's Technical Guide to All Things Video, technical guide to using software to make amvs
- I Wish I Was a Lesbian, anime vid,
- There Is Too Much Light In This Bar, live action vid, Life on Mars (UK)
- Beethoven's Fifth Gold Digger, live action vid, Gone with the Wind
- Rodeohead, live action vid, Firefly
- Hard Sun, a meta/Firefly vid
- May I Suggest, Up
- Heart of Funkness
- Vidding (2008), a documentary
Anime Fandom
After a period of "damn, all Manga Video do is release really bad OVAs with sex and violence and few redeeming narrative features" Ian returned to anime fandom thanks to the works of Miyazaki Hayao and Anno Hideaki. In the late 90s, he became an active contributor[1] to the Usenet group uk.media.animation.anime and member of the UK anime scene. He produced fansubs with the group Zettai Unmei Anime for his local anime club Oxford Anime Vision (OAV) and for showing at UK anime conventions such as Minami.
Fan Video Making
The Anime Years
Technically he made his first Music Video in 1992. It was an Anime Music Video using a variety of Manga Video licensed shows to the song Stay Away by Nirvana. It was made with two home-grade VCRs and, as he puts it "thankfully no longer exists because it was rubbish."
His newfound interest in anime had led to Fan Subbing, which involved the use of a video capture card. To test this capture card, he made two music videos in 2001, AccelaNation and Monkey Wrench. At the time, he knew little of Anime Music Videos, being mostly introduced to the concept by seeing some at the local anime club. He was unaware of the large, growing and ever competitive community that already existed.
In the subsequent months, he became fascinated with the hobby - downloading as many videos as he could find in the dark days before easily available web space - and leaving feedback on videos at AnimeMusicVideos.org. After familiarising himself with the large body of work produced by the community he finally decided to return to the timeline and make some more videos of his own, with a newly gained perspective on what is possible in anime video editing. The release of Shameless Rock Video was a key turning point in his visibility as an editor as the video quickly went on to receive numerous awards in the community including Best of Show at Anime Weekend Atlanta 7 - his first US anime convention, which he attended to meet with others in the AMV community. Between 2002 and 2004, he released around 20 AMVs, winning numerous awards in the community.
Transition to Live Action Vidding
In 2004, he became aware of a fan music video convention Vividcon, organised by the Vidding community. The 2004 Saturday Morning Cartoons show included his video I Wish I Was a Lesbian. Upon discovering the vidding community, he was fascinated by this very different aesthetic. His growing interest in making live action music videos led naturally into vidding as a hobby and in 2005 he attended his first Vividcon.
Before the Vividcon Experience, there was a lot of learning. It appears that animation, particularly the kind of footage found in your average Anime TV series, requires a very different style of editing. Learning the difference between animation and live action editing was a long painful process. His first live action video, Burn, was made during the anime years and he strongly relies on the drawn-like nature of the footage composition. Once he'd decided wanted to do more with live action, he embarked on a number of projects. The first was (according to him) disastrous, a Paint it Black video to the Coppola Dracula. It was "just a shoddy concept from start to finish and it made me realise I needed some betas and I needed to watch more vids to see how they were doing what they were doing".
By the time Vividcon came around, he had a fully planned out panel on the differences he'd learned and a video in the Premieres show. He had chatted online to a lot of vidders and he had seen a lot of great vids.
Technical Contributions to the Vidding Community
- A&E's Technical Guide to All Things Video
- How to play those damn videos
- Designed Vividcon's encoding software LlamaEnc.
Songvid Compilations
- Ink and Paint (disc 1) and Light and Shadow (disc 2)
- AbsoluteDestiny Retrospective