“Officially, the film was shot entirely in Iran during the last years of the Shah, presenting a priceless time-capsule of everyday life before the 1979 revolution propelled the Ayatollah into power. Secretly, several pick-ups and interiors were actually filmed back in Japan, but the media printed the legend, possibly because admitting it might have triggered a breach of contract with the manga creator.”
Over at MediaOCD.com, I delve into the curious history of Golgo 13’s live-action mission to Iran.

“The problem with Taisho-era Tokyo is that almost all of it was wiped out by the fire-bombings of the Second World War. Director Kiyoshi Saeki is forced to keep his camerawork close on street scenes and most exteriors, because a wide-shot of 1920s Tokyo, filmed in 1968, would have been an impossibility before the rise of digital effects. Only the temples remain constant, existing in a time warp unchanged for centuries, allowing the camera to linger on monastic scenes in a way it cannot do with the urban.

“The production team seize upon a fact that is often true the world over – that traditional events, like funerals, and traditional uniforms, like the Salvation Army, are much slower to change than other elements of society. Imagery of the Taisho era is instead telegraphed through the costuming, such as the plaid trousers and straw boater worn by Kentaro , the must-have fashion accessories of early twentieth-century Japan.”

From my video essay in Arrow’s forthcoming Blu-ray box set of the Wicked Priest films, starring Tomisaburo Wakayama.

Sori’s idea was to treat Ping Pong like a science fiction project or a fantasy movie – to get all the mundane stuff in the camera, and then treat it afterwards to add the special magic, which in this case, was the ball. By his estimation, 90% of the balls in the table-tennis scenes were animated effects, storyboarded by Sori’s long-time collaborator Shinji Aramaki, with whom he would later make Appleseed (2004).

“Actually,” he noted, “a quarter of the entire film, or about 300 shots, were processed with CG.”

In order to ensure that the actors were physically matched with the way real table tennis players would move, Sori drafted Yoshihiro Hiraoka, the coach for the Meiji University table tennis club, to give the cast a crash-course. Players from the real-life club can be glimpsed among the background players, while Hiraoka himself was cast as the coach from Kaio Academy.

“The actors were completely choreographed, or rather, they were practicing their swings. But in the end, they trained for about two months,” said Sori. “After that, they were all young, so they got really good, and they could really hit the ball. But in this production, the setting was super-players, so we added the CG ball later. In the end, that was just an added bonus; the power and beauty of the swings were everything.”

The concentration on interaction with an invisible object proved to be an exciting discipline for the actors, returning them to a stripped-down form of theatre, like stage performers swaying with the motion of an imaginary boat, or mimes negotiating an invisible obstacle.

“We were filming without the ball in sight,” said Sori, “but at that point, the image was almost close to the finished product. I’m not exaggerating; the actors themselves said, ‘When I’m practising, I can see the ball.’ ‘I can tell the ball is there.’ And the cameraman was also following the ball, which he couldn’t see, so it’s amazing.”

From my sleeve notes to the upcoming 88 Films Blu-ray release of Fumihiko Sori’s Ping Pong (2002).

“The backers were all expecting Totoro to be a flop. I mean, who cares about a movie where nothing happens in the countryside, right? Suzuki came up with the idea of shoring up Miyazaki’s mad pastoral project by running it on a double bill with something that the schools would have to block-book as ‘educational.'”

Over at Animation World Network, Andrew Osmond interviews me about my book Japan’s Anime Revolution.