Gedo Senki (Tales from Earthsea)

12th April 2006

This is a supplementary entry while the director is busy.

Number 69 - Director Goro knocks on the wall

At about 9 o'clock I was hungry and was wandering around the studio in search of snacks, when I heard a knocking sound coming from the editing room called Avid[1]. When I looked in to see what on earth was going on, I discovered Director Goro staring with absolute concentration into a monitor and knocking on the wall with his fist:

"bam bam bam"
"rat-a-tat-tat"
"ba- ba- ba- ba- bam".[2]

Waah, has the director gone mad!? If it was going to lead to this, I shouldn't have complained about a little thing like him eating my Pringles...

That was was I thought, but in actual fact he was measuring the timing of the images and sound in preparation for cutting (editing work). What he was working on was was a scene where there is the sound of knocking on a door at night[3] and someone inside hears it and opens up.

How they knock on the door has the potential to fit nicely into the story. For example, whether to knock strongly three times, or softly five times. Then, depending on that, whether to make the current length of the scene half a second shorter, or a quarter of a second shorter, or instead to leave it as it is. What he was doing was experimenting with these things, rapping with his hand against the wall as he watched the monitor.

As I felt relief at seeing my reliable image of the director restored, I remembered my empty stomach again and unceremoniously devoured some chocolate (just what I had been looking for) that was sitting there, and left the room behind me.

Translator's Notes

[1]: Presumably named after 'Avid Technologies' who provided Ghibli's CG equipment.

[2]: Japanese onomatopoeia: don = sound of drumming » bam; ton = sound of rapping or tapping » rat-a-tat

[3]: I couldn't find an exact translation for Japanese "yoto" [夜 戸], but from context and comparing related expression it seems likely that this is what is meant.