Videoimage, January 1979 issue

POPULAR ANIME

Exploring Space Battleship Yamato

Nerima, Tokyo, famous for its daikon [radish], is now the launch base of the Space Battleship Yamato.

Seibu Ikebukuro Line • Nerima Station. In this place, once famous for its daikon radishes, resides the production workshop of Space Battleship Yamato, which has sparked a huge boom. It is a 10-minute walk from the station.

Passing the Nerima Ward Office, turn right at the second street. Next to the Odakyu Distribution Center, where a cold wind blows, is a white, showy four-story building; the “launch pad” for a space battleship. Upstairs, the second, third, and fourth floors are all filled with young people, engineers who are responsible for Yamato‘s construction. A total of 80 people. These floors are each composed of projects.

On the second floor are the production project and the Yamato fan club, led by Chief Producer Osamu Hiroka. The third floor is home to the production and animation directors, where seven groups are in charge of art, animation, and special effects. The fourth floor is where the project team puts together the manuscripts completed on the second and third floors. The common term for this is “shooting.” Only after an OK is given here is the heroic picture handed over to the film crew.

Here is a brief introduction to the production process.

• Planning meeting

Storyboards are completed at the same time the final draft of the script is received.

• Drawing meeting

Focusing on the script and storyboard, the director, animation director, and drawing project team discuss the layout of backgrounds and composition. Vertical lines, horizontal lines, and diagonal lines are interestingly drawn on blank sheets of paper, and the rough is completed.

• Drawing

The chief director checks the rough sketches completed at the meeting. Based on this, the veteran draws up intermediate poses of the background and character movements, as well as a chart sheet of the movements. The director and the animation director check this, and finally, the production of the pictures seen through the television tube begins.

The staff (mainly the art director) who draws the backgrounds based on the layouts, and the staff who draws the animation, will produce 3,500-3,600 individual pictures. It is not enough to just draw. The art director waits for them at the exit for a strict check.

• Trace and coloring

The art director gives his OK. Pictures with an OK mark are run through the trace machine. The picture is burned onto celluloid, then moved to the 4th floor. After all these steps, the prototype for the film is finally completed. The finished product leaves the “pad” and is driven 15 minutes to the shooting studio.

The Tanihara shooting studio is located in a garage. Inside, a space of about 860 square meters is surrounded by a black curtain. Six photographers are waiting to see the fruits of the sweat of the staff. Some stay up all night. Outside the black curtain are three bunk beds and a simple kitchen. The studio is open all year round.

When it is busy, the six staff members are divided into groups of two each, working in full rotation in three shifts. The staff moves around in the blackness. It is quite hot. In summer, they work almost naked.

A 35mm camera is set upside down on a 3 meter high drawing stand (into which the background and the moving images are placed for filming). This is their mecha. Each roll of film is 300 feet long, and 16 frames are shot per foot. 3 feet of film takes 2 seconds to appear on screen…

Anyway, it is amazing. Moreover, the film has to be delivered to the lab (developer) by 9:00 in the morning. This is not the only restriction imposed on the filming project. The afreco [voice recording] schedule is coming up after that. The film is brought to the lab at 9:00 a.m. and developed at around 5:00 p.m. At that point, the film is ready for rush previewing.

Even if there is a delay due to a distortion in the production process, the afreco is sometimes done at this rush stage.

So…

“I think it would be very convenient to have a VTR. It would be easier to not have to worry about the lab first. I could see the finished product as I shoot, and make corrections on the spot.” (Yamato photography staff)

No merits are found in film photography.

“Unlike conventional frame shooting, with VTRs we’d have to stop and record one pulse (signal) at a time, so the equipment would have to be completely renewed. However, I’ve heard that the manufacturer is still in the prototype stage. I guess it will be realized in the future. Yamato 2 will be shot on film, so there will be no use of VTR, but in the near future…”

Yamato is being built by each staff member to the best of his or her ability. Someday, a VTR revolution may come to the launch pad. Dusk comes to Nerima, and the night waits impatiently for the sunrise.