Anyway, this little idea of mine started with wanting to use the full-length (as in 5-minute-long) version of the Power Rangers theme from the 1995 movie, but then it occurred to me: Gundam X is the 1996 Gundam series, Power Rangers Zeo is the 1996 PR series, both are my my favorites from each genre (yes, I've been a long-time PR fan for some time now . . .), and both feature my favorite (but terribly underappreciated) characters from each genre too (Adam in PR, Jamil in GX), so I couldn't help but do this. It's an almost direct parody of the original PR Zeo opening credits, right down to using brief clips from it for the titles and certain other shots. And because it was short, it meant less time working with editing.

For all the editing and timing with this, I made note of how long each shot in the original opening was and where it began and ended, and then replaced it with GX (get it, "Gee-Ex"?) clips that either matched the original perfectly or were close enough to the originals that it would still make it humorous. For the parts with the actual "cast" (they were mostly matched up with certain colors because of either the color they wore or the color of their mech), I used screen captures for the captioning (as you can't add them in Windows Movie Maker, not even in the WinXP version >_<), and in place of the shots there of the morphed Rangers, I used shots of the various pilots' mecha where applicable (Tiffa isn't a pilot, so I didn't put any mecha in there). Of course, this will probably be funnier if you're already familiar with how the opening goes and/or have any knowledge of the first 4 or so seasons of Power Rangers, but there are various places you can download the original opening from too (a good place to start would be the Multimedia section at http://www.rangercentral.com/ ).

Although I did have to use varying-quality fansubs for the GX footage, not a single scene in the actual video itself has any fansubbing showing up in it. The captions shown are the ones I added in myself. The audio was a wav file ripped directly from one of the Power Rangers CD's (which, yes, I do own), so it lacks some of the sound effects from the opening seen in the series. The brief PR clips that were used here were downloaded and of mediocre quality (probably taped off the TV back in '96 and then encoded for the net), as I don't have a video capture card, and Zeo episodes have never been released to DVD or even home video for that matter. There was nothing I could really do about that. The default screen resolution for this video is 640x480, as that was the only way Movie Maker would save it at this level of quality (any lower and the sound would've gotten messed up--trust me, I experimented with this), but it looks a lot better if it's viewed at a screen size smaller than that.

Some interesting things to take note of:
-Yes, I did change the title screen to say "Gee-Ex" instead of "Zeo" through use of an altered screen capture (like what you see above). A simple crossfade into that at the right points, and it looks nearly seamless.
-Listen closely to the lyrics during the scene of Jamil looking at the photograph--I personally think this is one of the funniest scenes in the video because the words totally contrast his personality and expression.
-On the flipside, the lyrics during the scene of the Frost brothers are frighteningly accurate if you know anything about the GX storyline.
-At the very end, watch for the little "GX vs. Zeo Rangers" bit. It was partially inspired by the end of Doki Doki's "K-Team" parody, but I tried not to look like I was ripping it off. I instead tried to imply a little something with Jamil (yes, I'm poking fun at my own favorite character here . . .), as I have a few PR fan friends who've told me he looks a little bit like an early Ranger character who used to wear the same color he does . . .

Overall, this was a fun little project (one day to plan out on paper and two days to edit and create the titles and captions), and it was also the first on my brand new PC, so it was a lot easier to do than my previous videos on my outdated laptop. Just goes to show you that even after starting out with some more dramatic videos, I can still make fun of my favorite shows . . .