Anime Fan Edit Techniques

[HammBrew]

I'm looking for tips and tricks when it comes to editing anime for Fan Editing purposes. I'm currently working my way towards posting my first fan edit (SAO Abridged: Ascending Aincrad) which turns SAO Abridged into a movie. As you can guess it's all anime. Now I don't have any animating experience beyond drawing the same thing on a piece of paper 3 times and revolving the frames over and over to fake an animated look and I want to be able to smoothly transition scenes within professional animated shows.

Right now I am working on a Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood edit. The goal is to make essentially two versions of the show. The first version would be FMAB cut down into lengthy chapters, sorta like making a string of movies that is the show. This includes removing intros, outros, credits over scenes, voiceovers, or scenes that otherwise don't contribute in a substantial way to the plot and just served to lengthen the episode to fit the episode length. The second version would combine portions of FMA2003 and FMAB in the earlier seasons to make a more complete story but would largely be the same after what is originally episode 11.

Now my main question is: Does anyone have experience removing text from anime? Now I can totally try one method I've been thinking of and that is to take a few screenshots of the scene (Because anime typically has a bunch of static shots this makes most of this easy) and photoshop them together so I can tweak it and then pan across an enlarged photo without the pesky words or credits getting in the way and without losing resolution by just zooming in past the text (Which is most cases throws off the framing of the scene).

I also want to know if anyone knows any good resources for finding foley or background music for well.... FMAB... But also other anime as well. For example when I was working on SAO Abridged: Ascending Aincrad I had to look up music from each episode and time it so that i could make smooth cuts that matched with the music. I am lucky in this one because on the SAOA wiki they list each song used in each episode.

If you have any other tips please share. I'm not entirely sure who I should be asking.

 

[That One Guy]

If by "removing text" you mean burned-in subtitles, that is really down to your source.

The ideal version would be using a source with separate subs rather than burned-in ones, but that's not always possible. You can use masking and a capture of a clean part of a given scene to hide unwanted burned-in subs if needed, but it only really works for scenes with little or no movement. Or you can assemble images as you've described in an editor like Photoshop and create a Ken Burns-like panning shot.

As far as identifying soundtracks go - fan wikis, youtube searches, official soundtrack albums on discogs.cok, and if all else fails Shazam or similar apps will help. If you need help identifying a specific track you can always post a clip and ask the community for help.

One thing I will throw out as a suggestion - if you have a Japanese audio track as well as an English dub in your source, it's worth trying to keep both in your edit. I have done this for a short I made from a French animated film, and while it was a bit more work because some of the dialogue was different enough that it didn't line up exactly, it wasn't too much extra work and the end result was worth it.

 

[ArtisDead]

It is very difficult to remove station logos and burned in subtitles.