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Information

• Member: Khandreia
• Studio: Vulture Studios
• Title: Captain Jamil
• Premiered: 2001-09-13
• Categories:
  • Drama
  • Character Profile
  • Serious
• Song:
  • Sarah Brightman Captain Nemo
• Anime:
  • Gundam X
• Comments: Every AMV maker has to start somewhere, and this was my start. But although it was the very first video I'd made, it still remains one of my favorites. Then again, it probably helps that I decided to make it about my most favorite anime character of them all (if you haven't been to any parts of my site yet, I'm the self-proclaimed Jamil no Miko), so my heart was really in it. And to the best of my knowledge, this was also the very first GX video to be made about a particular character rather than featuring mainly mecha action with a sprinkling of the various characters here and there. However, aside from the fact that Jamil is my most favorite character, all the other GX music videos I'd found before making this barely featured him in them for more than a couple seconds combined, and considering just how important he is to the story, I felt that to be a bit unfair. How are people going to be able to understand an underappreciated character for who he is if no one ever shows him for who he is? That was my main goal with this video. And as a result, I've tried to tell a story here, starting with one of the flashbacks to the 7th Space War, eventually moving into the Sea of Lorelei story arc (where about half of my footage in this comes from), and closing it out with scenes from the final episodes. So in other words, yes, this video is rife with plot spoilers.
  
  When it comes to the music, I think it should be obvious why I chose it, as Jamil is of course the captain of the Freeden and could even be seen as a bit of a modern-day/post-apocalyptic version of the legendary Captain Nemo as well. Heck, when I first bought the CD the song is on, I hadn't even listened to the song yet to immediately associate it with Jamil, and when I finally did hear it, I knew I eventually had to make a music video using it one of these days. I guess you could just say it was meant to be. ^_^ But even still, you'll find that I did try to match up scenes with the lyrics and tempo as much as possible while still working to tell my story.
  
  In terms of the technical aspects of this . . . because Windows Movie Maker is rather prone to throwing temper tantrums, I was occasionally working blindly with some of the editing work here despite having the timing all planned out on paper, so I guess I got pretty lucky in that many of the scenes ended up timed as well as they were. Some interesting things to watch for in this respect include one scene in which Jamil appears to be speaking along with part of the lyrics, the GX's head getting shot off in the second flashback on the cymbal crash, the GX Divider firing its beam machine gun and hitting enemy mobile suits on the beats, and my personal favorite that I actually intended to do, the GX Divider firing its Harmonica Cannon right on the beat.
  
  When I first did this video, it had been saved in an utterly crappy quality, as that was all that Movie Maker would let me do at the time for some unexplained reason. But when I was able to finish up my second video at a higher quality later on, I pulled this back out and saved it at the quality it is now while changing absolutely nothing in terms of footage. And boy, did that make a difference. If you've only seen the original version of this from September, take a look at it now, and you'll see what I mean. The action is smoother, the picture is clearer, and the audio (despite being an mp3 I ripped from my CD) is much better than before too. I know it's not perfect, but hey, what else can I do when all that can ever be found in terms of GX footage is varying-quality fansubs? Granted, the subtitles can be a bit cumbersome, but I've actually been told that the subtitling helps to tell some of the story, giving it a sadder and more "angsty" feel, so I guess I won't complain too much about that. But last I checked, it's becoming pretty popular within the all-around Gundam community since its September debut, so I must've done something right here. Not bad for my very first attempt, eh?
  
  9/9/2002: Because I want to keep the bandwidth for my site relatively stable, I've removed this video from my site indefinitely. I'f you'd still like to get it, I suggest either looking around on file-sharing programs, or you can e-mail me and we can arrange something from there.