Planning:

In 1999, the project started initially from the meeting of director Kiyoshi Kurosawa, producers Takashi Asai and Harumi Noshita in Berlin. Kurosawa was still shooting his previous film, and the actual meeting on the script of this film started in early spring of 2001. After several meetings, the discussion continued while several plots were sent from the director to the producers. The first draft of bright future was finished in the summer of 2001. (At that time, the staff called the draft “a film about jellyfish”.) One of the requests to the director on making this film was that he should closely depict the emotions of the characters. “Emotions come after actions” is the theory of the director. How the actions and feelings of the characters are expressed in bright future is the main attraction of the film.

Kurosawa created another important subject, jellyfish. He had an image of some creature discovered under the floorboards when a character tears up the boards. The director was fascinated by the two aspects of jellyfish, which looks soft and beautiful, but at the same time deadly poisonous and may kill humans. In this production stage, the staff started negotiating with the possible main actors and explained the film.

In the second draft, a young man’s coming of age story became more prominent, but the impression of the key subject, jellyfish, became weaker. In the third draft, impressions of the human characters and jellyfish equally became stronger. After enriching the depiction of the young boys at the end of the film, the final script was completed just before the shooting was to start.

Casting:

It was the first time for Kurosawa to cast an actor older than him. Fuji who read the script about 50 times impressed the director from the first day of filming by his brilliant performance as Shin-ichiro Arita. The song he was humming in the film, Hoshimeguri no Uta (The Song of Star Circuit) written by Kenji Miyazawa (famed poet and writer of children’s books who died in 1933), was prepared by Fuji himself. When they had a meeting on the costumes, Fuji suggested many ideas to the director and his enthusiasm impressed all the staff present. During filming, the director and Fuji were often embarrassed by the comments coming from the crew that they look alike.

Tadanobu Asano who costarred with Fuji once before joined the Kurosawa team for the first time. The director’s wish to work together with Asano one day came true by this film. At their first meeting, Kurosawa asked Asano if the actor had any questions and Asano humbly and shyly replied “Nothing particularly.” The director thought that Asano is a tremendous actor from this. Asano’s character, Mamoru, is an eccentric and difficult one to portray. Nevertheless, Asano made the best use of his personality and succeeds in playing Mamoru Arita who transcends reality and gives an important meaning to the film.

Joe Odagiri appeared nervously in front of the director during the initial interview. However, he was cast as Yuji right on the spot. The director’s description of the character, Yuji, was “He hasn’t realized it, but he is a sort of a chosen young man.” This is precisely overlapped by actor Joe Odagiri himself. By the time of the casting, Odagiri had very little film acting career, yet as the film’s shooting progressed, he drastically improved himself as a film actor and now he is certainly one of the talented ones.

A film costarring the three wonderful actors drew much attention of the press even before the completion of the film. Other cast includes Takashi Sasano, Marumi Shiraishi, Ryo, Ryo Kase, Sayuri Oyamada and Hanawa. They are active in various fields of film, theater, television and comedies, bringing interesting diversity to the film.

24 PHD = Introduction of Digital Equipment:

Technical cooperation provided by Sony made it possible to use the latest 24 PHD camera in this film. Producer, Takashi Asai, suggested director of photography, Takahide Shibanushi, not to film images as sharp as possible, which was the general trend in the conventional usage of High Vision technology. Instead, the producer suggested to create rough images by using High Vision camera like using a consumer model DV camera. Because he also suggested director Kurosawa to shoot this film by DV camera at the same time, the entire film was shot by two different types of cameras, HD and DV. Taking advantage of a digital camera, few lights were used in the dark scenes. As a result, a rough texture of the images with a black underlying tone made possible to depict emotional aspects of the drama, which is never created in the conventional usage of the High Vision camera. This is the first time for Kurosawa to challenge the HD filming. He says, “There’s no change in the people and objects in this filmmaking from the analogue shooting. I’m not concerned by what kind of equipment I use in shooting.”

Staff:

Under line producer, Hirohisa Mukuju, excellent staff was gathered in each department. With few exceptions of the director of photography and the sound technician, most of the members of the staff participated in Kurosawa team for the first time. The film was shot almost all outside in locations in Tokyo. The director’s goal of location hunting was finding locations inside the Yamanote railway line (a loop line at the center of Tokyo). Although some of them ended in somewhere outside the loop line, the production team succeeded in finding the most of the locations vividly portraying the current Tokyo inside the loop line. The hand towel factory, characters’ residences, abandoned houses and other locations gave the unique impressions to the film which would have never been able to be captured in studio sets.

Costume designer, Michiko Kitamura, understood the director’s idea embedded in the script before the first meeting and surprised the director by her interpretations. The director says, “Before I made this film, I used to rarely talk about the costumes.” However, this time, Kitamura inspired him in various occasions, especially in the scenes of seven young boys. At the last day of filming, the director was moved by a gift from Ms. Kitamura, which was the same clothing as Mamoru wore in the film.

Filming:

In March 2002, all departments started their operations. On April 8th, all production staff meeting was held and the first day of filming was on April 10th. Another main character of this film, the jellyfish, was caught by jellyfish trainer Koji Suzuki in inshore just before the first day of the filming and was put in Mamoru’s apartment.

The meeting room in prison looks like the one from a studio set, but production designer asuaki Harada built it in an outdoor location set within the limited budget. By utilizing the space of the location using natural light as lights from the ceiling, Harada planned and constructed the meeting room with unique light and shadow.

The scene which jellyfish heads for the ocean was shot by the “Akira Crane”, only one equipment available in Japan, by an extreme crane-shot of 20 meters (60 feet) high. The last day of the location shooting on April 30th was filmed near the water gate of the banks of Rokugo under the typhoon-like rainstorm. A temperature became very low in the hard rain, but a scene of Shin-ichiro and Yuji following the jellyfish and going into the river was needed and was filmed in a risky situation. Even though the crew placed the steel plates on the bottom of the river beforehand, the weather condition was dangerous to film the scene. The director was relieved when Fuji returned safely after he finished the scene of falling down in the river. It was the bad weather, but everyone in the crew was happy to have been able to capture dynamic images well enough to close the last day of shooting. Odagiri was even in tears by receiving applauses from the crew.

Post-Production:

Images from the 24 PHD camera and DV camera were digitized into Sony xpri non-linear editing system and the director himself edited the film. CG production team led by ASANO Shuji created the images of the jellyfish assuming the task of telling an excellent lie. The music was scored by the Pacific 231. Responding to the director’s order of making the melody provoking complicated human emotions, Shigeomi Hasumi and Takemasa Miyake composed the music at their house studio by “feeling like the jellyfish”. THE BACK HORN members who wrote the theme song said that the image of the music immediately took shape after seeing a rough cut of the film and they finished writing words and music for the song Mirai (Future).

After everything was done, a completed master tape of 24PHD was transferred to 35 mm for theater screenings. This film recording process by Arilaser and developing process were carried out in Korea because of the film’s co-producers, Digital Site Corporation, is the Japanese branch office of Seoul Studio Complex. From this year, the laws have been changed in Korea and the films from overseas can be developed in Korea. For the government-operated Seoul Studio Complex, bright future became the memorable first developed film from overseas (except Japan and Korea co-production films). Finally, both the master tape of 24 PHD to be screened by a DLP projector and the 35mm film prints to be screened at movie theaters were completed.

Technical Specifications:

Japan HD cam – 35mm – color – 92 minutes – 2002 – 1:85 – Dolby SR

Production Crew:

• Director – Kiyoshi  Kurosawa
• Producer – Takashi Asai
• Screenwriter – Kiyoshi Kurosawa
• Director of Photography – Takahide Shibanushi
• Sound – Hiromichi Kohri
• Production Designer – Yasuaki Harada
• Costume Designer – Michiko  Kitamura
• Editor – Kiyoshi Kurosawa
• Music – Pacific 231
• Theme Song – The Back Horn
• Co-producers – Harumi Noshita, Sadayuki Iwase
• Associate Producer – Itaru Fujimoto
• Executive Producers – Takashi Asai, Masafumi Odawara, Nobuhiko Sakoh, Kenji Takahara
• Production Companies – UPLINK Co., Digital Site Corporation
• Production Committee - UPLINK Co., Digital Site Corporation, The KLOCKWORX Co., Ltd., Yomiuri Telecasting Corp.

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