bmwracer wrote:
One backstory was why the delivery guy was late with the bentos... Another was how Tomoko acquired the iMac that she never used...
I remember someone posted about the bento thing. Never about the iMac.
I have some more translation stuff from the first "making of" vid. Probably pretty rough - we were trying to listen in a less than quiet room for one thing. Then there is the fact that I can't be sure he is relaying info I want. I told him the kinds of stuff I need, but that doesn't mean he recognizes things that may be important to me. Then there is the fact that he worked for some years in Japan, but that doesn't make him as fluent as a native Japanese (and if I had a native Japanese, they may not know English well enough to be really accurate either).
Anyway, he is what I have from the first 14 minutes:
As I suspected, about 4 minutes of it is introducing the cast and then there is a little bit about the story.
At the 5:00 minute mark, Juri is apparently being shown the sax for the first time and gets a sound out, using just the neck piece and mouthpice. My translator first said it was "I got it", then changed it to, "It came out".
During the director portion, he said he didn't use professional musicians - which could just mean the cast. And "professional" leaves a lot of area open. For example, the kids could have been high school players or even college in some cases. I don't think they were based on other things I read, but just keeping the facts in perspective. It is pretty obvious the main stars were starting from scratch anyway.
It also doesn't mean professionals were not used at all - only that the actors weren't professionals. While I think they did at least most of the playing themselves, there are spots in the movie that make me wonder if they had a professional trumpet player covering some high notes in spots. Hopefully as I get everything translated, that will become clearer.
Anyway, the director said something about how he though the actors would have fun actually playing and he thought that would project to the audience. To me, that tends to confirm that they performed the music during the film - would be hard to project the fun of playing if they weren't the actual players.
And I think he was exactly right. I can hear flaws in the playing throughout - including the end of the film - but they just seem to be having so much fun, I don't care!
Next from the narration was that they started lessons 3 months before filming began. That surprised me a little since, later in the video, they put up a screen title saying "60 days" before filming. I figured since they gave that plus another time of "30 days" before later, that that was when they started. Apparently they actually started 30 days earlier than I thought.
So far nothing said about whether they kept practicing after filming began. I suspect so, but can't tell yet.
The music teacher made a comment about how they could play by the time filming began. But how well? My guess is that they could play decently - enough to do the early scenes, deliberately playing a bit worse than they really could, but could not have played the concert music as well as they did yet.
Starting a little before the 12:00 minute mark, Juri is havingn trouble and the narrator says somethnig about how she wasn't sure she could do it.
I tried to find out what the teacher said during that which made the girls laugh, but my translator couldn't make it out with the noise where we were. He did say it sounded like he said something about there being "three of them" - there were 3 saxes in that rehearsal.
Just after the 13 minute mark - right after the screen says 30 days till filming starts - they show the drummer being shown things - apparently telling her the names of the different drums. Narrator said something about "auditions". Don't know if the drummer was auditioned much later than the rest or if this is simply out of order.
That's all for now. Important stuff (to me) is that they started 3 months before filming, clearly the main stars, at the very least, were learning from scratch, and why the director opted for non-professionals.