This was one of my submissions to Anime Boston 2020. It was not a finalist. Watch it here.
Robot Jox is a 1990s movie about robot “Jox” who pilot giant mechs to resolve territorial disputes. It makes a natural pairing with Mobile Suit Gundam as the conflict between Amuro and Char nicely parallels the conflict of the main characters in Robot Jox. This was an interesting project for me as it was the first time I did a trailer AMV. 90% of this project was straightforward as I just had to match up the trailer footage with scenes from Gundam. That said, there were some tough bits. In particular I had difficulty matching up the lip flaps for a few scenes where characters talk in the trailer.
Overall, I am pretty happy with how it turned out.
Director’s Commentary:
00:00 : I really like how the trailer intro turned out as I got to fill it with a bunch of Gundam specific jokes. I went with a red R style instead of the classic green just to be different. The actual movie is rated PG.
00:19 – 00:21 : A rather famous scene from Mobile Suit Gundam which is a bit of an injoke for fans.
00:29 – 00:30 : I spent a lot of time trying to get this to sync with the trailer audio. I think it is the weakest part of the AMV, but it does work.
00:48 : This particular scene shows up many times in Gundam so I was lucky to find a good spot in the trailer where the audio syncs up so I could use it.
1:04 – 1:05 : In the trailer, the noise is from a giant chainsaw. It was hard to find something that works given Gundam’s futuristic setting. I think this is fine, but I would have liked something better.
1:05 : Shout out to Mr. Skehill, long time fan of the show, for correctly identifying the episode this laugh occurs in so I could use it here.
1:13 – 1:15 : This scene actually ends about half a second too earlier for me. I could have stretched it out, but it would have messed up the audio sync. Luckily I was able to copy that half second from the beginning of the clip and it all worked out.
1:16 – 1:17 : I never liked this scene transition, it always seemed too abrupt.