A Conversation with Jerome Olivier
This morning I had the opportunity to iChat with Jerome Olivier, a motion graphic artist based in Tokyo, Japan. He runs
Speaking Pictures, a design firm with high profile clients such as Nike, Louis Vuitton and Miss Universe Japan.
Last year Jerome worked with Chage, a well-known Japanese pop singer, to create an unconventional film using Chage's still photography. The result is a stunning and extraordinary piece that manages to captivate the audience while giving them a feeling of disassociation at the same time.
Jerome discusses the project, his technique and workflow, as well as the challenges in working to entertain across cultures. Jerome has a BFA in film (and uses some film terms that I haven't heard since I was in film school!).
Jerome just found out that Missing Pages has been accepted into the Ann Arbor Film Festival in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The festival is in the latter part of March. Congratulations, Jerome! I wish you the best.
iChat transcripts
Michele Yamazaki, Toolfarm: Hi Jerome. Thanks for chatting with me today. Last week I posted a link to your short film 'Missing Pages' in our Inspiration section at Toolfarm and had quite a few people asking about it. Can you give me a little background on the film?
Jerome Olivier: The project started October 2004 when a friend of mine who's a producer for Chage & Aska (they're a duo in Japan, kind of like Simon & Garfunkel) approached me with the idea of making a DVD of Chage's photography.
JO: Initially, the project was going to be a simple DVD of Chage's photos that they were going to market to their fan base, but I thought the idea was too limited.
JO: "Why make a DVD that will only appeal to the fans," I thought, "when you can do something that will have a wider appeal?"
JO: and that's how the project got started.
MY: How did you hook up Chage?
JO: I'd done work for the band on their previous DVD's, designing their menus.
JO: I got the work through a friend of mine who's now the marketing director for iTunes.
JO: He was working at a production company here in Tokyo called Syn Entertainment.
JO: It's pretty much thanks to him that I got started as a motion graphic designer in Tokyo.
MY: I was wondering how you ended up working in Tokyo. You're originally from Canada, right?
JO: Yeah. I first arrived in Japan on what's called the JET Program.
JO: It's a plan started by the ministry of education to bring foreigners to Japan and have them teach in junior and senior high schools here.
JO: I did that for a year and then got a job in Tokyo working as a motion graphic designer for a company called Focal Point that imported video hardware from the States. My job was to learn how to use the equipment and make videos that would show off the software and hardware for the sales teams.
JO: It was a great job.
JO: I basically got paid to learn how to use After Effects and other compositing tools.
MY: The best way to learn!
JO: Definitely!
MY: You used After Effects in 'Missing Pages'. I showed my After Effects students the first 7 minutes of the project, which you have on your web site and they were all blown away. They love the look and wanted to know more about your technique. Can you explain it a bit?
){kind=link}
JO: Well, the principal technique used in Missing Pages is a very labor-intensive approach to making a film. First, we shot all of the actors in the actual locations without any blue backgrounds. The idea was to help the actors and also to reduce costs. By working on location, the actors could interact with the objects around them.
JO: At first, this seemed like a good idea, but in retrospect, since the actors aren't really acting, just posing, the approach proved to be a huge mistake once we got to the chore of masking out the actors from the background.
JO: The overall approach is a simple one, however. All we did was lock the camera down, shoot with the actors in the shot, then removed the actors and shoot the background. After the actors were masked out, I'd composite and animate two or more plates in After Effects.
MY: That makes sense. In the beginning, there is an amazing shot with pigeons. That must've been a huge challenge!
){kind=link}
JO: Yeah. Actually, there are two versions of that shot.
JO: In the initial version, it was done as a 2D composition, but the effect ended up being too timid.
JO: My approach was to set an anchor point at a specific location in the composition using guides to make sure each anchor point was the same, and then I’d scale each layer over time - using a more dramatic scale for objects in front and reducing the level of scaling the further back the object was.
JO: This, I now realize, was a huge waste of time.
JO: The best way to do it is in a 3D composition.
JO: Simply place all your layers in a 3D space and use a camera to move around. The effect is MUCH more dramatic and you can then create one layout and, using multiple cameras, create lots of shots.
JO: A huge time saving feature that creates a much more dramatic and realistic effect!
MY: It looks amazing.
JO: Thanks!
MY: Another cool shot is the bald bad guys. I'm not sure what you call them. This appears to be the same actor placed several times in the shot. That would've been difficult to do in a traditional film.
){kind=link}
JO: Yeah, they're called the Core Units.
JO: The idea was the Core doesn't draft their soldiers, they just make them.
JO: I worked with two butoh dancers from the Dairakudakan group who were able to create amazing characters. Those two guys, Okuyama and Ohyama, were incredibly fun to work with.
JO: When it was decided we were going to work with still images and create a movie like that, I started playing with different ideas of what we could do. The idea of having the same person in a shot many times over was one of the first things I realized I could do easily - hence the Core Units.
MY: We're they shot over blue screen?
JO: No, on location for the first 6 days and then over a blue background on the last day of shooting.
JO: But I think almost all of the shots with the Core Units are either on location or over a black background for a few scenes you haven't seen yet.
JO: The big surprise attack scene.
MY: The workflow must have been quite a bit different than with a traditional film, timing everything to the audio. Can you talk about your workflow?
JO: This is where things got complicated.
JO: There were two versions of the script, one in English and one in Japanese.
JO: When I started out the post-production phase, I was editing the storyboard in Final Cut, but then I realized I couldn't work that way because the shoot had been so crazy, we'd missed some of the crucial elements needed to create the shots we'd originally intended.
){kind=link}
JO: So I took a different approach and simply started creating the shots I knew I would need using After Effects, but without animating them. They were just static shots that proved I COULD do this or that angle.
JO: After I'd done the static version of the film, I went about animating each one, doing different versions and seeing how they played against each other.
JO: This went on for months and months.
JO: Also, I was working with an English version of the text because I was changing the dialogue as I went along.
JO: Since there was no lip sync, I could completely rewrite the dialogue as I went along. This gave me a great deal of freedom.
JO: One of the challenges, however, is the cultural difference between Japan and the western world.
JO: What might sound natural in North America might be completely weird in Japan.
JO: So I also had to go about writing a "culturally neutral" script and dialogue. This proved quite a challenge since what brings a script to life are the customs, the habits and quirks of the place it comes from.
JO: I think pulling myself away from that, or "neutralizing" myself the way I needed to in order to create a script that would be compatible with a Japanese and Occidental point of view created something that is, in an interesting way, alienating. This became the aesthetic of the piece which I find works well with what I call 'Fotomation'. Since you don't see the actors act, when they speak their mouths don't move, that separation created a... what's the word?
JO: Detachment!
MY: Yes. It really does.
MY: Toolfarm visitors really enjoyed it. How did Japanese audiences respond?
JO: Very well.
JO: It has a classic Japanese feel to it. It's both manga, but also like Noh theatre. Very reserved.
JO: Very quiet and strict in its form, not lose and wild like a Hong Kong action movie.
JO: Well, maybe Hong Kong action films are a poor example. Maybe the opposite would be cinema verite?
MY: I read on your blog that you had to make a tight deadline to make it into the Short Shorts Film Festival and you had to sacrifice some of the story and look to make this deadline. But, you came out with an amended version after the fact.
JO: Yeah, I felt like I was letting the people down who had invested so much time and effort in the project and also I felt like I wasn't being honest to the audience giving them something I knew wasn’t the best I could make under the circumstances. I HAD to finish it - make it the best possible short I could.
MY: That must've been really difficult, showing your film when you knew it wasn't ready.
JO: After the screening, when we went back to the hotel, I think I sort of lost it. I started shaking and let out one hell of a holler. I took a cold shower and composed myself for the inevitable drinking binge that always follows any production in Japan.
MY: So, where can people see the full directors cut?
JO: So far, the only place you can see it will be in film festivals.
JO: We've been accepted to the Cosmos International Film & Video Game Festival that takes place in Gainesville, Florida, from April 20th to the 22nd. Other festivals will hopefully follow, but Cosmos was the first to say yes.
JO: My hope is to get someone interested in releasing it on a compilation DVD of shorts. Someone at Resfest has expressed interest in having on their 2006 run and I THINK they release a DVD each year.
JO: I'll also try to sell it to television. We'll see if anyone bites.
MY: I am sure that they will. It's something completely unique... something that we're lacking here in America (ie. a proliferation of bad sequels made by the big studios).
MY: Do you have anything in the pipeline? Launching anything exciting in 2006?
JO: Right now I don't have anything like Missing Pages to work on. Actually, I'm roughly $60,000 US in the red with Missing Pages, so I'm focusing on paying jobs.
JO: Right now, that means a corporate video for the American Meat Association (for the Japanese market) and Art Directing the Miss Universe Japan 2006 pageant.
JO: It's a weird mix.
MY: Interesting variety!
JO: One day I'm editing pigs, the next day working with 15 of the most beautiful women in Japan.
MY: Thanks so much for chatting with me. I know it's very late in Japan and I don't want to keep you up too late!
JO: Yeah, I have to catch the last train in a few minutes.
JO: It was nice chatting with you. Thanks, Michele
MY: Take care, and thanks again.