A place for those who "Trust the Fungus"

This thread is for a concept I came up with on the EVAGeeks.org forums, called The Wall vs. Evangelion. There are many, many AMV editors out there who have successfully (and unsuccessfully) connected Pink Floyd's 1979 epic double-album and Hideaki Anno's 1995 anime series, but they have only done the "big" songs everyone knows about--"Comfortably Numb", "The Trial", etc.

My idea is to connect the two narratives through 25 or so AMVs and a few original animated sequences so that you have the narrative of The Wall taking place in the universe of EVA. Not only will this be an AMV synch project, I'm also looking to put a band together and perform this live at ACen (or, failing that, Wizard World) in 2015, on the 20th anniversary of EVA. It'll also use clips taken from the series to replace the sound effects from the album in order to enhance the "feel" of the overall narrative.

Only problem is, I don't know how to create an AMV to begin with, and it might be too much work for just me to do. To that end, I'm thinking of starting a Myspace page to draw attention to this project and see if I can get some editors and animators together. The goal is to get as many people contributing something to this as possible, because both The Wall and EVA are "about" what happens when people cut themselves off from those around them, and I'd like to do something that's the opposite of that.

SONG/VIDEO SYNOPSES TO BE POSTED SOON.

I'm sorry, I've just never seen the point in AMVs, putting songs to anime and trying to make some sort of connection.

Actually, somebody showed me the whole 'The Dark Side of the Moon,' put to 'The Wizard of Oz,' and I just didn't see it.

The term Apophenia comes to mind.

Oh, you'll see what I'm getting at tomorrow, when I post the synopses.

Did I mention that there will be costumes involved?

Prime Evil wrote:Oh, you'll see what I'm getting at tomorrow, when I post the synopses.

Did I mention that there will be costumes involved?

Is this a cosplay thing?

It is sort of a cosplay thing, but they're meant to evoke the overall idea of the characters while doing something new. In fact, the most emphasis on costuming comes during the Instrumentality/fascist-rally thing. I'm drawing my inspiration more from Roger Waters' 1990 concert performance of The Wall in Potsdamer Platz, Berlin.

NOW ON TO THE STORY

IN THE FLESH?(ADAM): The AMV for this might involve stuff from EVA, Akira, 2012, The Day after Tomorrow and other media that depict the apocalypse of Second Impact. (Say what you will about Roland Emmerich—he does know how to pull off mass destruction with panache!) These intercut with profiles of NERV personnel and Angels, along with dialogue tracks taken from Episode 21 Director’s Cut. The second lead vocalist represents the First Angel, ADAM, dressed in a white tuxedo and “pulling” the audience into the show. We see the image of the gigantic ADAM-thing rising up out of the clouds along with the Stuka dive-bomber screech, and then cut sharply to a crying Asian baby (SHINJI) at the end.

THE THIN ICE (YUI, GENDO): At first, we don’t need an AMV, just the lead vocalists (but let’s see how things pan out—I might change my mind!) However, we WILL need an AMV for the guitar solo as we preview the horrors that await this innocent child: the loss of his mother and the traumas of EVA piloting, for starters.

ANOTHER BRICK, PT. 1 (SHINJI): The first of many lyrical alterations, the original “Daddy’s flown…” line gets changed to “Father’s flown…” in keeping with Shinji’s referring to Gendo as “Father.” The AMV consists of the shots of young Shinji crying "DADDY!" and Gendo’s stern face along with the “LEAVE!” voice clip during the guitar solo, coupled with a “family photograph” which could be taken from somewhere in the series, specially drawn, or specially taken with the band members. Finally, the guitar solo features the sequence where the young Shinji builds a pyramid of sand in the playground from End of Evangelion. When the boy kicks the pyramid over, we fade to…

THE HAPPIEST DAYS OF OUR LIVES (SHINJI): This begins with the very beginning of the first episode, where the characters and Sachiel are introduced to us. The most significant alteration to this sequence is a planned CG/stop motion/rotoscope swap of the original Sachiel with what I describe as the “Gendo Monster,” who says the “STAND STILL, LADDIE!” line from the album. The song proper details Shinji’s life at NERV, living under his father’s thumb; the AMV illustrates this by showing the lad with Rei (and her blood on his hands) during the first episode on “…exposing every weakness however carefully hidden by the kids.” After it’s revealed that “his fat and psychopathic wife…thrash[es] him within inches of his life,” we get the image of the experimental Unit 00 punching its way through the glass intercut with the image of Yui Ikari’s tombstone. The final effect is the image of the school textbook page on Second Impact; the words “BLOODY LIES” are ‘painted’ onto the page in a white-hot rage, with red ink.

ANOTHER BRICK IN THE WALL, PT. 2 (SHINJI, REI CLONES): Almost in sharp contrast to the above song, the second “Another Brick” bursts in with rebellious defiance as Shinji defeats the Angels. Footage from the TV series and Rebuild if time permits is edited in such a way so that the battle set pieces appear in a heroic, brazen light (note—this is mostly during the guitar solo. I’m still not sure what we’re going to do with the first half of the song!) In the second half of the song, the Rei-clones take on the collective voice of the Islington primary-school chorus. At the song’s conclusion, the Schoolmaster’s voice gets replaced with the “Good work, Shinji” exchange from the episode where they had to defeat the CBS eye's evil older brother.

More to come tomorrow.

MerrittTheFerret wrote:I'm sorry, I've just never seen the point in AMVs, putting songs to anime and trying to make some sort of connection.

Actually, somebody showed me the whole 'The Dark Side of the Moon,' put to 'The Wizard of Oz,' and I just didn't see it.

The term Apophenia comes to mind.

I would kind of agree with you. Some of them are actually good, but a lot of them arent. I attempted to make one, and that was it, it's South Park's "Let's Fighting Love!!!" with DB.

The one thing that irritates me about AMVs is when people say they created it. They didn't create it, they just edited everything together.

Perhaps I should take a break and list my credentials.

First, I'm good friends with a one Bret Urick, writer of The Wall Analysis at http://www.thewallanalysis.com. We've been contacting each other through emails for a few years with ideas about Pink Floyd's album, and last year I mentioned Evangelion to him. He said he'd check it out and see if he could find any parallels to The Wall.

Second, I'm something of an amateur scholar of anime, and I use the term "scholar" very lightly. I've read Takashi Murakami's book, Little Boy: The Art of Japan's Exploding Subculture, which I found in Moraine Valley Community College's library (and have been trying to track down at CSU to no avail), and it was after I read it that I had the idea to put together this show. It's a very insightful book. If anyone on this forum should come across it, BORROW IT.

Prime Evil wrote:Perhaps I should take a break and list my credentials.

First, I'm good friends with a one Bret Urick, writer of The Wall Analysis at http://www.thewallanalysis.com. We've been contacting each other through emails for a few years with ideas about Pink Floyd's album, and last year I mentioned Evangelion to him. He said he'd check it out and see if he could find any parallels to The Wall.

Second, I'm something of an amateur scholar of anime, and I use the term "scholar" very lightly. I've read Takashi Murakami's book, Little Boy: The Art of Japan's Exploding Subculture, which I found in Moraine Valley Community College's library (and have been trying to track down at CSU to no avail), and it was after I read it that I had the idea to put together this show. It's a very insightful book. If anyone on this forum should come across it, BORROW IT.

I've been to that first website, The Wall is like, my second favorite Pink Floyd album (The Division Bell is my favorite...).
Also, Pink Floyd is my favorite band of all time. And believe me, I'm not denouncing anime, I see why people like it, but
I really only like Cowboy Bebop, which I collected all the sessions of on DVD over time between 2001 and 2003.
However, that new Ponyo movie that's coming out looks amazing and I'm going to see it as soon as I can.

I know where you're coming from. Evangelion is very much an acquired taste, and this project is pretty much the only thing I'm doing with it. I should also point out that I'll be almost 30 by 2015, and that's part of the reason I'm doing this.

Images. You need images; that's what'll convince you.

1: This is a cleanup of an image I designed for the second NERV logo, as featured in "In the Flesh (Part II)". The logo you see here was rendered by EvaGeeks' Duckfish.



(Somehow, I feel as if the NERV logo proper should be a bit smaller.)

2: This is the second revision of the "Gendo Beast," which takes the place of the inflatable Teacher Puppet. Ideally, I'd like to see someone do a bit of jiggery-pokery with the first episode of Evangelion and replace Sachiel with this bad boy.



3: This is the first version of the "Asuka Beast," which combines Shamshel and Unit 02.

GoChaunceyGo wrote:I'm sorry, I've just never seen the point in AMVs, putting songs to anime and trying to make some sort of connection.

Actually, somebody showed me the whole 'The Dark Side of the Moon,' put to 'The Wizard of Oz,' and I just didn't see it.

The term Apophenia comes to mind.

What you're thinking of, Chauncey, is "synchronization." AMVs are something different: it's taking a song and applying imagery to it with judicious editing.

My thing is a little bit more involved: Not only do I have the AMVs in mind, but I also have an original animated sequence ("The Trial,") projections (lyrics in kanji, neon signs, etc.), and projected backgrounds.

I like to think, though, that my project is just a little more scholarly than most others. Here's a more in-depth guide to the show--this is the second revision of the Spec Script I began in December of last year.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=BZRSH78C