Gedo Senki (Tales from Earthsea)

30th May 2006

Number 96 - Bunta Sugawara is the Bird[1]

Today we finished voice recording.

The last person to arrive for recording was Mr. Bunta Sugawara who plays the Archmage Sparrowhawk (Ged). Over two days he recorded all of his lines for us.

What I wanted for Sparrowhawk's voice was an "unlikely voice".
Not an obviously heroic, Archmage-like voice, but, I thought, a voice with presence, the voice of someone who had gained experience from travelling and who had stood on foreign shores. Difficult for a young person to approach, but tolerant and broad minded, he doesn't give people the sense of his position as the Archmage. That way of talking.

Mr. Sugawara's voice and his performance were the exactly what I was looking for.

As voice recording progressed, I had the impression that Sparrowhawk's strong legs, with their overwhelming sense of presence, were striding forward step by step. And in the middle of this rough, unrefined image, I could sometimes see hints of gentleness. This was really attractive.

I really want to thank you very much Mr. Sugawara.

Now the images, music, voices, special effects audio - the raw material is all in. Now the mixing begins.
Because the process of taking various materials and mixing them together to make one thing is often called mixing[2], I feel strangely impressed by it.
The feeling is that at last we have reached the beginning of the end.

Translator's Notes

[1]: I think this is because he plays "Sparrowhawk", but the word Japanese "tori" in Katakana (which means bird), might have some other slang meaning I don't know of.

[2]: This may seem a strange sentence, but "Mix" (written in English in the text) is a foreign loan word, so what the director is doing is restating its meaning in ordinary Japanese. Japanese people often use English words for effect.