Notice on Playability: The H.264 one is much cleaner and sharper at a similar filesize, I recommend you get this version if your PC can play it. The Xvid one is there only for those who cannot play H.264. To optain the codecs nessesary for H.264 (a faster CPU is needed for H.264 vs. Xvid), get the CCCP codec pack , or the VLC player .

Note on the lipsynching: Since too many people are bugging me about this, i'm putting it clearly here at the top, ONLY the Live Concert parts of the video where Haruhi is singing are lipsynched. Nowhere else in the video is intended to be lipsynched weather it appears to be or not. I left some lipflap in there since it shows Haruhi's personality and energy, and takes away from the video when I tried to edit it out. After carefull consideration, I have also removed the lipsync check on technical details, since I want people to pay attention to the video rather than critiqueing the "lipsync". (and because some people don't read comments, no matter how much I bold them ;p )

For those interested, the official release poster for the video can be viewed here.

Comments:
In a nutshell, This is a fast paced High energy Romance-comedy video about Kyon and Haruhi, done in the style of a typical MTV music video, incorporating footage from Episode 12 of Haruhi for the live performance parts of the video. It switches between live and story parts throughout the video.

The idea for this video came to me when listining to the song on my mp3 player at work, when it just clicked that this would go well with Haruhi. I noticed the song had a similar tempo to Haruna's "God Knows", performed by Haruhi in episode 12. I had always wanted to take advantage of the awesome footage available in episode 12 to make a "Live" AMV with, and so I decided to go with it for this one.

The hardest part of editing this video was probably doing the lipsynch during the live sections without interupting the fluid movement of the characters. Kyoto Animation's godlike animation skills actually made it quite dificult to lipsynch, but on the flip side, the scenes look dynamic and awesome ;p I ended up with a sortof compromise, you can see some areas thats a bit jirky, one of the reasons I decided to go with the shacky cam effect for the live sections, to hide this side effect some. I also timed the shackyness to the actuall movement of the characters (usually Haruhi) so its more like the camera is following her movement. Timming all the instruments to the sounds in the song was also time consuming, but worth it.

I didn't go too crazy with the effects in this one, but there are some, mostly just noise, cut and fades, black and white, brightness/contrast manipulation, and a few carefully placed lensflares. There are also 3 places that have masks that arn't hard to notice ;p
The scene at the end was made with 2 different shots to make it look like haruhi is outside Kyons room at the end of the video blushing. I took out alot of lipflap with photoshop, and a few freeze frames, but I left alot in because removing them took away from the energy of the video. Any you see still in there are in there because I wanted it to be. Ofcourse theres also the TV effect used for the "Live" sections of the video, which is custom made in photoshop and animated in premiere.

Technical stuff
Time to complete: About 40-50 hours in the span of about 2 and half weeks
Software used: Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Premeire, Besweet, Megui, Virtualdub, Avisynth, and the AMVapp suite. (no after effects in this one)
Audio: mp4=360kbps AAC, avi= 250kbps Mp3


The Lyrics:

Here we are so what you gonna do
Do I gotta spell it out for you
I can see that you got other plans for tonight
But I don’t really care

Size me up you know I beat the best
Tick tock no time to rest
Let them say what their gonna say
But tonight I just don’t really care

Come on baby we aint gonna live forever
Let me show you all the things that we could do
You know I wanna be together
And I wanna spend the night with you
With you
Come with me tonight
We could make the night last forever

Ive seen it all I’ve got nothing to prove
Come on baby just make your move
Follow me lets leave it all behind tonight
Like we just don’t care

Let me take you on the ride of your life
That’s what I said alright
They can say what they wanna say
cuz tonight I just don’t even care

Come on baby we aint gonna live forever
Let me show you all the things that we could do
You know I wanna be together
And I wanna spend the night with you
With you
Come with me tonight
We could make the night last forever

Lets pretend your mine
We could just pretend, we could just pretend, yeah yeah
You got what I like
You got what I like, I got what you like
Oh come on
Just one taste and you’ll want more

So tell me what your waiting for

Come on baby we aint gonna live forever
Let me show you all the things that we could do
You know I wanna be together
And I wanna spend the night with you
With you

Come with me tonight
We could make the night last forever
Come on baby we aint gonna live forever
Let me show you all the things that we could do
You know I wanna be together
And I wanna spend the night with you
With you
Come with me tonight
We could make the night last forever

---

Now that you have a slight behind the scenes of the video, I hope you enjoy actually watching it ^_^.
Please do let me know your thoughts on the video, good or bad, by quick comment or opinion. Comments are always welcome and apreciated.