Filming in Tokyo

So it has been a busy few weeks lately but I have just landed in Tokyo, Japan for my next feature. This is a Japanese basketball movie with Japanese actors in their native language. The film tells the story of a small town basketball team past their prime who is brought back together by their old coach to road trip up to Tokyo for a big basketball tournament. The film is a comedy, revolving primarily around the road trip the team takes from the Southern end of Japan into the big city, so it's 90 pgs road trip with moments of action during the basketball games. The producer is American (living in Japan now) and the director is coming in from the Sates as well. I also had the privilege of bringing my 1st AC, Richard Card, out with me and working with the best gaffer Tokyo has to offer, Yuji Wada.

the famous Shibuya crossing

Roppongi - the international party district

In the two weeks before we flew out, there was quite a bit of preparation. We spent our last three days in the States prepping our camera package at Indie Rentals. I have never brought any equipment overseas, so it's been a learning experience. The shipping is being handled by a private company, but there is a complicated process of acquiring a Visa for the equpment (called a Carnet) and filling out detailed forms of everything and its value for customs. The whole camera package will have to be walked through customs on both ends of its flight to hope that nothing gets held up.

prepping at Indie Rentals

We are choosing to bring out the camera from the States because we were able to get a new Mysterium-X and the rental prices are significantly cheaper than in Tokyo. I didn't realize just how funny the whole RED MX situation was until I tried to find one. Both Panavision and Clairmont couldn't nail down an MX, but Indie Rentals who I've used several times for smaller projects had several MX's ready to go! Obviously digital film making is moving away from the larger camera houses into the smaller ones. With that said, Indie is also providing us with quite a comprehensive camera package. I usually won't be stubborn about getting the latest and greatest, but I've heard so many good things about the MX and I know we'll have several situations in which we'll need all the light we can get.

Here is a quick rundown of our camera:
- RED Mysterium-X Camera
- Zeiss Super Speeds (18, 24, 35, 50, 85, 100 t2.1)
- Anginieux 24-290 f2.8 zoom
- Bartech
- Clip-on, 4x5, and 6x6 matte box
- Full ND sets with Hot Mirror, Grad ND's (hard and soft), full streak set
- CamWave wireless HD transmitter
- 7" RED onboard, 8.4" Panasonic onboard, 20" Sony monitor

I am pretty excited to work with such a complete package for the full show.

Richard's super comprehensive breakdown of our package

The crew I am working with is all Japanese, so as we landed and went straight into a production meeting with 25 Japanese speaking crew, it was a little bit overwhelming to say the least. But the production has provided me with an interpreter to communicate with the crew that doesn't understand English well enough. Although I've already picked up a few phrases, I'm sure this will come in handy during the rush of things on set. While on our first few location scouts, I've relied on translation very heavily when talking with some of the crew (line producer, production designer, etc.) which is something I've never really had to do before. We have also made sure to hire key crew that are fluent in English, such as the AD, Gaffer, 2nd AC, etc... I was a little apprehensive about having to rely on an interpreter, but its turned out to be a pretty straight forward and painless process. The majority of discussion that goes on in Japanese doesn't get translated, but it works out for the best because I'm not hearing all the extraneous discussion and drama that goes on on a film set!

on the plane!

getting close finally! (photo courtesy of Richard)

We have a very reasonable schedule on this shoot: 2 weeks Prep in Tokyo, 5 weeks shooting, and 1 week of vacation! Because June is the rainy month, the production has scheduled a bit more time than really necessary in case we are rescheduling to fight the rain. At this point we're looking at between 25-30 days of filming, which is a huge step for me. The longest shoot prior to this was my first feature at 15 days. Otherwise, its already day 3 of prep and we've been packing in the location scouts. Because the film takes place along the country side, a large amount of our locations are an hour or two outside of central Tokyo. So the crew of about 15 people piles into what they call a microbus (pictured below) and heads out for the day to tech scout all the locations.

scouting roads for the driving sequences

yes, they rock the variety pack of chips here too!

There are several differences with how a film set works over here in Japan versus in America. The roads are much smaller here so there are hardly any large vehicles. Grip and electric comes in several smaller trucks, rather than one giant cube truck. 2nd AC's are focus pullers while 1st AC's are more of an overall manager of the camera dept. The Electrics handle both lighting and grip, and what we call Grips are only camera grips in Japan. For example, they handle all ways of rigging the camera - dolly, crane, any special rigging our mounting. But because most of our crew has worked with Americans before, they are familiar with the differences and adapting to whatever we are comfortable with.

Wada-san standing in for light

one of the basketball gyms we plan on using

One of the most exciting aspects of this production is the phenomenal crew we are working with here in Tokyo. I was recommended a gaffer several weeks ago by another DP, and once I saw his list of credits, I had to get him. His name is Yuji Wada (a.k.a. Wada-san) and he is locked as gaffer. Some of his credits include Lost in Translation, Tokyo units of Fast and the Furious, Babel, and Inception, all great work. So I am looking forward very much to working and learning from Wada-san. The camera grip team shares many of the same credits, so everyone here is familiar with each other and has worked together a good amount.

the farm we will be shooting at for 4 days

not looking forward to the smell of this location!

For the rest of prep we will be mostly location scouting. Some locations we are still choosing, others we immediately like and it becomes more of a tech scout, going over ideas with gaffer and production designer. The director is arriving one week before we start filming due to schedule conflicts, so scouts have been less blocking and camera oriented than usual. We have a few days of camera prep once the gear arrives from the States in which the AC's will have a chance to work a bit together before being thrown into production. We also intend on having a test shoot where we can make sure we are all comfortable and familiar with how our gear is working. The other purpose for the test shoot is to have some footage to run through our workflow. This is a whole nother beast I will address in a later post, but has been one of the main areas of attention we have been researching.

me looking very American at Shibuya crossing (courtesy of Richard)

Things couldn't be going better, this city and my experiences on this project have exceeded my expectations. I'm definitely excited to be calling Tokyo home for the next two months!