Gedo Senki (Tales from Earthsea)

17th April 2006

Number 72 - Thank You Once Again

Well, from today, I Goro Miyazaki once again take up my pen.

At present, the staff in charge of key animation and artwork who have finished their work are taking production leave in turn. As a result, the studio has become somewhat quieter than before.
If it was possible, I would like to say to every member of staff going on vacation, "Thank you very much", but I keep getting nervous, or busy, and miss the chance to speak to them.
I would like to take this space to express my gratitude once again.

Last week out of a total of 6 rolls, we finished cutting rolls 3 and 4. That means that nearly 2/3 of the total pictures are completed.
In this round of cutting, because of the hard work of all the staff, we were able to go into it with almost all of the cuts completed[1].

When we were doing the first and second rolls, I was totally absorbed in the process. This time, though, I had gotten a little more used to it, and to some extent, had room in my head to pay attention to other things.
As a result of this I noticed various things afresh. I felt I was rediscovering and being impressed all over again with the workmanship of each of the divisions: animation, art, ink & paint, CG, imaging. Once again I felt embarrassed about my ignorance as someone who started off as a complete amateur.

To give just one example, there are cuts connected by action. This is where a scene is made up of a series of cuts connected by character action. When it comes to cutting these, you can feel for yourself that the scene supervised by a veteran key animator is well calculated and completely smooth.
This is not just in the raising and lowering of the arms and the movement of the feet, but that the rhythm of the continuing drama itself is well composed. This must be the way a veteran among veterans does it, I realised.

From the next entry, I intend to take a little time to write about my impressions now that we've finished the second round of cutting.

Translator's Notes

[1]: That is, all the artwork and animation for each 'cut' is completed before the 'cutting' or editing process begins. They are not still rushing to complete large amounts of footage before they can edit it.