Nathan Bezner was given two tracks to work on for the DDR Project 3rd Mix, an anime music video compilation featuring the talent of several editors put to the music of the Dance Dance Revolution video game megamix, a nonstop, nearly hour-long CD which shows off much of the music from the actual game. When Nathan found he didn't have enough time to complete both videos, he handed me the track "Brilliant2U" by Naoki to do what I wanted with it.

The concept of the video is somewhat of a tribute to the Japanese animation studio Gainax and the headstrong female leads of most of their series. In the video they are each given a part of the song to exhibit themselves and I wanted them to first display how they were strong and confident in their attitude, and then show how they became completely destructive forces. I also attempted to duplicate the game system of DDR all in Illustrator and After Effects as a light intermission from all the editing and effects-heavy action. The gear that appears in the beginning, middle, and end of the piece was designed specifically to tie the entire video together.

The basis of editing this video was solely on the frantic pace of the song. Brilliant2U is one of the most active songs in the entire mix and has such great rhythm that all I had to do was follow the pace with the anime. Most of the action and edits that occur in this video are done specifically to beats, words or rhythms so it becomes more effective as a video to dance to, as well as watch.

Digital Effects were used to enhance the color and tone of the video where scenes weren't vibrant enough. It's worth noting that in this video there is one particular animation series that didn't have any effects put to it because it didn't need anything; it was frantic enough as is.

I am most fond of this video because it includes the most prominently used text than any other video I've worked on. The video includes a section where each of the characters names appear on screen next to themselves. I didn't just want to place text in and have that be it. I moved text around, colored them different and gave them all their own attitude to reflect the character they labeled. I hope to do more like that in the future as I am a huge fan of typography in any medium.