Movie 4 Production Diary

[fflewddur]

"If we end up making the next movie, it seems like there should be some harlot youkai, just so Sesshoumaru can finally get his kicks . . ."

or

"If we end up making the next movie, it seems like there should be some self-adveristing youkai, so then the movie can pay for itself and cut down on budget costs. The current advertising endorsements are a pain in the arse. By the way, can hear me now? Good!"

;D

[echolalia]

I'm amused that location scouting for the third movie took them to a place called "Inuyama"...

[Chafa-kun]

Dog Mountain... eek, sounds weird

[Patches]

Ooh, this one's short and simple, so I think I can get it done before work.

Visitor in the rain

Today, for a change, I went to Mitaka.
On the way, I unexpectedly ran into the scenario writer, S-san.
Who would've thought?
Hasn't it been, like, three months since I've seen him?
On the train, we talked about our mutual state of affairs.
After talking, naturally the conversation switched over to the likelihood of a fifth Inu movie and the difficulties of making the story.
Of course, getting the green light for the fifth film will hinge directly on the success of the fourth film.
But for now, let's switch the conversation away from the next movie.

Yesterday, in the rain, the animation director until last year M-san stopped by the studio.
We went out for about an hour and asked about how things were going.
Lately it seems like the producers have been doing a lot of work.
When we got back to the studio, he gave me some candy.

The ending song isn't here yet.
This is becoming more troublesome, since I need it before I can do the continuity.
In that case, I wonder what this year's theme will be...

2004/10/05

[bomhammer]

Continuity is back ;D ;D ;D

and already thinking about the 5th movie

[fflewddur]

Ahh! And an ending theme song! Wonder how it will be this time?

[Chafa-kun]

He's probably planning the continuity on the fifth movie xDDDD

[fflewddur]

Chafa-kun said:

He's probably planning the continuity on the fifth movie xDDDD

Ahh, how productive! . . . wait.

[Patches]

Sequel...

The ending is usually the part that takes the least amount of time, but since we've been using all our energy working on the actual film, naturally we haven't had much time to work on it.
(though, while I'm saying that, last year the CG operator F-chan was working on the shading for swaying trees endlessly without rest)
So, although I'm thinking that this year everything's going to be different, in the entry earlier in this page, I knew that I was anxiously awaiting the ending, and as usual talking about sequels.

The staff credit is now generally sort of in thirds.
When I wrote about the second movie, the font was too small, so when the scroll speed was too fast it was unreadable, and since there is no shortage of troubles around here, I'd made it legible a little too late last year.
Looks like the same sort of thing happened this year, and they've already made about 30-40 pictures.

2004/10/06

Curse you for getting my hopes up with that title!

[Chafa-kun]

damn he got my hopes up too ¬¬

[Patches]

Woo, I'm back from Homecoming! ... 'cept it turns out I'll likely be going back down there again next week for the career fair. Ah well, in the meantime, Gasher left me a doozy of an entry ("Gasher" is Shinohara's screenname... though I have absolutely no idea what it means -_-*).

Tales from Earthsea

I was in the studio in the morning.
I was doing the layout direction check until this morning.
There are some cool cuts milling about.
The director's really screaming about this kind of movie, too.

I finished the preliminary continuity for the ending and handed it over to H-kun at the desk and photographer A-pro.
With no disrespect to H-kun, it's already half put together.
I rarely come home to a dark house, but it's also not uncommon for me to return home with the extra time to change my clothes in order to get into the bath.

I saw a number of parts of the demo photographing currently in progress, but the goal for today was to take a look at where we are now and adjust the schedule for the future.

I returned to the studio in the rain, since there's a typhoon, and checked various color samples.
The second film had 23, last year's film had 24, so if the pattern keeps up for this year, I've already counted 23 for A and B parts alone.
Forgive me, color planner U-san.

At 7:00, I called an emergency meeting with animator F-san.
He's a chivalrous animator who has undertaken 40 cuts at this point!
F-san was the character designer and animation director for a certain production, but with no disrespect to F-san, this year we've got a lot of director-class animators and designers.
I'm just trying to humbly say that I have a lot of respect for the supervisors... but I don't think it's coming out that way.
I'm talking about the enthusiasm of the workers and the connectedness of the staff.
Naturally the charm of the animators is there as well.

As usual, I took the last train home.
From here on out is a story that doesn't really have anything to do with Inuyasha.

Since I was done with continuity, I finished reading "Tales from Earthsea" on the train.
I first started reading the trilogy more than 20 years ago, and I really like the latest installment of the series (I say that and I only have six books!)
It may be a collection of short stories, but the works by this author (Ursula K. Le Guin) contain such rich imagination and wonderful worlds.
So many times in those stories, my nose stuffs and my eyes cloud up.
In the afterwards, the translator Shimizu Masako-san says, "I was told you can deeply trust authors who confront humanity... and I remembered how that quiet courage gushed forth", and I want to say that myself.
Even so, I think Shimizu Masako-san's translation of "Tales" is quite good.
Since a lot of famous fantasy books have been published since "Harry Potter", I wonder how long it will take for the creators to reap the rewards...
(I'm thinking of Kamibashi Naoko-san's "The Protectors" series, in which volume 2 was particularly amazing, I thought)
So, I've told you the wonders and awes of the story of "Tales".

2004/10/08

The title he used for the book was actually something like "Record of the Ged War", but I decided to go with the English title of the book. There's another entry that he made today, and I'll get to that in a sec.

[Patches]

Music meeting

Due to Tokyo getting a direct hit from a typhoon, it's like the wind and rain is trying to tell the studio something.
With that state of the world presented, we had a meeting in the sound studio of G-company.
The 650-page continuity was really heavy for 90 minutes.

The composer W-san, the sound director T-san, avex's T-san, and 8 other people were there.
We followed along the music menu that had been passed out beforehand.
Since this year, the music menu and W-san's thoughts are relatively close, working out the composition, details, and intentions went rather smoothly.
Most notably about Inuyasha and Kikyou and the climactic (?) argument over the weakness of men.
Since there are a lot of characters and fight scenes, it is imperative that the music makes sure that this all doesn't descend into chaos.
Again, the soundtrack alone is huge (to those looking at it), and since I can hear it, it has to have a lot of variation.
Speaking of ideal situations, when the film is complete, even though I want to write music, every year I have no time, and overseeing the conversion of continuity to video takes priority.
Even so, when I think about everything that W-san does when writing music, the end result this year should be interesting, too.
However, when I think about the heroic burden of having to come up with about 60 tracks in a month (that's, like two tracks a day!), I can't possibly say that optimistically...
Oh-ho, but my situation was the same (about 920 hectopascals).

After that was the casting meeting.
This time there was a broad explanation of the guest characters, proposals from the production side, getting ahold of the seiyuu, doing stuff with the schedule, etc. etc.
It seems that the final mix of the ending is almost done.
Since the demo take was a little too long, we'll be making a short version of the ending theme.

2004/10/09

Hectopascals? Isn't that a unit of pressure? Like, "Ha, he's gotta come up with 60 songs in a month? That's not pressure! 920 hectopascals is pressure!" ^_^* I don't know if they have the same "pressure" euphamism that we do, though.

[Chafa-kun]

Yeah, Pascals is the basic pressure unit, equals to 1 atm... if I remember correctly ^^"

Ugh... 2 songs a day. Whenever I try composing something I come out with a song in like a week... I couldn't be a score writer, I'd die... >___<

[Patches]

... tte, there was no post yesterday, so he makes up for it today by posting twice! ... Gah, and I have to go to work in 45 minutes, so I'll only have time to get to one of them right now.

Insert song demo

At 2:00 this afternoon was the editing meeting.
There were three people from Sunrise, one person from photography, two people from the editing department, and four of the V editors.
For this movie, the video editing for the digital photography is done by Q-company, and the digital edting done on a device caled a becam is sent out to J-company.
We send the edited data from J-company to Q-company, then Q-company puts the digital resources together, then deliver the finished product to be put to film.
Since the digital film isn't standardized, we have various methods to put them together (I'm familiar with a few), because of the software and hardware there are a lot of things that are readable and unreadable.
Therefore, we require the aforementioned meeting.

In the evening, I received the demo of the insert song from W-san that I had been expectantly awaiting.
I immediately listened to it.
Oh, the intro is the sound of exotic strings, and then a synth starts playing the melody line.
And then it suddenly goes into a beat of five? So I thought, but the next is still in four?
The mixed meter gives a mysterious feeling, but the melody resounds pointedly.
Yes, it's very good. It'll fit the scene well.
So, on to my report.
Pointed, somehow mysterious, and doesn't makes me think of the natural wonders of Japan, and furthermore, somehow a feeling of insecurity... it's perfect, isn't it?
Yeees, fear the W-shi!
It would be good for someone with a clear voice to sing this.
Though, even though I'm sitting here smiling by myself, one of the nearby staff looked in here with a dubious face.
"Somehow, that makes me feel bad."
... f(-_-;)

On the other hand, the producer I-san returned with the finished ending theme to the publicity meeting.
I listend to that right away as well.
It wasn't changed that much from the demo.
That means that there's hardly any adjustment that needs to be made to the continuity.

At night, I had a meeting with animator I-san about the ending and epilogue.
I-san already participated the third time, so he already knows the Inuyasha worldview, making it progress smoothly.
After that I went to studio 1, where I had a minor meeting with animation director H-kun about the ending and epilogue.

2004/10/12

[Patches]

And here's the latest one. Don't you just hate it when work interferes with translating?

Insert song demo part 2

Today we spent the whole day making the insert song demo movie.
I was busy with the continuity, gathering and setting measurements, and cuing up the music.
I was wondering when it would be good for the music to appear, about halfway through here... in this cut, I want them to sing this phrase... and therefore I've got X seconds and Y frames left... basically, trial and error.
In reality, that time was pretty fun.
Since we'd finally placed the cuts and finely adjusted the measurements, I also went to studio 1 today and had a minor meeting with director S-san.
Musical instruments for the children to carry were also suggested by W-san, as assumed in the original plan.
S-san, despite the minor alterations, still wore a smiling face.
Even though he has to be much younger than me, his speech is calm and quiet, somehow giving the feeling of his high caliber.
(I'm not bragging or anything, it's just that I of small caliber am well-attuned to those of large caliber)

Next door to the meeting room, writer T-san was at his computer writing up the script for the recording session.
In any case, since he's determined to get it to 650 pages, I get a bit of a shiver just thinking about that load of work.
And it's not just that, he helped me check my mistakes and other areas that were awkward.
(but it's nice that my mistakes were checked)

2004/10/13

Great, so all the kids have musical instruments now, too? ... Actually, I couldn't tell if that was just Wada's suggestion after the fact (like, "ah, man, we should'a given them instruments!"), or if it's something that actually made it into the movie.

But, the previous entry guaranteed that the childrens' song will be catchy. At least it wasn't in a meter of 6 (all songs in 6/8 time are catchy). But songs in meters other than 2 or 4 are generally catchy. You don't find too many songs in 5, though ("America" from West Side Story is the only vocal in 5 that comes to mind at the moment. Well, that and the Italian opening theme to Slayers, but I'm guessing people are more likely to be familiar with the first example. ^_^*)