The Days of Post-production

I was absorbed in editing work for the past few days.

This involves selecting the necessary cuts from the stupendous amount of film to fit the length of the film. It is an extremely important process which virtually determines the impression of the work.

Both the producer and I knew that even from the conception of the script, the film was too long – I had pondered over this for a long, long time, but there were many scenes that I just couldn’t cut. They were all scenes that were close to my heart that I could not bear to throw away.

Oh hell, if this is how it has to be, I could make a “Director’s Cut” version… I was secretly determined to carry this out, but this is too much to hope for. Actually, it is through this “diet” process that the “theme” begins to surface.

Perfection never exists. All we can do is pursue the ideal to the limit.

We watched the scenes over and over –
“Let’s cut this scene, and leave the other one.”
“Even if we cut a few seconds of this, I want to leave the few seconds of that other scene.”
“There is not much use for this scene.”
“I really HAVE to put in that expression.”
etc. etc. The clash goes on.

In the meantime, we wait for the rough sketches of the images of the trains of the Yamanote Line and the snow scenes created by computer graphics.

Yesterday, we finally got to the stage of watching the video rush which does not have the music.

And then finally, the theme song of this film by Makihara (Japanese singer song writer Noriyuki Makihara) arrived in its complete form.
How we’ve been waiting for this!!

This song is used as the ending theme.
We listened to it with the temporary end-title roll.
Makihara-san’s heartfelt lyrics mixed with his voice sank deeply in my heart.

The scenes from the shooting to the completion of the film…
I have seen it so many times, but yet, I again felt tears well up in my eyes.

The film still leaves its final stage.
We need to have music composed that will exactly match the impression of this film. Plus, we need to prepare sound effects that will add life to each scene. We continue to have detailed discussions to determine the type of sound or music to be inserted at each precise moment. We need to make the most of every method available to express the characters’ psychological descriptions, and create the greatest world of sound.

In terms of the images, we still need to make subtle adjustments to the film processing to achieve better hue and texture. Our goal still seems far away.

... even so, we have finally reached the stage where we are able to catch our breaths.

Our goal is only a step away!

(Originally posted in Japanese on Aug. 26, 2006)