Defying Gravity - Macross Frontier AMV

I wanted to make this AMV a departure from the average drama video, and make this uplifting and inspiring, exploring the heights of human emotion, rather than taking the audience through a dark journey into the depths of the human soul. I wanted to use the version of Defying Gravity from the musical "Wicked", but it had too many pauses, had two vocal parts, and was too context dependent - if you didn't know anything about the musical, you wouldn't get the important parts of the song! But after looking elsewhere, I found that Idina Menzel's single version was the perfect version to use here. I also added some of my own sound effects, including some Valkyrie jet noises, and chimes towards the end.

There are a few little special tricks I did in the video. In the "Unlimited" lyric, the original video flashed a big red "MAX" (because it's a volume scale...) but a "maximum" is decidedly the opposite of "unlimited" so I had to adjust it to blink the infinity symbol. Towards the end, I also added in the feathers falling from the paper airplane.

Throughout the video, the thing that ties it together is the paper airplane. The paper airplane is supposed to symbolize Ranka's independence, and this was supposed to be connected in the scene at the climax where she throws the paper airplane she has just made - it's supposed to fade into the Valkyrie with the trail of feathers which shoots up into the sky - but I couldn't get the video to line up perfectly. Some people get the message, others don't quite pick up on it, so I'm including this factoid just FYI.

This was a finalist at the 2010 Otakon AMV contest! Thanks to all those who voted for it.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• macross
• frontier
• defying
• gravity
• otakon
• amv
• 2010
• idina
• menzel
• wicked
• ranka