Jellyfish Eyes 2 Begins Shooting

Hello all, this is director Takashi Murakami. It’s been a full year since our last production diary and now, Jellyfish Eyes 2 officially began production on August 1, 2012. What kind of movie is Jellyfish Eyes anyway? Why are we starting on Part 2 even though we haven’t yet premiered the first? My first task is to explain these things. To do so, we go back to last year, when the main shooting on the film took place.

I previously told the story of how things began when I met Yoshihiro Nishimura, director of HELLDRIVER.

Jellyfish Eyes Production Diary 2011/08/04

After shooting was completed, I continued working with Nishimura on post production for a full year at his studio Nishimura Eizo. During that time, we also began planning on other film projects.

Post production on Jellyfish Eyes has been extremely slow. We originally planned to be finished in November of last year. Then November became December, December became January, February, March, April, May… and now we find ourselves reworking many portions and aiming for completion by the end of 2012.

Without knowing the basics of movie making, I plunged in with no plan and tried to do everything as I wanted. The result is that we ended up with over 900 CG shots and a chaotic post production process.

We’re still in the midst of that chaos now but it has definitely been a great learning experience.

So why, despite the already ever present chaos, have I decided to make a part 2 then? Even our production staff can only shake their heads. After all, we don’t even know if part 1 will succeed or not financially.

Despite these words of wisdom, I find that in my career, I have never embarked on any project where I knew that it would be a hit from the start. In fact, nearly all of them have been subject to intense criticism upon their unveiling. Each one a giant wash of spit and bile.

And thus, by my estimation, Jellyfish Eyes too will prompt a storm of bashing when finally released.

After all, I have no cinematic grammar, have definitely overstuffed things story-wise and in terms of technique, am pretty shoddy. I’m certain there will be a lot of people who will be happy to see me fail. But I don’t really care. I have a message I want to send, a method of transmission and an audience that will receive it.

And now I can announce that we have pegged a release date for Jellyfish Eyes 1 for Golden week of next year. (We will announce the theater and times at a later date). Despite this, however, we are still nowhere near finished. (laugh) We’re now restarting post-production from scratch and have to lead from the front to keep the staff motivated. At the same time, shooting with the actors for Jellyfish Eyes 2 will continue throughout September.

Even today, we had a day off scheduled but the main staff are planning to assemble for location hunting. We also went to plan the shooting process for a very important scene.

And so, we will once again be updating this production diary during shooting. The diary will include details on both the continuing production of Jelly Fish Eyes 1 and Jellyfish Eyes 2. Please follow as we go.

Lastly, we are looking for extras to shoot with us on August 10. Please apply! Those who take part will receive a free Jellyfish Eyes t-shirt.

※The shoot is now finished. Thank you to everyone who replied.