The most glaringly obvious visual problems occurred with an interview with a Baptist preacher from Los Angeles – the footage looked very out of focus. While it’s possible it could’ve been my viewing monitor, since every other image looked fine, I have to conclude that the focus was off on this one. (As I found out later, the interview was done in SD, whereas the rest of the film was shot in HDV. It's possible that that is why it's soft in comparison to the high resolution footage. While mixing formats in a documentary is acceptable, it needs to be a little more diverse than a single shot being different than all the rest. If SD footage is going to be used, then make sure there are a couple of SD shots, rather than just one, otherwise it'll seem like a mistake. If there's no other SD footage that needs to be used, then try running the SD footage through a program like Red Giant's InstantHD, as this should make the footage look much more similar to the HDV footage and keep the differences from being a noticeable issue.)
Another possible issue was the home video of Brain’s first standup show. As one might expect, the audio wasn’t great and neither was the video. I’m assuming that he wasn’t intending to do a documentary at the time, but the bad footage is a little off-putting in contrast with the rest of the documentary. There’s the possibility of re-enacting the scene, but that’s not always the best idea, especially for a documentary. At the very least, there could be a subtitle of some sort that indicates that the footage is home movie and not originally intended for the documentary – or something of that nature.
The movie had a great variety of audio. From very traditional-sounding Japanese music to J Pop to hardcore rock. (Occasionally, we would see some footage of the bands performing and one of the hardcore rock bands featured a mostly-naked lead singer. And you thought Japan was all about Geishas and Samurai, didn’t you?) The film made great use of local bands for both music and entertaining footage.
The voice-overs were well done and easy to understand, as were most of the interviews. However, there were a few moments where the audio of the interviews was a bit low and it was almost overpowered by the background music. Trying to invest in a more powerful shotgun mic and getting that closer to the talent with a boom pole is imperative in interview situations in which a lot of stuff is going on in the background. (If the mic must be mounted to the camera, then creativity must be used to pull the talent farther from the noise causing environment to help isolate them.)
This film’s 30K budget was mainly used on equipment costs, translation fees, and transportation. It first glance it seems like a lot of money, but I imagine that prices in Tokyo are nothing to sneeze at. In addition, Brian was working at a military base, which likely meant long hours and lots of running back and forth to and from the city. The entire documentary probably took a long time to compile, which makes the price tag seem a lot less. (And documentaries that stretch out over long periods of time tend to be more expensive, anyway.) As they say in the movie biz: good, fast, and cheap. Pick two.
This film gives great insight into a world that many people never would have known about. Plenty of Americans haven’t been to Japan – let alone imagined that there was an emerging culture of Western-style comedy. The characters in this film are so funny and colorful, and the comedy is full of laughs, one almost forgets that they’re watching a documentary.
In recent decades, Japan has become a land of extremes and contrasts. It is still deeply rooted in the past, but the influx of modern technology and alternative culture can be clearly seen. While it bears certain similarities to Western culture, there are many aspects that are completely foreign to us – no pun intended. This documentary gives a great look at a little-known world, as well as the great contrast between new and old that exists in the country of Japan.
