Since my teenage years, I have been interested in anime, which is animated content from Japan. I have since become highly interested in the anime fan community here in America. Among the repertoire of items within this fan community are fan created videos set to music, usually organized along a certain theme or genre. These are typically known as Anime Music Videos, or AMV's. There are typically contests held at anime conventions, in which video editors showcase and compete for prizes based on audience voting.

My interest in AMV's sprang from the notion of a fan's ability to affect the content of their favorite anime, and I have singleminded pursued the video editing field with the intent of achieving mastery over such a field of endeavor. Over the course of the last few years, I twiddled with Windows Moviemaker (an atrocious but educational program) to make a total of three AMV's, whose quality I am frankly embarrassed with. This past year, however, I finally learned to use Final Cut Pro at Pittsburgh Filmmakers, and at the end of the semester, released the first AMV that I was actually proud of.

This notion thrilled me - I will finally be submitting an AMV of my own to Pittsburgh's anime convention. This is something I want to continue doing, and I want the AMV's that I make to reflect my skills as a video editor, and contribute to a portfolio that I can refer to for the rest of my professional career. Therefore, I plan to take what I learn from this class to create an online portfolio with which I may showcase my AMV's, any other videos I may work on over the years, as well as my web site design ability.

The portfolio will be simple, with only three sections - a home page, a contact information page, and a content page, featuring the videos I will and have created. As the number of videos increases, I may break up the content page into multiple sections, but right now, it is enough for one page to hold an "AMV's" section and an "Others" section for all videos that don't fall into this category.