Okay, got through the rest of the first (of 3) "making of" videos.

Narrator made a comment about how they were new to band, which reenforces what has come before.

They practiced in the morning and, apparently, worked on their acting roles in the afternoon. Nothing about how long they practiced, but based on my experience and how intense this had to be, I'd guess a minimum of 2 hours and quite likely 3. Definitely would be a killer on the lips which explains holding towels up to them!

When filming starts, you might remember the "making of" scene where the 2nd trumpet player pushes her arm out in front of her in prep for the scene. Apparently she is told not to practice it - just do it.

That's a small tihng, but I think it fits the pattern of the movie that the director wanted things to be "natural" - thus teaching kids from scratch.

During filming, they were still practicing in the morning.

During the filming for the final concert scene (starts around the 21 minute mark), my friend said there are comments about the music for "the whole movie by themselves" and "did it themselves".

Since this is the most critical thing for me to absolutely confirm, I asked him to have his Japanese wife listen to that portion.

It was mentioned a couple times that they worked 10 months. He did point out that it could be interpreted different ways. For example, they could start at the end of one month and end the beginning of the 10th month and still call it 10 months. There is also the question of whether they counted time between the warm weather scenes and resuming in the snow.

Anyway, based on what I have so far, filming started July 25, 2004. The music teaching begane 3 months before so, guestimate about April 25th. Winter filming resumed February 17, 2004. That would be just 8 day short of 10 full months and certainly they wouldn't have finished in one day! So figure late February or early March for finishing.

Unless they did things out of order on the "making of vid", the last scene was done before winter scenes. No idea how long that took. We just know about the initial 3 months and that practicing did continue during filming. Odds would be that the last concert would be at the end of all that, just to give them as much time to develop as possible.

But with that scene out of the way, it would mean they probably had a LOT of time away from playing before they did their live concerts!

^ Wow, you're really dissecting all extras and whatnot...

BTW, are you aware that there was an official Swing Girls book released as well?

It might even have more insight on the film and its development/production.

EDIT:

I haven't seen the book anywhere, but would be interested.

I'm pretty much locked into this movie at least until I can get rough translations of all the "making of" vids - long way to go.

When I moved to Hawaii, I got into tryng to locate as many location shots from Elvis' "Blue Hawaii" movie. Did pretty good at that. But in spite of having to drive around a lot to check, it was probably easier than trying to translate this stuff! Mostly because I don't want to tie up someone else to do the translating. So I did it today and that was 8 days after the last time.

As a director, I also want to narrow down as much info on what they did - so even the detail about practicing in the morning is interesting to me. Narrows things down a little.

I notice things here and there which sometimes leads me to check other things.

BTW, if the book is in Japanese, I'd be kinda stuck anyway.

dabigkahuna wrote:

BTW, if the book is in Japanese, I'd be kinda stuck anyway.

That didn't stop me from buying it.

bmwracer wrote:

That didn't stop me from buying it.

But how do you know what it says?

I could get some help, but asking someone to go through a book for me to translate it is asking a lot of their time!

dabigkahuna wrote:

But how do you know what it says?

I don't.

I just look at the pictures... Like a Playboy magazine.

bmwracer wrote:

I don't. I just look at the pictures... Like a Playboy magazine.

Pictures can be interesting - just like the outtakes and "making of" videos. But I don't think I'd learn much just from the pictures. Vids give more even if I don't know what they are saying. Like I can see many things that let me know how they were starting from scratch on the instruments and also get an idea of how hard it was on them. Can't even get that from pictures.

dabigkahuna wrote:

Can't even get that from pictures.

True.

Having the book is more of a memorabilia thing more than anything else.

bmwracer wrote:

True. Having the book is more of a memorabilia thing more than anything else.

Maybe I should just learn Japanese!

dabigkahuna wrote:

Maybe I should just learn Japanese!

More power to ya.

If only I had taken some courses when I was in school...

bmwracer wrote:

More power to ya. If only I had taken some courses when I was in school...

Back when I was in school, we only had French or German to choose from. Oh, and Latin.

Just thought I'd stop by and let folks know that I have not been able to get more translations from my friend whose wife is Japanese because, unfortunately, they aren't married anymore.

I still hope to find others who will help me translate more.

dabigkahuna wrote:

they aren't married anymore.

Drag.

Anybody here?

Anyway, I haven't made any progress on translations of the "Making of" video or the "First and Last Concert", but I have managed some other things.

My main goal was to alter the subtitles to remove any swear words - can't show those to young school kids! There were also some typos in the movie. I had somehow managed to create an .srt file from the .idx and .sub files, but when I did that, it was just a really short portion. It just seemed to be a really slow process when I first tried it on the whole movie and I wasn't even sure it was working. So I marked just a short section to see what the results were.

This week, I wanted to get back to it and do the whole movie. Darn if I could remember how I made the short .srt file - not even what program I used!

But darn if I didn't find out that you can download files on line for subtitles and I found one in English for Swing Girls in the .srt format. So all I had to do was go through it and edit anything I needed to.

Next, I had to get it into the movie. I used VLC to play the movie. It lets you pick the subtitles included, but also select from a different file. That worked!

Next I needed to get it into iTunes where the subtitless would not have to be selected from an external file each time. I did this by using Handbrake on my Macbook - it has an option to select an .srt file, so I did that, essentially making a copy of the movie again.

Once in iTunes, I still had to go to the "Controls" menu and then the section for subtitles to turn them on, but once that was done for the movie, iTunes seems to remember the setting.

So, I'm all set for the actual movie now.

My second project was to get the "First and Last Concert" into iTunes. I had done it, but for some reason, there was no sound! In fact, of my programs, only VLC would give me sound. I tried saving a copy from that as an mpeg-4 for iTunes, but no success.

So today I used Handbrake on the original AVI file I have for the movie. I then did a quick test to see if Quicktime would play the sound and it did so I thought I had solved the problem. However, when I imported it into iTunes, there was no sound again! It made an m4v file.

Deleted the iTunes copy and went back and tried the file with all versions I have of Quicktime and RealPlayer. All worked.

So next, instead of going to iTunes and "Add to Library" (then selecting the movie), I went to the movie and under "Open with" and found iTunes. My setting are such that anything I play in iTunes is copied into iTunes. Should be exactly the same result as "Add to Library", but this time it worked.

Maybe I did something wrong the previous time - selected the wrong version of the file maybe - but I'm just glad it worked!

So, there's two tasks done. I then wondered if maybe someone had created a subtitle file for that concert or the "making of" videos. Searched various subtitle file sites, but no luck. That was disappointing since it would answer many questions.

Just have to find someone fluent in Japanese and English that I can convince to help me. Heck, if I could ever get good translations, I may be tempted to see if I could create an .srt file of it myself. Be a big project, but pretty rewarding too. I'm actually a little surprised that no one has done it already.

^ Ohisashiburi...!

Aww, I didn't know you were editing the subs for the movie: I coulda told you that subs were available and that you didn't have to reinvent the wheel...

I thought you were totally focused on subbing the "Making Of" and concert footage...

bmwracer wrote:

^ Ohisashiburi...! Aww, I didn't know you were editing the subs for the movie: I coulda told you that subs were available and that you didn't have to reinvent the wheel... I thought you were totally focused on subbing the "Making Of" and concert footage...

I was focused on the other videos for translations, but never got more from the other teacher who had helped me some. And now he's moved on to another school anyway.

But with these other problems out of the way, I may see if I can find a parent or even a student who can help. I know we have some who speak Japanese, but I don't know if any are really fluent in it.

Of course, the big problem is that the stuff is so long, thus a big investment in time listening bit by bit, then writing down the translation they give - and should notate the time in case I decide to try to make an .srt file.

If it was just be being able to understand Japanese, I wouldn't mind the time, but I'll be taking time from others. And, ideally, I'd do it twice to see which sections may have different ways of translating the same thing. If they match, no problem. If they don't, then it gets tricky!

May be getting some useful information. One of my middle school students speaks pretty fluent Japanese and I had her translate a few things. For example, in the movie at the big concert where Juri suddenly stands up there was nothing in the subtitles that made that logical. She gave me a couple options and "It's all yours" seemed to me to fit best. It's a fairly common expression when you are turning things over to performers. So I emailed her mother to see if she'd be willing to let her translate the stuff in the 1st & Last Concert as well as the "Making of" vids. Turns out her mother does tranlations for the university here and she said she'd be willing to translate them for me for free!

Have to wait and see if it actually works out. It's going to be a big job - especially if we try to make it detailed enough to create an .srt file for subtitles! I went through all the concert vid and created a file that just gave who was talking, when it started, and when it ended. Even just that took a lot of time. I started separating out each phrase (based on when they had pauses). Figured I'd need that detail to make the subtitles work later. But later I decided that was too hard - especially for the translator. I'm thinking it is better to just notate the starting point of longer sections and, when I get the translations back (assuming they are detailed enough rather than general descriptions), I can figure out by what she writes and where the pauses are, what should go where. At least that's the theory.

Hopefully, if she follows through, I'll at least be able to report the general information from each of the videos. Sure hope they say a lot about why they used non-musicians, what their practice schedule was like, etc. And, of course, lock down for sure exactly what they played in the movie (performed ALL of it themselves - probably by dubbing themselves, or did most of it, but maybe had some professionals in there someplace, etc).

Actually making an .srt file may be one heck of a long process though! We're looking at vids totally 3.5 hours or so and just typing in the proper format for an .srt file is going to go slow for me!

As I get parts translated, I'll pass it on here. No idea when it will start. And I'm going on vacation Wednesday for a couple weeks.

Not much to report. The lady doing the translating recently told me it has been a much bigger job than she expected.

She did tell me that from what she had seen, she thought they did do their own playing. I don't know yet if they said anything about dubbing themselves but I would think that the situation in a movie would require at least that.

I suggested she send me stuff as she goes rather than wait until done. We'll see what happens.

^ Your dedication is admirable.

bmwracer wrote:

^ Your dedication is admirable.

Well, at this point it is more about patience! Unless the lady tells me at some point she can't do it, I'm in "waiting mode"!