Limits Out of Necessity
Posted June 12th, 2008 by Nick
A new member at Cherry Blossoms Falling1 had pointed out an interview of Makoto Shinkai on the Electric Sheep Magazine site, the first I've seen since Shinkai released his Five Centimeters Per Second last year.
What interested me most was the real reason Shinkai did without color in Other Worlds and She and Her Cat:
Makoto Shinkai: I made She and Her Cat in black and white more out of necessity than design. I made the film in 1998 and at that time it was very difficult to make colour animation due to the lack of available technology. Colour used three times as much space in the computer and it would also make the process three times slower and as I was still working at the time, I needed to minimise what is a long and complex procedure. If you make a movie now, it doesn’t matter if it’s black and white or colour because the technology is able to deal with it.
Another interesting thing Shinkai reveals is that he is working on a feature-length film for his next project.
I also like learning about Makoto's feelings about trains in his work:
MS: This is a question that I get asked quite a lot by Japanese audiences too. I am not particularly interested in trains themselves and I don’t particularly enjoy drawing trains. People do point out that trains feature in my films quite prominently and what I tell them is that first of all, trains are part of everyday Japanese life and as the main characters in these films are in their teens they don’t have access to cars. Though I’m not interested in trains themselves, I am interested in scenes of trains travelling through cities or countryside. The box-shaped carriages moving through these scenes are beautiful to me and I am attracted by the idea of total strangers being taken to their destination in these boxes. I haven’t seen a level crossing in London yet but in Japan they are everywhere and I have always liked the idea of this divide between two sides that the crossings create. For much of my life, from high school to university to my working life, I used trains myself and have many memories from those days.
I can't wait to see what he will make next!
- 1. Please ignore the banner there. If you don't know what I mean by that, don't worry about it...
Re: Limits Out of Necessity
It always interests me when film makers talk about how certain aspects were either compromises, accidents or something that just happened to work out - some admit that a take didn't go as planned, but the unintended result was so satisfying that they kept it. The same goes for ad-libbed actors' lines I suppose.
The simplicity of She and Her Cat always seemed to be an exercise in getting the most out of limited time and resources, which in some ways makes its beauty all the more impressive.
Speaking as someone who's lived in England all his life, trains aren't such a visible part of everyday life here - since Shinkai's living in London things like the Tube will be an integral part of going about everyday life but, like the quintessentially changable British weather, our transport system is a standing joke that we have a love-hate relationship with! I don't think trains here in the UK convey that romantic dignity that they do in his movies...
At any rate, I hope he gets chance to travel out of the capital because there are some really picturesque areas of countryside on this grey little island...level crossings are slightly more common out here than in the cities. It's always interested to hear an outsider's view of your home country, of course!