Kuro
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The Evil Naraku Mini-Me
Posts: 176
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Post by Kuro on Oct 25, 2004 18:33:26 GMT -5
For some reason, the idea that he made note that "O-kun's head was being assaulted by an insect" cracks me up... XD
Actually, maybe the island is actually related to Tessaiga (who does after all, have its own guren-ish-ness), sincewe all know Tessaiga is the main character. Inuyasha is just there as transportation. ^_^
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Post by Patches on Oct 25, 2004 19:32:24 GMT -5
For some reason, the idea that he made note that "O-kun's head was being assaulted by an insect" cracks me up... XD Actually, maybe the island is actually related to Tessaiga (who does after all, have its own guren-ish-ness), sincewe all know Tessaiga is the main character. Inuyasha is just there as transportation. ^_^ Funny, I thought you'd make a comment about making the sword extend to fill half the screen. ^_^*
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echolalia
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Goofy Gaijin
Posts: 122
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Post by echolalia on Oct 26, 2004 0:41:29 GMT -5
Funny, I thought you'd make a comment about making the sword extend to fill half the screen. ^_^* Heh. Maybe that'll be my new sig: "What's hard and red and pulsates and extends to fill up half the screen?"
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Kuro
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The Evil Naraku Mini-Me
Posts: 176
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Post by Kuro on Oct 26, 2004 5:54:19 GMT -5
XD WHAAAAAAAT?? One little sword reference and I'm labeled as t3h Sword Innuendo Girl for life!
*hides the Sigmund Yasha topic*
Actually, my first thought was about Red Tessaiga and the "let's make the shiny stuff even brighter and sparklier" comment, but... well, yeah... ^_^;;
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Post by Patches on Oct 27, 2004 13:32:49 GMT -5
Don't let the title get your hopes up. -_- Voice guests
Yesterday was the photographing update of the first trailer. The colored version is still only half done, so the rest of the cuts are lineart. Once some rough editing is done at G-company, it will reach us after a number of days as VHS. Finally, once all the cuts have been colored and are in final form, we'll switch over to recording and dubbing. This trailer will play in the house (movie theater) with "Howl's Moving Castle" which premieres November 20th.
I talked with I-producer about casting. This time, for some reason, there are a lot of special guests. Like ___-san from ____ TV, the talent ____-san, and ____-san from ____ radio... For the sake of publicity, it's good to be busy, but it just isn't that simple at this point. About voices, if that's all I'm going to talk about, if you've got a good voice quality for a character and can act dramatically, then there's no problem. However, in reality, when you plan to get involved with talents (I hate that word), even if they don't have a good voice quality, it makes my head hurt. It's also sometimes hard to find guests for incidental roles like villager A. Well, I knew from the start we'd run into something like this by making new characters, but...
The candidates for the roles of the hanyou children and the Shitoushin have arrived. When we have voice samples from the actors (for the commercials, drama, and various other settings, plus a voice catalogue for their respective roles), we can go about confirming the voices.
At night, there was a meeting with I-pro from about the epilogue's art. In any case, it looks like this is the only place where the characters use their normal (base) colors.
2004/10/27 I was kinda wondering about that, though, considering that none of the movie 3 trailers contained any actual dialogue from the film. ^_^* The first two trailers didn't even contain any genuine footage from the film, either. XD
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Post by Patches on Oct 29, 2004 14:33:22 GMT -5
The first rush check
We've got the first part of the trailer colored. It's mostly the beginning of the second part that isn't complete yet, but naturally I'm anxious for the first rush check (... though, not as much this time), but it's mixed with nervousness at the moment.
The staff room isn't very big, but I see about 20 people including the directors, animators, color checkers, and other workers. With the glory that some cuts have exceeded expectations, things are starting to look up. The characters, movement, images on the screen, color balance... it's all looking good. It seems that all the staff are in the right place. Yup, even though it's nice that I personally won't have to touch up that much, it feels like I'm not needed (cry). As I thought, no matter how I look at it, my heart's in a fuss. One of the supervisors, T-san, came to me with a smiling face saying, "Inuyasha really is great". I feel the same.
I talked with S-san of YTV the other day about casting and the voice samples that arrived a few days ago and did some adjusting. Almost all the casting for the characters has been decided.
W-san mailed me the schedule for the music recording. Everyone in all positions have become busy. Early tomorrow, at last I'll be able to start tackling the editing.
2004/10/29
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Post by Patches on Oct 31, 2004 15:01:30 GMT -5
First half of the editing
Starting at 4:00 in the evening, I did the first 40 minutes of the editing. It was only five years ago that I was doing editing by peering into a dark viewer and cutting and pasting the film, but now it's with a mouse and keyboard while watching a monitor. Movies are still mostly on film, but the editing business has been completely revamped over the past number of years, and editors who work with film negatives are becoming extremely rare. So, that one valuable (?) person, Y-san is in charge of that for Inuyasha, making this film our third together.
Comparing the editing to live action movies, which have a lot of rough cuts that need to be pieced together and organized, animation editing is heavy on details. Until the cuts in the continuity are firmly decided, in order so that we don't do a lot of wasted work, there must be a definite decision of what to and not to include, so it's no doubt that the life of movies has greatly changed. (when you look at the film before and after the editing, this is obvious...) A movie with sloppily-done editing is no matter, as it is an essential process.
There are 550 cuts in the first half alone. Besides the keyframes (the main images), there are those that were photographed on cels, and those images that are a mixture of stills and animation. Following the initial action scene, there are really no breaks. Moreover, the directors, animators, backgrounds, color, and photography have all been doing their parts quite well. In this time of limited time, it's good to have this sort of quality.
There aren't that many keyframes, so the editing is difficult (too much of anything is bad, so there are things that I've been given that I can't do), but the still images have been subtlely inserted, and so that we can match the main director's vision exactly, we've improved on the major difficulties. At a certain studio, I wouldn't have been able to believe this sort of editing progress...
Moving on to the last half, the mood completely changed, and it almost seemed as if the action scenes had developed into a completely different movie. For example, the insert song plays in this part, and I can adjust the demo music. The atmosphere of the images is very nice.
Eventually the work was finished, and even though it was X:00 in the morning, it was earlier than I had thought. Up until now my abilities (not that I'm bragging or anything) were nothing to talk about. The staffs' resolve gives me a good feeling.
2004/10/31
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Kuro
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The Evil Naraku Mini-Me
Posts: 176
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Post by Kuro on Oct 31, 2004 15:35:02 GMT -5
And the mad rush for completion continues!!1 Time to start a "Doomsday Inuyasha" countdown or something.
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Post by Patches on Nov 1, 2004 23:20:59 GMT -5
Gah, I've got a bunch of stuff coming up tomorrow and Wednesday so had to prepare a lot, so sorry for the late translation. Retake excuse
I got into the studio in the morning and immediately went about the ending layout check. The ending is at the point where there are four cuts left.
On an unrelated note, while I was in O-town I tried paying the photographer A-pro a visit. It turned out he had just finished cutting the keyframes for the trailer. Usually while I'm watching, there's a content discussion between myself and the photography supervisor. Before this, that insect that had been assaulting O-kun's head had given him a good idea. After this, they'll work towards Thursday's editing and the photography of the last half.
When I got back to the studio, I had an excuse to work on the retake of A and B parts and the trailer. While looking at the images, there were some imperfections, and I had to pick up some of the inadequacies that did not meat the director's vision. This was a fine excuse to do a retake, since to make it complete the photography needs to be fixed. Even though there still aren't that many keyframe cuts, there isn't enough time to fix everything in order of appearance.
While in the middle of this, I got a call from H-san of G-company who's working on the trailer. As for the trailer, I had a request, so that's what we talked about. H-san also said that this year was yielding unusually good givings.
For the trailer check, it'll contain about ten cuts from today's last half parts (C and D parts). Neither this nor the first half parts are inferior to each other. Whatever the part, the staff is doing their best. I don't want to lose to the other parts, that seems to be the spirit around here (or is it just me?)
During that time, choosing of the colors and dealing with problematic cuts and whatnot, whatever the case, the staff managed to make short work of it. Even so, there's still about 20 staffers still working at the Inu studio.
2004/11/01 Like I said, I'll be out of town for the next day and a half, so anything between now and then will be late (meaning I'll be late on the manga AGAIN. Why, job-related prospects? Why must you always be on Wednesdays?). .... A gnat just flew up my nose. Now MY head is being assaulted by an insect (though, I THINK the term might have been figurative, like "had an idea buzzing around" or something).
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Post by Patches on Nov 4, 2004 16:20:11 GMT -5
Hm, the first line of this one already scares me Dream...
I woke up from a bad dream. (Sorry, this one's going to be a little dirty...)
I was throwing up in the bathroom, but it just kept going and the barf wouldn't stop. It was just wave after wave of nausea, making me keep going bleeeh bleeeeh. I think that the barf eventually stopped after a while, but then some sword-weilding warrior came and stabbed me in the butt. So at that point, with my body sliced in half, so my consciousness was sort of floating around in the space above my body. Then this huge stone hit me in the head. Even after getting clunked, it didn't hurt, so I wonder if getting hit with a hard object was purely subjective, and so I woke up while thinking about this leisurely.
Oh dear, by this time I've had a lot of nightmares, but this year's are completely nonsensical.
During the first year, if I was taking a shower, the hot watter would get replaced by shampoo lather and gradually go into my mouth. Naturally, I'd want to spit the stuff in my mouth out, but I couldn't, so then it would become hard to breathe, and when I finally couldn't breathe anymore I'd wake up.
During the second year, for some reason I'd become a salaryman and worked for a big corporation. My office was quite high up a skyscraper, and for some reason it was slanted at, like, a 45-degree angle. And it was covered in glass all over. My desk was next to the window, where the slope was the farthest down. It was even as high as the window. So, I had to put up with carrying my desk somewhere were it didn't look like I'd fall out. It didn't look like it would work, is what I was thinking when I woke up.
As for last year, I was floating around in the ocean on a tiny boat (like one of those two-seaters that you can ride in for 30 minutes for 500 yen). For some reason the boat was right on top of a huge school of sardines, so I had no control of the boat. I was thinking that I'd at least have no problem with food, but then a shark came close to the school of sardines I was riding on. And then it opened its mouth and started stuffing its face with sardines. The shark passed right near my boat, but at that moment, we locked eyes and it left. I was relieved for a moment, but the shark from before did a U-turn and came back. This time it was moving faster, and it became evident that it was headed straight at my boat (and, for that matter, me), but at that moment I woke up.
According to the psychologists Freud and Jung, our unconscious thoughts are very important. I'm no expert in the matter so don't understand it very well, but I've read Kawai Hayao's book quite a few times, and he thinks that dreams are your advice to yourself. The deal with subconscious issues that you aren't aware of, and so when your unconscious wants to give you a warning, that is what a dream is, or so is the jist of it. (of course, dreams aren't only about crises. You can have happy visions, too) So, remember this the next time you have an impressive dream, check up on the state of affairs around you at that time and relate them to the meaning of the dream. Well, if my interpretation is bogus it's not all that useful, so I need to think about my own behavior, and since hitting the brake fully is most effective, I'll command myself, so I'd think that would be mostly effective.
Now then, getting back to the original story, the dreams I've had during the final stages of the Inuyasha projects of previous years... no, there's no explanation for my unconsciousness, it's actually a simple dream to understand. It's an excessively simple-to-understand dream, and I'll just laugh at myself. However, the dream I had yesterday.... ummm....
2004/11/02 ... I had a dream last night that I was Kagome, and I had a magic cape that gave me wings, and I flew around gathering fruit. *nod nod* Relates to my everyday life completely.
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Post by Patches on Nov 5, 2004 13:30:18 GMT -5
Okay, no more vomit this time. This one actually looks halfway informative. Last half of the editing
I started the last half of the editing at 6:30 in the evening.
The truth is, before that from about 1:00, I was working on the editing for a different project. Although it's planned to go on TV sometime next year, it doesn't relate to Inuyasha. If you're asking why I was working on something other than movie 4 to begin with, it was just something that happened to run together.
With that settled, on to editing. Aside from the trailer, it has very few keyframe cuts, so it was mostly lineart editing. Because of that, instead of looking at a monitor, but rather at a sheet, I worked out the details while looking at paper that had information on the animation and photography. Naturally, there's a bit of a risk trying to edit something at this stage, but with the schedule the way it is I can't afford to be late.
For quite a while at the end of last week I was communicating long-distance with Y-san and I-san of J-company. The others in attendance were assistant supervisor O-kun, animators, and the director. We started at the last half of C-part. The meaning of the titular "Guren" came from this scene, and it's a very key part of the story. We proceeded nonstop from the last half of C-part, through D-part, and on to the end of E-part, where some amazing action scenes come into play. The action scenes are a huge burden on the workplace, so we originally intended to cut a few of them out, but as for the opening, it really became something marvelous. Naturally, the staff's effort has been marvelous as well. Even so, we've been making each one give their all, and it's turned out wonderfully. H-kun at the desk said, "We won't be able to gather a staff like this one ever again", and that's the reality of this film. This won't be a troublesome movie at all, is the feeling. However, if it will all be colored at this rate, is another story...
We went from E-part into the ending. I wrote this before, but immediately following the last line of the movie is the intro to "Rakuen", and it's all good.
Eventually, the editing finished around 4:00 in the morning. In the beginning there were a lot of problems, but somehow everything was able to go as planned, much to I-producer's relief. Starting with the daytime editing, 15 hours of staring at a monitor has made my nerves a little sensitive.
Going back to the studio, the animators, color choosers, and about 15 other people are still working. After checking the ending images that were on my desk, I took the first train home.
2004/11/04 ... Okay, now I'm even MORE convinced that "Guren" is someone's name. ... And why is this one dated yesterday? It only went up an hour ago...
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Post by Patches on Nov 6, 2004 0:48:03 GMT -5
Sigh... I ask why that one didn't carry today's date, and then I come home from work and find that he's updated again. At least the topic is more along the lines of what most people here are interested in (which is why I figured I might as well go through it yet tonight) Insert song recording
I got up earlier in the morning, and since I had a task to take care of, I left the house. I was headed for the recording studio, A-company. That's because this evening was the recording of the insert song. The insert song is performed in the movie by the seiyuu O-san.
When I arrived at the studio, W-san was having a meeting with Y-san. Y-san is the recording engineer that we've met with every year ever since the beginning of the Inu films, and W-san has the utmost confidence in him. He's got a great smile. This is the first time I've met the seiyuu O-san. She's appeared as a guest character in the Inuyasha TV series before, and is an acquaintence of C-part's director, S-kun. That S-kun was in the middle of busily running around the workplace and giving his opinions.
After I simply had a meeting with W-san, O-san, and S-kun, we finally got on with the recording. I've been present at numerous music recordings before, but this is my first time present at a vocal recording. It was also the first time for S-kun and YTV's S-san.
The image was a totally honest and clear voice. It was different from singing in her normal voice, since she had to sing it in the character's voice, and even though I think it took a while, on the second take she finally got it. I think O-san is great, and this is the first time W-san gave such detailed instructions. He'd say: "Go to mezzo forte in measure 12..." "Make that last hold longer" "Try making it sound more like a prayer in measure 8" "Let's try doing that 'hikari~' part a little louder" etcetera. Singing sure is difficult.
The feelings contained in it were such a wonderful take, but being too good in relation to the character makes it no good, is what it's like. In short, to sing a little less professionally is what the request was, but on the final take, it was all clear. In the end, there ended up being 7 to 8 takes. O-san, good work.
YTV's S-san is in the middle of planning the setup for the movie premiere. I wonder when there's going to be an official announcement?
2004/11/05 And now the question is: Who is O-san? I guessed "she" on the pronoun, given that we know the song is sung by one of the kids, and kids are almost always voiced by girls. There was also the clue that O-san has appeared in the TV series before as a guest character. My guess? Ohtani Ikue. She played Koryuu in the episode with Souten. The only thing that makes me a little uncertain is the blogger's statement that he'd never met her before, and Ohtani is pretty high-profile (she's the voice of Pikachu, for crying out loud. Not to mention she was Merle in Escaflowne, another Sunrise project). The stupid thing is, as soon as he said that O-san played a guest character before, my mind immediately snapped to Ohtsuka Akio (Inu-papa), but then realized that he wasn't a guest in the TV series. ^_^*
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Post by Patches on Nov 8, 2004 12:59:29 GMT -5
The first trailer
At 3:00 in the afternoon was the first trailer. There are a lot of staff busily working on all the parts in the studio; probably about 8 people. Aside from this, the art and photography for the Toho ad, and about 20 other people at G-company in the Tokyo studio went to a private showing.
The first trailer is the first print of the finished product. In the days of film, whenever an episode of the TV series was completed there would be a preliminary private showing, but with digital, since the video is ported directly to the video on the TV, this was entirely not possible. Now there's only a little time left before the private showing of the movie.
It's not a problem to show the trailer film, though. It'll be playing with "Howl" in theaters in ten days.
At 8:00 was the rush check of the first half parts. Today I went through about 90 cuts. While watching the monitor with the respective staff, we were discussing reasons to do retakes of this and that. Not exempting the trailer, this time there are a lot of neat and cool cuts. Since it's a package deal with Hamtaro, the length of the trailer had to be cut short, but the trailer's just the tip of the iceberg.
2004/11/08 .... Well, if the trailer's done... when are we gonna get to see it, huh? ;_; Hopefully this means it'll be up on the website fairly soon. *checks* Not there yet, though...
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Kuro
Full Member
The Evil Naraku Mini-Me
Posts: 176
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Post by Kuro on Nov 12, 2004 14:20:35 GMT -5
I wonder if they're waiting until they release it with Howl next weekend. I think you were the one who mentioned that...
*goes up to reread previous journals*
Ah! There it is.
So hopefully next weekend we'll have... more vaguely informative (yet yummy-looking!) trailers. And maybe we'll get to hear a snippet of Rakuen, too. ^_^;; I can't wait to hear that song!
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Post by e chan21 on Nov 12, 2004 17:43:16 GMT -5
Kuro, you're right! Yatta! Next weekend. My birthday also happens to be next weekend. Double celebration Woo hoo! Yeah, I hope to hear Rakuen too, although it's also likely that they will use the hanyou kids song for the trailer.
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