You’ve watched the video, now you want to know how it was made? Well here are the production notes for the Stage 49 Arranged Battle Scene, Tokyo Final Battle II! Contains Code Geass spoilers!
The Video
For those who haven’t seen it yet, here’s the video:
The Battle
The original plan for the battle was something like this:
The Black Knights storm the Settlement with little resistance
Schneizel and co. show up
Kallen’s Gurren SEITEN debuts
Kallen vs Luciano
A capital ship battle between Avalon and the Ikaruga
Production for the video took about 12 hours over 1 1/2 weeks. As you can see the theme of the video kinda follows the events of the episode, but with a little SRW crossover flavour thrown in.
This video was somewhat of a test for what I could do with future videos in terms of incorporating anime footage. Yes I know it’s a grey line as to what is legally acceptable or not, but I think the amount I’ve used constitutes as “fair use”. If you’ve got experience in dealing with YouTube on the matter (ie you make AMVs or such), please let me know as I’d like your opinion.
The Music
Four out of five pieces of music are straight from Code Geass. While CG has some good music, the problem is all of the tracks are under 2 minutes, and in this business you can’t really get much done in that time. “Avalon” is the music which plays when Schneizel’s ship shows up, and the track is only 1 1/2 minutes long, which is why that scene might look a little rushed.
I also planned on using “Nightmare” when the Ikaruga would finish off the Avalon, but again, the track plays for less than a minute. In the end, I somehow thought of “Virtuous Mission” from Metal Gear Solid 3, which fit the theme I wanted and was long enough.
Special Effects
I used cut-ins of Lelouch from a few episodes of CG where he barks out a few orders, which kinda fleshes out his tactical ability a bit more than his actual fighting capability. I had to use ones from the first season, (since the only time in R2 he does this is when he’s not in a KMF) which is why he looks a lot younger than he does in other scenes.
Cut-ins were also used for the Lelouch/Luciano, Kallen/Luciano and Suzaku firing the FLEIJA scenes, which are straight out of the Tokyo Final Battle II episode itself. I’ve tried to avoid using scenes from the anime where you can see actual full sized mecha if possible (since I believe it’s kinda cheating), but for the final scene, I couldn’t think of a way to show it without using the actual scene from the anime. I cut it back as much as I could for fair use issues.
Finally I used cut-ins from Macross Frontier to show the Quarter transforming. Since there’s no transforming animation in the game, I think it works really well to bridge between it’s carrier and robot modes.
One of the major challenges in using cut-ins from anime though, is blending in the music that’s in the video itself. Sometimes you can hear the music coming through, and that’s a limitation I guess.
Apart from that there aren’t that many flash effects compared to the Stage 47 video. Kallen punching through the various mooks was done by putting Kallen in Mazinger Z and using the Rocket Punch DK animation. Kallen kicking Luciano into the ground was done by landing Luciano, putting Kallen in the Walker Gallier and using the Gallier Full Power attack on him. Fyana “blowing up the bridge” was done by cutting the Missile Scopedog attack with the MDE warhead from the Valkyrie.
Possible Improvements
I’m pretty happy overall with how the video turned out, but here’s what I would do to improve it:
Rolo/Jeremiah would’ve been included somehow, but I ran out of time.
I would’ve included the Shinkirou’s attacks somehow, but again, time issues.
Schneizel’s appearance scene would’ve been fleshed out more, if the music would’ve allowed.
I wished I could’ve somehow featured the Black Knights more, but apart from Kallen’s Guren, the rest of the CG units have pretty mediocre animations.
Oh and by the way, I know sometimes I like to put skits at the end of videos, but the last 10 seconds or so is actually a mistake on my part. I had some leftover footage at the end of the video and forgot to delete it before rendering it. 🙁
The next video will either be for Stage 51 (fighting Aim), but I may skip it depending on how interesting I think I make the video or not. If not, it will be Stage 52, where ZEXIS fights Schneizel in the Damocles.
