Hellø Fairy: Notes

Video: Bottle Fairy and Various
Audio: Various
Awards: Anime Weekend Atlanta 2006 Pro - Best Comedy, Manifest 2006 - Best Comedy/Fun and Fan Favourite, Nan Desu Kan 2006 - Best of Show (Viewers Choice)/Best of Show (Editors Choice)/Best Comedy, Another Anime Con 2006 - Best in Show
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I was waiting for anouther AMV Hell rip off ... it's been a few days. -- Quick Comment

Blah blah spoilers below blah.

The title can be pronounced either "Hello Fairy" or "Hell Fairy". Since the ø is hard to type if you don't know how (Alt-0248 on the numeric keypad), people seem to dispense with it. The thought of interpreting the ø as either an o or a crossed-out o amused me.

Most years, I spend a lot of time early in the year working on a video for Otakon, Anime North, and whatever other spring/summer cons I send it to. This leaves me with less time and energy to work on a new video for Anime Weekend Atlanta, a con that dedicates a lot of time and resources to AMVs.

AMV Hell style videos had been winning at conventions left and right. While they can have some good parts, I often found they had a lot of mediocre parts as well. Their style can work to ones advantage since you can cater to multiple comedic tastes at once. If someone doesn't find one part funny, they might find another part funny. This type of video can be easier to do than something where you have to pay attention to the lyrics and flow of a longer song, but since I've done that a lot already, I thought I had "nothing to prove" in that department.

And this video was easier. And fun to make. Find funny-looking scene, think of related song, and boom -- video segment. Some segments are similar to segments found in other videos. In some cases it's intentional, in some cases it's coincidental.

I used only one show (except at the end) in part to make it relatively fast to make. I chose Bottle Fairy since it follows the adventures (both real and imagined) of these fairies over the course of a year. It has a variety of amusing clips.

Since I was a little tired of seeing this kind of video to the exclusion of other types, the whole point was to blow everything to hell at the end. Since I wanted to cram a lot in there, to get across that this kind of video can be long and overwraught, I made segments as small as possible. I then sorted them by length longest to shortest, to make it get more frenzied near the end before everything messes up. I took some short clips at the end and stuck them near the beginning to break up the longer clips a bit. Of course, repetition was also used as a comedic device.

Then there are the Max Headroom segments... To my knowledge, Ashyukun was the first to compare short clips in this kind of video to the Blipverts seen in the first episode of Max Headroom. I love the show (I wish it would come out on DVD), so I wanted to incorporate it into the video. So a couple of clips featured Sarara, one of the fairies, put onto a Max-style background that I made and edited to fit some audio clips from the show. (I also included the actual blipvert) The flipping images at the end were inspired by the "Academy" episode, where some hackers "zip" a TV channel, which means they replace regular programming with their own random garbage.

Some notes on some of the segments follow. Some simply mention other videos where I heard the song.

• The "fake video" thing has been done a few times before, like in Narutowned and a video by RYS. Like the rest of the parts, I tried to keep it short.
• "Let's get scratching" audio is from Jet Set Radio. JSR is awesome.
• When I did the "infiltration" scene with music from Metal Gear Solid 2, I had forgotten that that scene was used with "Commando" in AMV Hell 3.
• I was listening to Goldeneye and Goldfinger before I remembered Goldmember.
• "Hey! Listen!" is from Navi in Zelda: Ocarina of Time. I haven't really played the game, but I knew of the character from this VG Cats comic.
• It took a few hours to find that Christmas song. A lot of promising looking song titles from the Dr. Demento show lead to dead ends.
• I'd forgotten that Fullmetal Hell had used the Raiders of the Lost Ark audio. It's an obvious choice here.
• I remembered the song "Wynnona's Big Brown Beaver" from a video by RYS.
• I remembered the song "Three Little Pigs" from a video by daymorn.
• The Katamari/"Rollin'" segment in AMV Hell 3 was one of my favourite parts, so I thought to use the song here.
• The DBZ grunting sound is from the dub. The sub is more subdued than I realised, at least during that scene.
• The Azumanga Daioh opening parody was partly inspired by AMV no Baka 2. Just add blood.
• Miruku commented that with "Eat It" and "Fat", I had placed two Weird Al songs next to each other, but it was intentional. Cause and effect.
• I remembered the song "Tubthumping" from a video by Otaku Outpost.
• I had actually done the Max Headroom "cube" background for a different video already, but it had never gotten made.
• I was rather pleased with the "Toy Soldiers" segment. I was originally going to use the video as is, but then thought to add the blood for extra humour/shock value. Then I thought to pull the old switcheroo at the end and turn it into a ketchup commercial, thus also implying fairy cannibalism.
• I remembered the song "You've Got A Friend" from a video by More Than Toast. (different version though)
• "You Put A Hex On Me" was supposed to be a vague reference to Euphoria, or any other video that features hexagons.
• The dialogue in the RPG parody is a sidelong reference to The Wedding Rings.
• I'd forgotten that AMV Hell 3 also used "I Believe I Can Fly". Oh well. It used a version by William Hung.
• "You were almost a Jill sandwich" is from Resident Evil.
• "Boom! Headshot!!" is from Pure Pwnage. Specifically, episode 3.
• Using "Believe", of course, was inspired by the parody segment in AMV Hell 3.
• I knew of the "rave" song from Strongbad, though it's also appeared in FOOTBALL!! and AWA VAT Breakdown Techno Rave.
• I first learned about LazyTown from #amv IRC chatter and loli-pop. Kururu looks a bit like Stephanie.
• I had forgotten that the "Ooga chaka" song was used in Anime: Lifestyles of the Animated and Fabulous, but that's probably where I remembered the audio from.
• The pop idol growling is a reference to my own Lollipops, Sunshine, and rrrRRRrrr, using a different song by Iniquity.
• The "oraoraora" noises are from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, since Kururu's motions in that scene look like an attack from the show.
• Kumaguro had made a video to a version of "Witch Doctor", so that song also came to mind.
• "Bungeeeee!" is from Worms Armageddon. Fun.
• The audio for the fading to white clip is the "leap" sound effect from "Quantum Leap". (sped up since it was longer than I remembered)
• The idea behind the "we surrender" thing was sort of like, the fairies were being made to go through all these motions with all this audio, and they were just tired of it, or something.

PS: There are little joke pictures "hidden" in most of the transitions. I'm not going to explain them all, but I want to acknowledge a few.

• The cardboard box is from VG Cats
• I first saw the "road sign" used as an icon by EK.
• Hypnosaka is from AMV Hell 3. Apologies to SSGWNBTD. Hypnosaka made me do it.
• The corn is from AMV Hell 0. <shudder>
• The controller is a Photoshop job by a former co-worker years ago.

Thanks to Miruku and Spate.