Monthly Archives: November 2014

AMV Making

When I have free time, I sometimes go on iMovie and start making short AMVs (Anime Music Video). Despite the name, the sources used aren’t always anime. They are inspired by AMV Hell. AMV Hell is a series in which AMVs are shot and sweet. They are usually under a minute, and are often played for comedy. In fact, it inspired a lot of AMVs. Often, when AMVs do the short, parody style, they are often called “AMV Hell Style.”

For example of one of the official videos, watch this below. Beware of some cursing and dark comedy.

http://vimeo.com/57100017

Madevil. “AMV Hell The Best of AMV Minis.” Online video clip. Vimeo. n. d. Web. 4 Nov. 2014.

I was also inspired by AMV Hell. Like I said earlier, during my free time, I often use iMovie to make AMV Hell like videos. Actually, I considered submitting some of these for the official AMV Hell, but the submission deadline had passed.

I’ve made a lot of videos. I used my computer to take a screenshot.

I will show you some of them below.

The first is one of my favorites. The visual is from the video game Kingdom Hearts, and the audio is from both Kingdom Hearts and the web show Atop the Fourth Wall. It’s not perfect, like with lip sync. However, whenever I show it to people, they seem to find it pretty funny.

The next one is pretty good, but I think it could use some work. The timing feels a bit off. however, I find it pretty clever and funny. The visuals are from the film Spirited Away, and the audio is the Nintendo Gamecube boot up screen. I called it simply “Fall”

Next up is one that I think fails. I tried to make it funny, but I don’t give the context about it, so anyone who doesn’t know what it’s talking about will be lost. The visuals are from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, and the audio is a text to speech program reading the poem from Shrek, and proclaiming it bullshit. Also, the lip sync is off. Though, there are worse than this.

Next up is another Pony AMV. The audio it uses both Pony and a text to speech program an However, it works better because what I’m making fun off can be seen in the video itself, with how Applejack’s freckles seem to disappear when she runs. Warning, some cursing in the video.

With the next Pony video, I tried to be more random. I feel like it didn’t work as it tried to be too random and not funny. the audio is from both Pony and Super Smash Bros Melee.

The next one I believe balances out randomness with being funny. The visuals are from Sailor Moon, and the audio is all from dialogue I typed out and had a text to speech program read. To add to the hilarity, I used a picture of Kyon from Haruhi Suzimia face palming, with a fail logo placed over it, and a buzzer sound.

The next video was more of a test for lip sync The visuals are again from Sailor Moon, and the audio is from The Stanley Parable. I feel like it turned out pretty funny. There’s just something about seeing the main character’s mentor get fed up with her stupidity.

Here’s one that isn’t trying to be AMV hell, and more of a music video. I tried to do one that wasn’t trying to be funny, but, again, more of a music video. It was also a lip sync test. I really need to work to my lip sync. It’s not perfect and it may go on too long. The visuals are from Winx Club and the audio is the song Lost Carol from Silent Hill 3.

Finally, another one that isn’t trying to be AMV hell, and is more of a music video. I liked this one more than the other one. Sometimes I felt like it wasn’t entirely matching up, but that wasn’t common. I didn’t even try with lip sync this time. (Except in some places) The visuals are from Winx Club again and the audio is the song H.T. from the anime Trigun.

As you can see, I really like making these videos. I’ve made a ton of these, and I’ll likely make many more.

Katherine Plays The Stanley Parable

Leave a reply

I did a let’s play of the game The Stanley Parable. I love watching these on youtube, and I wanted to try my and at one of them. It’s down below. Beware of some cursing.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

When I recorded it, I used the application Photo Booth for recording me, and I used Quick time player to record the screen. I had to mute the video of me, as when I put the two videos together, there was a noticeable echo with both of them playing.

I also had trouble keeping my eyes at the camera. During the video, I am clearly looking down at the computer screen. I also should have used a mouse, as my clicking on the finger pad can clearly be heard in the video.

Also, it was nearly impossible to line up the footage of me with the footage of the game. Just when I thought I had it, another audio glitch came up. I decided to just uploaded the play-through with the game footage, since it already had my voice. Many other let’s Plays just have the audio of the player.

I also had to find a way to post it on the blog. The video was 20 minutes, and was too big for the site. I tried splitting it in half, and it was still too big. I had to put into multiple parts so that I could put it up on the site.

I then considered doing another play-through with only text and pictures. I took screenshots of the game as I went along. It worked out pretty well.

I call the following Katherine Duncan and the Confusion Ending.

The game begins.

My boring office. My job is just pushing buttons. I’m not kidding.

Worst. Job. Ever.

Where is everybody?

I just asked where my coworkers were, narrator. Shut up.

This workplace is boring without everyone missing!

Observed room 417 to annoy the narrator. It worked. He’s pretty easy to annoy.

So I’m supposed to go through the left door?

Let’s go through the right door, everybody!

Of course, the narrator is not amused. Sure, I wanted to go to the employee lounge.

The lounge is marvelous!

*two hours later*

Okay, the narrator has made it clear that I need to get out of the lounge or else.

Now, the narrator wants me to go in the left door. I don’t want to make him angry, so I’ll listen to him this time.

He wants me to go straight.

Hey wait, It’s an elevator!

Let’s ride it!

I’m going to regret this, aren’t I?

The narrator is not happy, and we are probably lost.

So where do we go now?

Okay, the left. Should have known.

Really?

Okay, right it is.

GAH! Make up your mind!

Please be the way…

It seems we are on track!

It’s pretty creepy in here…

What’s that room up ahead?

A spoiler? Really?

Well, this isn’t good.

Wait, restart?

Oh my god, he restarted!

Well, that isn’t normal. He’s going to restart, isn’t he?

Of course.

Well, that didn’t help at all!

Wandering doesn’t seem to help either.

I don’t even think this place is part of the story!

Yay! I win!

Really? Jerk.

Will this even help?

So, this will keep us on track, right?

It’s doing fine so far.

That’s a bit unusual.

Okay, what the f**…

This adventure line is more trouble than it’s worth.

And it led us right back here.

This is getting old.

So, the narrator decided to create his own story without the adventure line.

It tried to come back, but we ignored it.

F888k you, adventure line.

Oh my god. My mind just exploded. The narrator refused to do any more.

Maybe we’re free.

We can do-

Shit.

Well, it seems everything is back to normal.

OH GOD IT’S THE ADVENTURE LINE!

*Besides that one scare, it seems that everything is bad to normal, and the narrator remembers none of this. The End*

So that was my text playthrough.

So which was better? The text or the video? I personally liked the video better.

My old writings

Leave a reply

While I was going through my computer, I decided to go through some of my old writings. I was not impressed. Most of my writings were done for high school. Each quarter, we were required to write a portfolio. We would write it, edit it, and create multiple drafts until the english teacher decided we were done. I decided to read through two of them to see if the were still good.

One of them I read was an early work. It was done in 2008. It was called The Queen of the Underworld. Looking back, it was poorly written, with a confusing story, things just happening at random, an a dues ex machima ending. I also spoil the story in the opening paragraph!

It’s not the worst (One only needs to look at the abomination that is the story about the sand-witch, which was my first story), but it’s by no means good.

I used a text-to-speech program to read the story, and turned it into a mp3 file.

As you can see, it’s pretty bad. It’s also made a bit silly with the different voices for dialogue. I also, in hindsight, should have used a female voice for the narrator, since the protagonist is female.

To show my reaction to this story, I made a picture that I made by editing pictures together.

I meant it to be a brief recap of the story, showing the villain, her monsters, and the heroine, represented by Fluttershy of My Little Pony. It also shows anyone remotely normal’s reaction to it. It turned out pretty good, if a little cluttered. However, I do believe that it shows the reaction well.

The other writing I read was from 2010. It’s clearly a lot better. It’s called The Eternal Element War. The storyline is much clearer. It’s more of poem. I wrote a lot of them. I wrote so many of them that the teacher told me to not write as much poems. She also tried to get me to write more nonfiction, because I tend to focus on writing fiction. It didn’t really work.

The story’s not perfect. It’s a bit rushed, there isn’t really a lot of characterization, and it comes off a bit preachy. Unlike the other one, however, I’m not embarrassed by it.

Like with the other writing, I used a text-to-speech program to read the story, and turned it into a mp3 file.

Again, it’s not perfect, but it’s mush more tolerable. Also helping is that it’s not as silly as the other one because there’s no dialogue, and thus it only has one voice.

Like with the other story, I made a picture. Like with a previous post, I used a dress up game. The game can be found on this website.

As you can see, all of the elements are clearly female. The game I used only allows you to create female elements. Since in the story Fire and Air are male, I tried to hide the fact that they were clearly female in the game.

I ended up liking this one less than the other one because it’s simply them standing there and it’s kinda boring. The other one was slightly played for humor. Secondly, even with the futile task of making Fire and Air look male, it was pretty simple to create the picture. With the other one, I had to find the picture and edit them together in GIMP.

In the end, I guess what I’m trying to say through all this rambling is that even if you think you totally failed at being a writer, with practice and time you will improve. It also helps if you can make fun of your bad works, like making a picture of it.

Conjuration 2014!

Leave a reply

During the weekend, my family and I headed out to Conjuration. It was a first time fantasy convention in Atlanta. It’s major fandoms were Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and The Chronicles Of Narnia. If course, there were many other fandoms represented as well. My parents were helping with registration.

There were quite a few people. That’s pretty good for the first year of a convention. Though by sunday, there were quite a few people staying at the hotel. Also, there were a lot of families on Friday, though that’s probably because it was Halloween.

Also there was a surprising number of people who told my parents at the registration that this was their first con. There were a lot of parents taking the kids to the convention because the kid is a fan of one of the fandoms shown at the convention.

Since it was the first year of the convention, so there were some problems. The dealers room, essentially the community shopping center, was pretty weak. It was mostly artists and writers.

Also, there weren’t any people checking badges, which struck me as odd. I would think that at a convention, to prevent people from getting in without paying, there would be those.

Aside from that, it was a pretty good con. Despite there being a few problems, I could totally see this con happening again next year. The fundamentals are in place, and if the people running the convention tweak things a little bit, it will only get better.

I didn’t actually go to many panels. Since it was the Con’s first year, there weren’t that many panels that I was truly interested in. Also, my family wasn’t staying at the hotel, and it took us a hour to get there. Thus, I wasn’t able to go to later panels. A lot of the more interesting panels were later at night.

The panels I did go to were interesting. One, for example, featured an improv group. It was called “On the Next Episode of.” They watched a episode of the cartoon Dungeons & Dragons, and then acted out what they thought would happen on the next episode. It was really funny.

Of the things I did, my favorite was the Deatheaters game. It is essentially Mafia or Are You a Werewolf, but with a Harry Potter theme. There was also eight special characters. I know that sounds like a lot, but we had 30 or 40 people in that panel. We didn’t even finish the game, because it was their first time trying the game out and everyone was loud.

I actually, on Saturday, decided to cosplay as a generic anime girl with a katana. I wore a wig I got at Party City, a school outfit, and wielded my plastic sword that I got when I took karate. Unfortunately, my outfit included a skirt and a shirt with short sleeves on a day that was very cold. I was inside for most of the time, but I was still cold.

As you can see, I had an interesting weekend at Conjuration.

Katherine Perrin

Adorkable doesn’t even BEGIN to describe me

Monthly Archives: November 2014

AMV Making

Katherine Plays The Stanley Parable

My old writings

Conjuration 2014!