skywalkersaga wrote:I know I already mentioned this to you, but the editing on this video is astonishingly good. The images, scenes, and transitions blended so seamlessly that I was constantly forgetting that it was a mix of 1/6 figures and real people. It all fit together so well, that I barely noticed! The amount of work that no doubt had to go into it in order to achieve that effect is incredibly impressive.
Stylistically, I can definitely see the influence of Band of Brothers, along with the music -- though this particular soundtrack has a different feel to it than the track used in the first Yae video (due to the different composer, I presume?). Either way, it is very effective, and both pieces of music have ended up stuck in my head for days after! :')
As for the contents of the video itself, Yae is still the star of course, but I wanted to make special mention of Nakano Takeko -- I really loved the scenes and moments you included of her here. Very emotional and moving.
I hope everyone will take the time to press 'play' on this one -- it is just as beautifully made, with just as much attention to detail, as the figures themselves. Well worth a few minutes of your day. :')
Wow, sky, thanks so much for the exceedingly kind compliments and continued support!
You have been a great help to me while I was finishing this project, I can't thank you enough!
About the composer, actually, it's the same one for both pieces, NAKAJIMA Nobuyuki. Just based on his work on this series alone I think he's fantastic. The whole soundtrack is incredibly varied, from typical movie action sequences to the types of moving heartfelt tracks like the ones I used, all the way to jazzy riffs, all mostly classical style but with a very distinctively Japanese feel to many of the motifs (probably more noticeable in this video; the first one reminded me of a Beethoven slow movement). There may be some confusion about the soundtrack because I mentioned at some point that two composers were involved. The great SAKAMOTO Ryuichi (of
Last Emperor fame) composed the opening title track as well as one piece entitled
Yae's Theme (which hardly was ever used as "her" theme in the show, much more often a general Aizu theme). Stylistically both are very different from the rest of the soundtrack that Nakajima composed, although Nakajima definitely incorporated snippets of melodies or rhythms from those two pieces as inspirations from some of his tracks. But the opening title is the one you'll see the most if you do searches on YouTube, hardly any of Nakajima's are featured.
And yes, in this one I deliberately wanted to feature Takeko as well as the two soldiers in addition to Yae, so the hard part was knowing what balance to strike given the strict time limitation of the piece. When I first took pics of Takeko many months ago I knew I would want to feature her in another video so I took a lot of extra pics that I never posted so they would be "new" when I released this, same with the soldiers. Given the poignancy of Takeko's story I had to feature her poem and last charge, but because my figure doesn't look at all like the series actress and her clothing I tried to focus more on some of the other women from that scene, particularly JINBO Yuki, the woman in the foreground of that first shot (the one who killed herself in the show; and the actress [ASHINA Sei] who killed herself in real life.
)
Really, thanks again for your continued support during this whole project. It has helped make all the hard work worth it.
Ovy wrote:Well I watched it three times now, one time on the TV.
Some thoughts I had.
As mentioned already in the other video's thread, this style might be one of the best ways to bring 1/6 figures to life in video.
Unlike stop motion, there are no fluent movements in there, but these organic transitions, which our heads put together into a sequence of movement. Stop motion will always have that very stylized puppet feel to it, no matter how perfect it is.
But your realistically appearing 'film' stills look right without having to be fluid. I think the brain is much better in accepting the harmony in these slightly changing figures.
With the stylized beauty of war pictures and solemn music, of course we have that Band of Brothers association, but I also had to think of 'The Pacific' a lot, even though it's intro is less personalized with less faces in there. Used the music/mood for writing shore based undead war stories and read some Eugene Sledge some years ago, so I have some kind of connection to it. And of course The Pacific has that connection to Japan anyway.
The whole video makes one nostalgic for a show never watched, but it feels like having watched it many years ago. Maybe something in the music triggers some memories to older films. Or even stronger, a nostalgia for a long gone time period.
In a way romanticising a war from a civilian's perspective, or just paying respect to the people who had to live through it.
I think I have two favourite bits, first when the old photography popped up, giving a sense of the time passed. Had to think of the picture of older Yae you posted, with the lost war behind her.
The other is the running charge sequence and the transition to the figure. It has this undramatic action, if that makes sense. I also like the black grain and scratches whirling like on an old projector.
The amount of work you put in there can be seen in every frame, especially these recreations of poses. So I can understand that this kind of drains your energy to make another one. But as it looks you finished this huge project and educated us along the way.
Ovy, thanks so much for your thoughtful and kind comments! If it made you feel nostalgia for something you never even saw, I feel like I've accomplished something, because I had those feelings for a show I did watch (4 times!) while I was creating it. Although the music I chose and the way I framed the clips and my figures definitely had a more "romantic" feel, the show is much less so and shows much more heartbreak and senseless death, although it certainly ennobles the sacrifices as well.
I'm glad you feel the use of freeze frame and still photography was effective in conveying movement. I knew I was never going to be able to do stop motion, so I used actual footage cut up into bits of slo mo and freeze frame layered over and under the still photography of the figures, as well as some limited freeze frame photography of the figures as well. It's all an illusion of movement, even though the individual elements are quite static. And the music with it's slow and steady tempo in 4/4 meter also helped, with its underlying triplets giving the illusion of a waltz but belying its slow dirge.
I'm not sure what you meant by "old photography," but perhaps you meant when I used various black and white or sepia colored sequences? And I did enjoy using the "grunge" effects in the freeze frame pics, both on the live footage and the figure pics. Actually, both types of effects were heavily influenced by Band of Brothers, I cannot lie. I tried to imitate the feel but not copy the exact effects, since the music and subjects are so different. Maybe the closest I came was the sequence with the charging soldiers and the explosion sequence during the climax of the piece. Same but different!
Thanks again for your support and you have also helped me feel like the hard work was worth it through this whole project. Someday I may return to this and create another one, but for the moment I've accomplished what I wanted.
