Part 2 - 2

Part 2-2

Day two, and it started to get cloudy earlier than forecasted. Don’t need an umbrella yet, but it’s getting kind of dark.

Lee Tae Sung left the earlier than us to take guitar lessons. He needs to learn the song he will be playing in the film. The scheduled rehearsal was called off, so shooting will begin from the afternoon.

The whole crew assembled at the road by Tokyo Tower. The staff is great. I can just leave it to them to get the job done. In the meantime, I have things going through my mind concerning the script. I rather like thinking this way, in a somewhat noisy environment, just going along with the flow with the questions that come up in my mind. I guess I’m just not the type to sit and contemplate at the desk.

Though the looks of the sky is not very encouraging, the expressions and movement Tae Sung shows is exactly as I envisioned it to be. It looks promising. Tae Sung was shooting an action movie just awhile ago in Korea, but the influence of that experience is not coming out in a negative way. The private lives of actors who are good in getting into the character tend to be influenced by the roles they are playing. With Tae Sung, I have had many discussions on “creating a character” and “acting”. Though he is young, his ideas on acting are quite mature. What pleases me is that it’s not all talk neither.

From late afternoon, we started to shoot the night scene at the park by the railroad tracks near Takadanobaba Station. It is the scene in which Lee Soo Hyun (Lee Tae Sung) and Yuri (Marky) are alone together for the second time. There were more trains going by then we imagined, and we had a hard time getting a good take because we could not hear their lines.

The scene needed a relaxed mood, so we did not want a very detailed storyboard, and we did not want to postrecord it, either. But the “train” is a very important motif in this movie. I wanted to include it in the image implicitly somehow. The staff scouting for locations, knows how I feel about this. Which unfortunately leads to other troubles… (laughs)

It is necessary to have plenty of time for a shooting in the night time. Film, is an art in the visual sense of “light and shadow”. The night scene is indeed a world in which we can create everything by what we choose to light up from the dark and how.

No matter how great a job the art director does in providing props, we cannot capture it without light. The same can be said of beautiful actors. That is why it takes time.

So, by utilizing the standby time for lighting and art work, we did a reading of the script. The rehearsal we did with Marky paid off, and she was showing much change. She seems to have grasped something in the way of putting her emotion into the character. She is responsive, just as I thought. But it took some time to reconsider the script. Every time the word “Korea” comes up, we tend to become sensitive. I believe this is something this film cannot get away from.

Tae Sung was constantly talking amiably and making jokes, and along with the staff, he was trying to create a space with Marky. The two are creating a good atmosphere. This kind of communication is what makes the atmosphere of the movie itself. In this way, we produce a film, one cut at a time.

First was the scene where they play in the basketball court in the park. When I told them, “Do it for real!”, little Marky (her height is in the 150s, where as Tae Sung is over 180 cm) gets serious and goes to seize the ball. This brought out a natural expression from her that worked well. I could also see some of the intensity that is desirable in her role. The chemistry between the two also seemed good.

We were able to take a few cuts. Then, the last cut for this scene was the expression on Yuri’s face as she walks away. I wanted to see the many emotions that goes through her in the moment, but it is difficult to get it out of her. We go through many retakes. She knows why I am calling the NGs. It is one thing to be able to understand it in your head, and another to be able to express it. I can tell she is trying desperately to respond to my request.

When I was finally able to call, “Okay!” it was nearly 11 p.m.
“Good job! Let’s pack up!”
That was the end of day two.

(Originally posted in Japanese on June 24, 2006)