User:AbsoluteDestiny
| Name/s: | AbsoluteDestiny, Ian Roberts |
| Fandom/s: | |
| You can find me at: | http://www.absolutedestiny.org, http://www.derivativeart.org |
| On Fanlore: | My contributions / email me |
I am AbsoluteDestiny (Ian Roberts), a media fan from England who has been making fan vids since 2001, initially making Anime Music Videos and later contributing to the Vidding community.
My website contains links and information about my fanworks: AbsoluteDestiny.org
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" I returned to anime fandom thanks to the works of Miyazaki Hayao and Anno Hideaki. In the late 90s, I became an active contributer[1] to the Usenet group uk.media.animation.anime and member of the UK anime scene. I produced fansubs with the group Zettai Unmei Anime for my local anime club Oxford Anime Vision (OAV) and for showing at UK anime conventions such as Minami.
Fan Video Making
The Anime Years
Technically I made my 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 thankfully no longer exists because it was rubbish.
My newfound interest in anime had led to Fan Subbing, which involved the use of a video capture card. To test this capture card, I made two music videos in 2001, AccelaNation and Monkey Wrench. At the time, I knew little of Anime Music Videos, being mostly introduced to the concept by seeing some at the local anime club. I was unaware of the large, growing and ever competitive community that already existed.
In the subsequent months, I became fascinated with the hobby - downloading as many videos as I could find in the dark days before easily available web space - and leaving feedback on videos at AnimeMusicVideos.org. After familiarising myself with the large body of work produced by the community I finally decided to return to the timeline and make some more videos of my 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 my visibility as an editor as the video quickly went on to receive numberous awards in the community including Best of Show at Anime Weekend Atlanta 7 - my first US anime convention, which I attended to meet with others in the AMV community. Between 2002 and 2004, I released around 20 AMVs, winning numerous awards in the community.
Transition to Live Action Vidding
In 2004, I became aware of a fan music video convention Vividcon, organised by the Vidding community. The 2004 Saturday Morning Cartoons show included my video I Wish I Was a Lesbian. Upon discovering the vidding community, I was fascinated by this very different aesthetic. My growing interest in making live action music videos led naturally into vidding as a hobby and in 2005 I attended my first Vividcon.
Before the Vidicon 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. My first live action video, Burn, was made during the anime years and strongly relies on the drawn-like nature of the footage composition. Once I'd decided I wanted to do more with live action, I embarked on a number of projects. The first was disasterous, 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, I had a fully planned out panel on the differences I'd learned and a video in the Premieres show. I'd chatted online to a lot of vidders and I'd seen a lot of great vids. That's not to say, however, that I was well known.
tbc...