bmwracer wrote:

Ouch! Coincidentally, our office manager has been out this week with gallstones.

Got home finally. Better trip than I expected - never had even medium pain. All very light and I used fewer pills than expected. Main thing is that I'm home and can deal with it better.

Unfortunately, plugging my laptop back into my system (big monitor, external keyboard/mouse, external monitor, etc - nothing except the computer worked! Apparently my USB hub is shot, but it doesn't explain the monitor which is not plugged into the dock - it goes right into the computer.

Well, too tired to mess with it more tonight.

dabigkahuna wrote:

Got home finally. Better trip than I expected - never had even medium pain. All very light and I used fewer pills than expected. Main thing is that I'm home and can deal with it better. Unfortunately, plugging my laptop back into my system (big monitor, external keyboard/mouse, external monitor, etc - nothing except the computer worked! Apparently my USB hub is shot, but it doesn't explain the monitor which is not plugged into the dock - it goes right into the computer. Well, too tired to mess with it more tonight.

Now you can spend some time reading about BitTorrent.

bmwracer wrote:

Now you can spend some time reading about BitTorrent.

Well, got my computer problems solved - the big one (the monitor) was solved just by unplugging it from the power strip and plugging it back in. Weird, especially since the power strip was off while on vacation. Only thing that I never got working was my external keyboard so I bought an Apple bluetooth one. Turns out that that solved two other problems I had been having. Can't see why, but it did.

Have been busy with other things. I will get around to watching the Nodame Cantabile stuff for sure and I still watch key sections of Swing Girls most evenings - just to put me in a good mood before going to bed.

Thanks for all the help. I'll be following up on it for sure.

dabigkahuna wrote:

Well, got my computer problems solved - the big one (the monitor) was solved just by unplugging it from the power strip and plugging it back in. Weird, especially since the power strip was off while on vacation. Only thing that I never got working was my external keyboard so I bought an Apple bluetooth one. Turns out that that solved two other problems I had been having. Can't see why, but it did. Have been busy with other things. I will get around to watching the Nodame Cantabile stuff for sure and I still watch key sections of Swing Girls most evenings - just to put me in a good mood before going to bed. Thanks for all the help. I'll be following up on it for sure.

I'll be here if you need help.

bmwracer wrote:

I'll be here if you need help.

I'm working - very slowly - on translation. right now, it is focused on "The making of" vids.

Only two things to report so far and since I predicted the translation in advance, I doubt it is news to anyone who has looked at it seriously.

Anyway, I noticed in some of the Japanese writing on the screen that two key points included numbers. The first one was "60" and the second, later in the vid, was "30". Turns out I was correct that they referred to 60 and 30 days before filming began.

The 60 appears 7:24 into my video (the first of three of the "making of" series). It comes up after a bit showing early stages of teaching the girls so I don't know if the 60 days marker was a bit after they actually started or if they used some artistic license on that.

The stuff coming right after that "60" seems to show things a little beyond what I might expect the first days of teaching, yet pretty basic - especially if they, as I suspect, did a lot of rote teaching. And these being older - highly motivated - kids, it is hard to estimate how fast they would progress at first.

At 13:07, we get to the 30 days before filming part. Just a tiny bit of teaching the drummer and then a shot of a building with characters on screen I don't have a translation for yet. I'm guessing it is where they will be practing a lot - maybe living there too. Have to get back to you an that. After that, they seem to be playing more in groups inside that building.

At 19:09, they show the numbers 2003 7 and 25. Haven't confirmed this yet, but I'm assuming that refers to July 25, 2003 - probably the start of filming.

I'm slowly getting help from someone I teach with here who spent some years in Japan - and while he isn't up on the Japanese characters, his wife is apparently Japanese.

Don't want to take up a lot of their time, so this will probably be a slow process - especially when it comes to translating their speech!

^ Wow, you're really dedicated to the task... More power to you.

Any luck with BitTorrent?

bmwracer wrote:

^ Wow, you're really dedicated to the task... More power to you. Any luck with BitTorrent?

Haven't done anything more with bittorrent yet. Have to eventually since I wat the Cantabile stuff and probably will be looking for a higher quality version of Swing Girls.

Right now my focus is trying to get more info on the background of the movie. And the most important thing there is to lock down the stuff about their own playing (did they play all we hear on the movie live, or did they dub themselves from a studio session (which is my guess), or was there at least some professional additions (which I think may be possible based on how some things sound) - mainly some possible high trumpet pitches.

Gotta be careful with how things are said. Saying, "The girls played all the score music" is not really the same thing as saying they did ALL the playing in the movie. It could me they did a lot, but it could also mean they could play the music - as we know from their live concert - but not necessarily being the performers of everything actually IN the movie.

A common comment I found in various descriptions was that they spend 5 months training. I had originally interpreted that as 5 months before filming, but it could mean time during filming.

The times given so far in the vids show at least 2 months before filming. Could be a bit more since it isn't made real clear, but I would say it wouldn't me much more. We don't know how filming went other than they had to deal with two seasons. Probably a significant gap in between. Did they keep practicing during that time and do the final scene near the end of filming - or was that scene dow before winter filming? If it was done at the end and they kept practicing all along, we have a probably start of filming in July 2003 and winter filming in February 2004. That would be about 7 months plus the two months pre-filming.

My big task is going to be trying to get an accurate translation of what the director says during the "Making of" vids. Also the music teacher. I'm hoping they'll be clear (yeah, like a translation is going to be really clear!), and also give some of their philosophy for why they took this rather extreme effont to teach these girls from scratch.

I mean, why not just get kids who already play - at least a fair amount? Or just dub everythnig with professionals? I can't think of any movie about musicians that took this much effort to train from scratch.

Heck, in "The Glenn Miller Story", they had to plug up the trombone mouthpiece because the star (Jimmy Stewart) kept trying to really play and was awful!

Most things with people playing instruments are pathetically fake so this aspect just fascinates me. Okay, being a band director myself probably is a big factor as well!

dabigkahuna wrote:

I mean, why not just get kids who already play - at least a fair amount? Or just dub everythnig with professionals? I can't think of any movie about musicians that took this much effort to train from scratch.

It is unusual, but I think it adds to the film in some odd, interesting way...

bmwracer wrote:

It is unusual, but I think it adds to the film in some odd, interesting way...

Oh, I agree - I think it is a very big deal. I just would love to know his reasoning for doing it that way. I could see how not using professionals might save money (but maybe not since it is probable he had to pay all those kids while they were learning).

Certainly getting kids who already played would have been cheaper. Some teaching may have been needed, but not nearly as much.

I keep thinking he must have been trying to make a point - maybe just to those kids. I saw a link to a page about Juri - maybe her page - that said playing saxophone was one of her hobbies so it stuck with her at least.

Wonder how many others kept it up? After all, they did develop to a fairly high level.

Hope to get some info from the other teacher at school today, if he looked at my latest email before leaving home. He can understand Japanese, but not read many of the characters so he has to show it to his wife.

Just got the info by email on the other written stuff:

I asked about what was written on the screen when they showed the building which seemed to be used for teaching. I also asked about the blue sign along the road in the same picture:

First picture center: Yamagata prefecture Yonezawa city, left blue sign(it's not clear, but pretty sure): Yonezawa sking ground

The two places they seem to be giving dates were correct:

7/25/2003 Start filming (crank in)
2/17/2004 Winter location reopen (restart)

I also asked about something that seemed to be a souvenier shop or something - have to check the context again. It had 2004 on a little sign, but I couldn't read the rest of it:

open until the end of 2004

btw, how many times they did the concert? there is 2 versions of their messages during performance

Kechua wrote:

btw, how many times they did the concert? there is 2 versions of their messages during performance

Twice, maybe?

Kechua wrote:

btw, how many times they did the concert? there is 2 versions of their messages during performance

What do you mean by 2 versions of their "messages"?

As for the concerts themselves, I'm not sure. I believe I saw at least two different videos - one inside and one outside.

And I read they performed in New York and Los Angeles. And I saw another video of them performing on some TV show.

Don't recall if I posted this site previously: http://swinggirls.exblog.jp/

dabigkahuna wrote:

What do you mean by 2 versions of their "messages"?

One at the first&last concert itself, another at the bonus where you can also find some materials behind the scene and their comments

Kechua wrote:

One at the first&last concert itself, another at the bonus where you can also find some materials behind the scene and their comments

I'm still confused on what the "message(s)" were. Could be because I may not have seen the same things you have and I sure can't speak the language!

I have the first and last concert - at least the one inside where there is a fair amount of talking. love to know what is being said. I also have three "making of" videos which may or may not be the ones you are talking about. But I can't understand what they are saying there either.

I'm trying to get some help on translations from people I know who speak it at least somewhat, but it's hard to take up lots of their time to do that. So far I've just gotten them to translate some writing from the "making of" vids, which I posted above.

dabigkahuna wrote:

I also have three "making of" videos which may or may not be the ones you are talking about. But I can't understand what they are saying there either.

There's also a number of backstory videos to help further flesh out the story...

bmwracer wrote:

There's also a number of backstory videos to help further flesh out the story...

Seems with all my research, I missed a lot.

I do recall one video - not sure if it was said "back story" or not - but it made no sense to me. Seemed to focus on the piano player a lot.

dabigkahuna wrote:

Seems with all my research, I missed a lot. I do recall one video - not sure if it was said "back story" or not - but it made no sense to me. Seemed to focus on the piano player a lot.

One backstory was why the delivery guy was late with the bentos... Another was how Tomoko acquired the iMac that she never used...

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.