Movie 4 Production Diary

[panoramacon]

Maybe he will start the continuity on the next movie so he won't be in such a crunch

So I guess this is pretty much it for the produciton diary then?

P

[bomhammer]

i doubt it. I think there will be some for post before he is done.

[Chafa-kun]

One more post about Kagome's skir and I'll just...
do something very nasty to him >__<

[Patches]

He's back! Finally! Maybe with the continuity done, he's not working weekends anymore.

Final director/supervisor meeting

I was in the studio in the afternoon.
I touched on the epilogue continuity a little.
At 1:30PM, S-san and T-san from Q-company stopped by.
Because the red tint on the master monitor that we use to designate colors had become too strong somehow, I asked them to readjust it.
The calibration must have been adjusted during the drafting stage, so they corrected it.
It was only a little bit off, but I wanted it the color we've always used.

After that, we rationed out the director and supervisor drafts for the last part, and at 6:00 was the final director/supervisor meeting.
In any case, the editing stage is the first hurdle and the completion is the second, so the schedule has become wonderfully TV-series fare (?)
Even though the subject is unusually heavy.

The meeting was completed at 9:00
After that, I had a discussion with the director T-kun about colors.
Then we checked the colors for B-part.
Depending on the scene, we finely adjust the coloration of the characters.
In this part, there are over ten cases of these minute changes in colors.
There are only two or three cuts here that don't use the colors, so the color designer's responsibility is great.

2004/09/27

[Chafa-kun]

More continuity!!! Yay!!!

Well, seems he still has more job than continuity

[Patches]

Gah, he just updated today, but I don't have enough time to translate it before work. I'll be back 9:00-ish Eastern time to post it. It's about selecting music for scenes! What fun!

[Patches]

I'd modify my previous post to add this, but then it wouldn't register on the updates, so... whatever. ^_^*

Music menu

In the morning, I went to get my hair cut since it had been left to grow for a half a year.
Now it's all better.

I got into the studio in the afternoon and immediately got to work on the music menu.
The music menu is a memo that keeps notes on the types of music to go along with each scene in the movie, (later there will be a music meeting) and this is the basis for the composer to write the music.

To sum up music into one word, the composer's personality and the director's approach can be completely different.

I seem to recall composer Satou Masaru-san (well-known for his music in Kurosawa Akira movies) writing something like, "Putting running music with a running scene is television, but putting what kind of feelings he's running with into the music is movies", but aside from that, judging distance from the characters and the like, doing something as minor as that can change the type of music to use completely.
Determining the weight of the music in specific parts of the movie is a huge task, so it's fun to think up the menu.
This time there are a lot of parts that are nothing like the Inuyasha soundtracks in the past.

As for putting together the menu, F-chan informs me that they're halfway through the main title (her face was full of confidence today), and they're checking the colors for A-part.

2004/09/29

[bomhammer]

He didn't mention continuity once

[Patches]

Yeah, well, for those of you who missed the continuity, he mentions it once today.

The electronic brain of the workplace

It's already been three years since we went from cel coloring to digital coloring.
But there's hardly anyone in the industry who uses cels anymore.

As for the Inu films, while the first film was done with cels, the ones from the second film onward have been digital.
At first, the new photographing equipment has a lot of constraints, and the colors tended to not be what we wanted, but now most of the problems have cleared up, so the new photographing has already far surpassed the film.
Though I'm still a believer in film, the allure of digital is drawing me in.

A-pro's Y-san was in charge of the photography in the past two films, and he made iteneraries for myself and the art director, I-san, who were inexperienced in digital.
This year, like with the past Inu films, T-kun and O-kun are working their butts off under Y-san as the photographing supervisor.
In contrast, when you look at those two, they go to great lengths and their combination has cleared up a lot of difficulties.
When I think about it, the visual image that gives off is unusually large, so we really rely on them.

We're in a section where life is difficult due to a completely altered schedule, and there are a lot of unsavory tasks that we simply have to nod and take, but A-pro continues to work tenaciously and the other photographing staff get helf from X-company and don't raise their heads.
(Umm... come to think of it, there are a lot of staff who don't raise their heads...)

A while ago, worker H-kun mailed me a document totalizing the progress on all the parts so far.
At times the animation was rough, but I also got some mail from animator Y-kun.
The rough draft of the poster and the trailer continuity were sent.
There were also some pictures sent of when I was consulting with friends.
I'm also writing this journal on the Mac at my house.
There are some strange things in this world.

2004/09/30

[Shamu]

Oh thank god! I can go on with my life now that the continuity is back!!!!!!!!

[Patches]

Ack! I thought he didn't update today, but it turns out he just posted later than usual.

Meetings lasting into the night...

I was in the studio at 2:00.
Yesterday, I worked on the music menu, which I didn't have on hand.
I briefly went over it until the end, and it looks like there will be about an hour's worth altogether (of music).
Hmm, the people looking at it are probably thinking it would be great to put a lot of W-san's music into it, so it's probably okay as it is.

At 8:30 at night was the last part art board meeting.
After that was the D-part color meeting. (I wasn't there)
The meetings ended sometime around 1:00 in the middle of the night, and after that was the D-part character color check and background corrections on the master monitor.
I left the studio around 2:00, but even at that hour, the studio was still heavily populated.
I went back with H-kun until we reached my house.
On the way, we chatted about the current state of things and where we'll be going in the future.
After he saw me off, there were some images all the way to H-city.
So does this mean I'll be going back to the studio at 4:00?

2004/10/01

Just how many of these things start off with "I was in the studio at X:00"?

[Chafa-kun]

these posts are 90% time and 10% info

[Patches]

The calm before the storm...

From noon onward, I was making a clean copy of the music menu.
A few days ago was my first time working on the G5 (Mac).
An unusual small pocket of time had opened up, so after dinner I went to see a movie for the first time in a long while (N. Shyamalan's "The Village").

Naturally, location hunting is an important part of live-action films, but sometimes animated films do it as well.
Location hunting is a trip made in order to gather information on suitable settings for a movie.
We went location-hunting for the Inu films 2 and beyond.

For the second film, it was Itsukushima shrine.
Even though it was the basis for Kaguya's castle floating on the water, it didn't appear that much.
Instead, the useful thing was a large temple called Senjoukaku that was built on the hill behind it, which served as the basis for the room Kaguya stayed in.

For the third film it was Inuyama castle, the Takeda castle on Mount Wada in the Hyougo prefecture, Himeji castle, and then Kyoto.
Takeda castle was particularly useful for the castle on top of the mountain.
Information-gathering was at the end of the holiday in May, and even though we had to walk from the base of the mountain to the top, we joined some local elementary school students on the hike and talked on the way up.
Everyone knew of Inuyasha, and there were kids among them who had seen the movies.
Naturally, hearing it straight from them is great.
The ruins of the sprawling rampart at the summit was impressive, and since the weather was nice, we had a breathtaking view below.
The bamboo thicket on Mount Arashi in Kyoto was the location of Inuyasha and Sesshoumaru's battle, and Nijou castle was the basis for Takemaru's main room.

This year, at first we intended to gather information at Izushotou's treasured island, Hachijo Island, but on the appointed day the weather was bad so the flight was cancelled, and we gave up on the schedule after that.
So, we hurridly decided to go to Kumano.
Since there were too many places to look, we were running around nonstop for two nights and three days, and still plenty of these places appear in the movie.

If we end up making the next movie, it seems like there should be some Hawaiian youkai, so we can go to Hawaii to do research, or no, some aurora youkai so we can go to Alaska, no no, some Mongol or Tibetan youkai, ahh, oh, or maybe some Incan youkai would be nice, and I think some Patagonian youkai... ehh, lets go to America, like in Las Vegas or something....

2004/10/03

XD If I made the next movie, I'd vote for Broadway youkai so I could go to New York for some "research".

And he didn't mention continuity once...

[Shamu]

OMG! Singing/dancing youkai! NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!! Sounds like he REALLY needs/wants a vacation (a place where there's no continuity)! I like the idea of Las Vegas youkai! Now there's a movie for you! Miroku would have a hayday with those show girls!

[B-chan]

I can already envision the title of the fifth movie:

"Inuyasha: The Fortress with a Million Lights and just as many Showgirls"