Movie 4 Production Diary

[Patches]

Ah, so he does update on weekends. At least on Saturdays. I was wondering if he would.

The world is becoming wildly out of balance

One day, there was a conversation between a certain worker H-kun and a certain supervisor S.

H: "What is the most essential part of drawing the continuity?"
S: "A pillow."
H: "W... Wait, you're not allowed to sleep."
S: "Okay then, time."
H: "Just that is a little..."
S: "Okay, breaks."
H: "And that's also a little..."
S: "Okay, the automatic continuity machine."
H: "Haaaah?"

However, the thing I want most is a Shikon shard.

The other day, I-pro confirmed the appearance of copyrighted subject matter (in short, an fanart) in A-zine from G-publisher.
I'm sure the publishing company was eager to post such a tasty image, but our side would like to keep themes that might spoil the movies covered up. Such is this line of work.
Last year, we did all we could to prevent Inu-papa fanarts from getting out.
(Sorry to all the Inu-papa fans)

2004/09/04

Er... .....

::wanders away whistling innocently::

[Patches]

Holy freakin' long....

DVD Color Correction

The "Sword of World Conquest" DVD went on sale last month.
But, there's a bit of a disappointment concerning this.
(This one's sort of a difficult story...)

The process of turning digital data into film, called "Color Correction (Col-cor)", is a very important job.

In the digital data, even if the cel colors and background colors coagulate nicely, when cutting, subtle differences in hue can appear. Col-cor is used to remedy these color differences.
It is possible to correct colors that don't match the original plan.
Since we look at each cut one at a time, naturally it takes a considerable amount of time, but it has a great effect and is something like the final hurdle.

Born in England, the one who works these machines is S-san of Q-company.
Even though he was always working through the night until morning (and being out of it until afternoon), he was always smiling and looked like he enjoyed what he was doing.
Seeing S-san's happy face washed away my tiredness, with his "Yeah, let's do it" sort of attitude.

Anyway, back to the Col-cor story.
Col-cor is done in a dark room while watching on a 20-inch Masmoni (does that mean "master monitor"?)
By the way, it looks like that Masmoni has been used yes-million times.
Complex calibration (adjustments) have to be done to get the style just the way we want it.
Just having excellent-looking colors would be wonderful, but we would also like to draw the subtle changes in colors.

We use so many colors when filming, and since there are basic differences in the representation of color on a movie screen vs. a monitor, colors do not appear the same.
You see the light directly on a monitor, while a movie has this light projected onto a white screen.
(If you compare this to looking directly at stained glass vs. reflecting it on a piece of white paper, it's easier to understand)

Therefore, Col-cor is optimized for when the image is projected onto a movie screen. (Beforehand, there are many tests and we establish methods with the film developer)

So, when we put the second film out on video and DVD, we watched it on a monitor with the hopes of fixing the color all-around.
Without changing it from the feel of the theatrical viewing, we reviewed it on the monitor and fine-tuned it to the best of our abilities, and that was that.

The point is, we released the DVD this time without doing that.
It is regretful, since it appears this limits the viewability of the DVD.

So, I finally got to the main point.
As general advice, if you can, turn down the brightness on your TV a liiiiittle bit, and also turn down the chroma (strength of the color) when watching, I think you'll get pretty close to the feel of seeing it in the theater (= my intention).

2004/09/05

Yes, he did take a whole page to tell us to turn down the brightness on our TV's. -_-*

[SaraInuyasha]

XD Well, that was amusing, I wonder if the IY 3rd movie DVD/VHS has that same warning on it...

[Patches]

Everyone until dawn

I was in the studio around 12:00 in the afternoon.
The director N-kun, T-kun, and the animation checker N-kun were all there.

Last year, T-kun stepped in at the last moment and helped out a LOT as assistant director.
I've asked him to direct the climax of this year's project.
But, since there has yet to be a meeting about it, at the moment, we're still waiting for this request to have substance.
But, I'll be pushing for it.

For some reason, N-kun the animation checker calls a lot of the people in the room aliens.
He's a friendly guy, but when he uses up all the memory and the data gets wiped, then its troublesome.
He's always getting offered work from all over the studio.
Naturally, he is an imperative member of the Inuyasha staff.

Today was continuity all day. Thanks to that, the end is in sight.
I'm on part nine.

Right now it's nearly 3:00 in the morning. I took the last train home, but even at this hour a lot of the staff stayed behind at the studio to continue working.
If only I still had that kind of endurance.

2004/09/06

There are too many N-kuns....

[Patches]

The sound of the wind howling outside the window...

I had my car inspected this morning, so I didn't get into the studio until 1:00 in the afternoon. This is its second inspection (in other words, five-year), but it's only got 19,000km on it.
The first and second time are both the fault of the Inuyasha movies.
When I was doing continuity just before Golden Week, I was just on the verge of getting the continuity updated before summer break, but with autumn approaching it's more like a scene of carnage, and except for winter I have no time to do anything fun.
I want to continue working on the movie, but I also want to goof off. Hmmm...

I was working on continuity all day.
We're working at a good pace getting the layout checks for each part done.
Layout is sort of like the blueprint of the scene, with camera alignment, character size and position, and all the basic information that goes into the picture, so it's certainly an important part of the filmmaking process.

At 10:00 in the evening we gathered together the staff and H-kun to have a meeting over the remainder of the schedule.
H-kun first showed his face opening day last year, and he was really moved by the audience's expectations and reactions, and at the same time didn't act shy or afraid when confronting the audience so I feel strongly for him.
Naturally, because of this, there are a lot of people I am going to miss.

2004/09/07

They're in the process of getting smacked by Typhoon Songda, by the way.

[Shamu]

Geeezzzzz! A typhoon now? And an earth quake just a few days ago! I'm surprised they're getting anything done for this movie!

[Patches]

Pond splash

As usual, I was in the studio at 12:00 in the afternoon.

Having completely switched around the models, the animation director for A-part, S-san, was unusually in the studio at 3:00 in the afternoon.
S-san helped out a little when we were making the second film.
He did the lengthy cut (took a lot of time) with the fight between Inuyasha and the dragon.
He really is absurdly good at action and special effects.
I'm not saying he's the only one, but with action shots like the opening scene, it's really fun.

At the raid that happened in June (before it started, everyone was together and making noise, you know, a drinking party), I had carelessly dropped S-san's hat into the pond inside the store, and he was just smiling while saying it was all right, with this whole air that he didn't mind.
People are great, huh? I bother them a lot. Sorry.

By the way, at that time, I'd also carelessly dropped the director T-kun's briefcase into the pond.
It's not like I was particularly drunk or did it on purpose.
T-kun also just smiled while saying it was all right and that he was suddenly thirsty, with this whole air that he didn't mind.
People are great, huh? I bother them a lot. Sorry.

2004/09/08

... XD

[Kuro]

XD

Okay, so is it a pre-requisite that one must be insane and silly to be part of the Inuyasha staff? XD

[bomhammer]

you are sure not kidding XD

[Patches]

Oh dear. If you thought yesterday's was silly...

Scary old men

While I was working on the continuity from home, my oldest daughter came to take a peek.
She took a quick look while I was working on Kagome in the continuity, and I heard her mutter,
"We've got 40 old men drawing little girls in sailor uniforms."

The animation director for part of the second film, S-san, is a resourceful animator in his 30's.
I think all that working on the construction and movements of Kagome's pleated skirt went to his head, because for the sake of research he'd stand in front of such-and-such station and intently watch the skirts of the middle and high school girls who walked in front of him.

Not Inuyasha, but a character designer whom I worked with on a different series, T-shi (late 30's), had the schoolgirl uniform go to his head, so for the sake of research, he was tortured over whether or not to buy the "Uniformed High School Girls Picture Book".

If you think about it (no, even if you don't think about it), they're pretty scary people. (ah, me too?)
But they all think they're doing it to make a great movie...

2004/09/09

[Chafa-kun]

Japanese people scare the heck out of me sometimes and...
this is probably one of those times

[B-chan]

Now when you watch the fourth movie be sure to think about all the research that went into animating Kagome's skirt.

[bomhammer]

you would think they would know after making three movies. i think it is just a reason to check out girls' legs

[Patches]

Film test

At 2:00pm we were at the Tokyo film studio for the film test.
The entire staff of about 30 people attended to make sure the colors on the studio's Masmoni matched the intended coloration for when the film is projected onto the movie screen.

The issue regarding the coloring from before has almost cleared.
The darker details weren't as smudged and had cleared up on the re-watch.

Inuyasha has a lot of fights with particular youkai in dark places.
(If a youkai showed up when it was light, it wouldn't be very scary, would it?)
Because a movie theater is a dark place where you sit for a long time, taking into consideration the effect on the eyes and whatnot, the color in general needs to be suppressed.
Because of this, the darker details are an imperative element.

After that, I went into the studio to decide on colors with color designer U-san.
We had already decided on the color scheme for the main villain and guest characters in July. Today was for the remaining villains and random props.

U-san has been in charge of color design ever since the first movie; Sunrise's famous (?) color designer.
He's always singing a song or eating something or the like, but he's a fast and accurate worker.
He also has an unusually strong sense of responsibility, and when we were in the final stages of last year's movie, even though he'd fractured his collarbone in a biking accident, he was able to handle working in a cast every day without rest for about a month.
Of course, after that he was grumbling that no one told him to "get some rest"...

From the start, a color designer needs to be able to find some common sense.
When watching a movie, the background and cel color combinations need to easily appeal to the average viewer.
That's fine, and even in the second and third stage it's easy to see that the movie is a fine piece of work.
Lately my position has seen an increase in important duties, so naturally this is an even more important section.

2004/09/10

[Patches]

Just as a random notice, Rakuten (the blog server) is down for maintenance today, so there likely won't be any post. Sorry for the inconvenience. ^_^*