BLOG BASICS:
I'm a little unsure as to why I've opted to attempt an on-line space dedicated to my thought ramblings. Some friends do it, and it gets fairly intense with their writing about perceived social injustices or a total delving into their hobby / interests. Others use it as a promotional tool.

I'm not saying that any of these approaches are wrong. I suppose my reasoning is to save myself a little time in my various correspondences as I often have to tell the same stories over and over and it gets a little tiresome. Those friends can just log in here if they find a spare moment. But then again, the stories I share are often personal in nature and when writing I keep that person firmly in mind. With a blog it's as if you're just screaming into the Ether, unsure who is listening and what their judgment will be.

MAKURANOSHOUSHI:
With that out of the way, I'll keep things to the here and now. I'm sitting in a local café in my town of Shimokitazawa and am getting ready to put the final edit on a video I've done for musician Kow Otani.

Otani's been a good friend of mine since 2001. But even before that I was a major fan of his work. He wrote 3 excellent scores for Shusuke Kaneko's Gamera trilogy, and basically scores for TV, film and even video games. He's also a popular session player in Japan too and plays for groups such as "Southern All Stars" and "Dreams Come True." His work is everywhere!
I was fortunate to hire Otani to do the scores for my first two films, THE iDOL and BRINGING GODZILLA DOWN TO SIZE. Both scores exceeded my expectation and, beyond that, just working with Otani is a lot of fun. He's a super positive guy overflowing with musical cues.

In an attempt to repay him for his work on my other films (and, hopefully, future work) I took the task of creating a music video for the upcoming release of his CD with singer Aika in a group they call "Makuranosoushi." I've seen the group 3 or 4 times and really like their work. Otani approached me two months ago with the project and a stack of DV tapes shot at one of their shows a year ago.

To begin, I had to edit the show down from 12 hours of footage to 5 minutes. Holy crap did that take time! And I'm not an editor. Fortunately, I've been peeking over the shoulders of my editors so I had a good grasp of how to use the software, in this case Premiere Pro.

Otani and Aika came over the other day to review the final edit before I prep it for the mastering company. I'm happy to report that they were totally ecstatic over the work I did. I should mention too that I received help from J.R. Lipartito on the edit as well as Tony Mullen, who created three neat CG animations for the video.

Well, today J.R. comes by and we'll finish this sucker off!

After this I put the final touches on FEED ME, which is a whole other film and story!