4F began as a mini-project in my high school days (before I had ever \bseen\b a video editor), during which I was active in a couple of anime APAs and trading circles, and my very scattered and somewhat limited exposure to parody-dubs was only of a couple of early PineSalad dubs, and a stray Sherbert dub (the only one to leak into the trading arena.)
My equipment consisted of a camcorder and a mini-cassette recorder, both belonging to my father. The camcorder had a flying erase head, which allowed me to clip together video without getting the telltale ghost-bars most VCRs show when one tries to use the pause buttons. Another important feature was the ability to record on the video and audio tracks separately. This meant I could rearrange the video footage, and dub new audio over it.
At the time, the highest quality copy of anything that I had was \bProject A-ko,\b and it was a favourite of mine, so the first thing I did was copy the part where B-ko explains the features of her Max 5000, and dubbed over the audio to make a somewhat lame giant robot commercial. At some point soon thereafter, I went through the rest of the movie with an eye for what to use for a longer dub.
Although I didnÆt know it at the time, the copy of \bA-ko\b I had was "lettercropped," JerryÆs term for when a video has black bars laid over the top and bottom of the screen to make it appear letterboxed.
I wrote out a script for a 5 minute parody-dub, and planned to tag it on the end of any tapes I copied for people in the trading circles. It was a rudimentary story of mysterious aliens trying to get food from McDonaldÆs. Using the first bridge scene, a bunch of footage of Spy D getting run over by A-ko, and a final mishap with the shipÆs transporter (involving a great deal of cutting around), ending, of course, with the destruction of the Earth. The camera had no frame-accurate control, and a pause of several seconds between the time I hit record and the time it actually did. I had nothing but my sense of timing to get the video clipped together the way I wanted it. Needless to say, it would usually take several tries per shot, and I had to settle for "good enough" on several occasions.
4F version 1 (the one where Biglips rambles on about a basket of fruit) was in fact extremely different from the final version, added footage notwithstanding. The humour was almost entirely non-sequitur, Monty Python-style, of which very little remains in the final version. I had intended to make it sound something like a very bad translation. A-ko and B-ko were unnamed and short on dialogue, and originally they were the Fast Food Freedom Fighters, still chanting "Fast foodÆs bad! Fast food kills!" albeit in my stepmotherÆs conspicuous falsetto.
Two versions followed that one, one of which no longer exists and the other of which was never given sound. Those would be versions 2 and 2a. Version 3 was a collaboration between myself and Jerry, whom I had recently met in Japanese class at Delta College. He had been using the schoolÆs video editor for various projects, including \bShowdown of the Kamacheesy Ninja\b (a parody of martial arts movies inspired at least in part by the \bBilly Kwan\b shorts on \bTotally Hidden Video),\b and the \bVF/X Documentary & Extended Mix Medley.\b When I saw the equipment, I realised that here, finally, was a way to do \b4F\b right. Classes had taken time away from 4F until now, but the addition of new equipment was motivation enough to \bfind\b time.
It took a little while to learn how to use the editor, mostly by watching Jerry and asking how to do this and that. He seemed to like the idea, too, and after working with the script (a three-page thing handwritten on notepaper), we decided to expand it a little, and it jumped from 10 minutes to 30 minutes (mostly JerryÆs additions), involving a bunch of female voices (the first had only one), many months (actually about a year and a half), delays, changes of equipment, computer titling, full soundtrack, etc. This final version is Version 3. Of the original script, only the last page still exists.
\c04\b4F problems\b\c00
The greatest hurdle to getting \b4F\b finished was entropy itself. The video editor, being school property, was given maintenance just enough to keep it functional, and that, combined with the poor tape quality, led to glitches. First of all, the tape we were using for the master was a standard grade Maxell. Standard grade is not good enough to handle the constant recording and re-recording of video and audio tracks, as we would soon discover. The dropping sound quality we had originally attributed to the equipment itself, but after a little experimentation, we concluded that the tape was just wearing out. Thus, we obtained an Extra High Grade tape, and Jerry copied the master onto the new master on his home equipment. To compensate for the generation loss, I reclipped \ball\b of the video from the original \bA-ko\b tape (which was straight off LD). After that, everything seemed fine, and we worked more on the sound, re-recording a few scenes where the sound quality had dropped too far. But when it came time to make a copy of the master, we found to our horror that JerryÆs HiFi equipment had recorded a HiFi audio track on the new master. To the non-HiFi video editor, the track was invisible, but when played on any other VCR, an echo of old sound could clearly be heard in the background. We tried recording new audio on both audio tracks to get rid of it, and even re-recording the video track, but the echo remained. Another generation had to be sacrificed, by dubbing a copy on the video equipment, which made it lose the HiFi track.
The sound itself had some interesting adventures. The only microphones we had were cheap ones, little better than the ones that come built into tape recorders, and we had been using them all along, until difficulties with the video editor made us beg the use of the TV class teacherÆs equipment, which he very grudgingly provided. His suite was equipped with professional, broadcast-quality microphones, and we used them to record the scene with Yen-Zero meeting the Captain aboard the ship. Regrettably, the sound quality was \bso much better\b than before, we had to do it over again with the poor microphone to avoid such an obvious jump. At that point, it would have been impossible to redo the whole thing (though I wanted to badly), since the actresses were getting scarcer by the day.
I donÆt include all of the existing video of Version 1 on the tapes I send out, because after the bridge scene, nothing has any sound, which makes an already bewildering sequence of cuts into a visual cacophony without meaning. Another segment I include on the tapes (the one with the "infernal whistling" going on) is not a version of \b4F,\b it was just a sound test made by Jerry that I thought was funny.
As far as scripts for \b4F,\b (other than the ones in this booklet), there \bare\b a couple in existence, but none are complete, and what \bis\b in them isnÆt necessarily what youÆll hear on the screen, due to some ad-libbing here and there.
