Gedo Senki (Tales from Earthsea)

27th April 2006

Number 80 - The Production Team

'Production' means the department responsible for the progress of production. As the name says it plays a planning role, linking the various levels of production together and pushing them along. All of the members of the Ghibli production team, beginning with Mr. Watanabe[1], are familiar faces from the production diary.

Their work is pretty hard. Basically it's a job where they have to talk about the schedule to people even when they don't want to. Sometimes they receive complaints. They bow their heads, listen to grumbles, give encouragement, get stomach trouble from the pressing schedule, and sometimes they have to just sit there and wait. Because of the nature of the work, it's taken for granted that it will be done well and the people doing it get no thanks.

Even I sometimes want to grumble. At those times, they are the ones who listen to me. That has really helped me out a lot.
Thank you.

In the midst of a rather heavy schedule, the fact that the production is still progressing more on less on schedule is of course due to the hard work of all the staff. Behind them, however is the frantic support of the production team.

As we now enter the home stretch, the production team's stress levels reach their hide tide mark. Every day we join hands in our hearts[2], to say that we'll stick together to the end.

Translator's Notes

[1]: As far as I know this is Hiroyuki Watanabe, credited as production manager on Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle, and as a producer of the short film Ghiblies Episode 2.

[2]: That is, emotionally they have the feeling that they are joining hands.