Part 2 - 4

The weather was cloudy.
We shot the “chase scene” which comes directly after the scene where the two main characters meet.

Going through the downtown area of Ikebukuro Station’s east exit, Soo Hyun and the guys run between buildings and all over the place. Tae Sung is really energetic. Being a born athlete, he seems to feel at ease when he is moving his body.

In between takes, he played at the near by game arcade, and got many prizes with the UFO Catcher game he was good at. I was told that he is so good that his hotel room is overflowing with prizes.

During break time, I saw a copy of an article in the newspaper Sports Hochi with the headline, “Marky, of High and Mighty Color Wins the Lead in a Movie”.
According to the producer, we were informed yesterday at 4 p.m. that they were planning to put out the article today.
Following the articles which went out yesterday mentioning Hong Kyung Min’s appearance in this movie, information on this movie started to fill the pages of the media all at once.

I asked Ren-chan of the network GOHEY in Hokkaido to help us write a guitar score for the music we were going to use in the film. Tae Sung needed to practice his guitar, but the preparations were not ready. I wanted him to look at the score as early as possible, so I asked my friend for his assistance. To Kattsu-san of “21 (twenty first)”, thank you so much!

After shooting the scenes with Lee Tae Sung riding the bicycle, in the afternoon, we went to the motion picture studio in Ikebukuro.

The staff did a terrific job in remodeling the studio on the fifth floor into a Korean style apartment. From the color of the wall to the objects in the room, they arranged the room paying the utmost attention to the details. Lee Tae Sung and the other Koreans were quite impressed, saying “It’s very much like a real room of a young Korean man”.
This was the fruit of the work done by the art team and Yona-chan, who is a staff/interpreter. Yona-chan is a junior of the Japanese language school Lee Soo Hyun attended, which is called Akamon-kai. She is presently attending a film school here, and with the dream of working in the film industry in Japan, she is participating in this project.

The scene we were about to take, was where Lee Soo Hyun drinks with his friend while talking about the future. The conversation between the two friends (chingu) go on and on. Although I cannot understand the exact meaning, because I had gotten used to the sound of the Korean language while on location in Korea, I was able to detect some mistakes in their lines. But it seems that I get tense in the shoulders while we are shooting without being aware of it. I had thought that my shoulders were better after the treatment I received, but it started to become painful again during shooting.

We finished off before 11 p.m., and went back to our hotel in Shinjuku. We had a meeting at a nearby restaurant with the producers that came back from Nagoya, reporting on such matters as the progress of the shooting.

On the way back, I could not tolerate the pain in my neck and head any longer, so I jumped into the nearby sauna and got a thorough massage.

I finally felt some relief at 4 in the morning, and went back to the hotel. I should be able to get some sleep now.

(Originally posted in Japanese on July 1, 2006)