Century Kings

3/11 (Sunday)
Today we filmed a scene of Shiro’s company “Excesstreme.”

V3, Kazami Shiro, is a charismatic and young president of a IT company. Excesstreme is a fictitious name, and these names and settings are sometimes thought up by the assistant directors. We also are assigned to “searches” on occasion. For instance we found out what an IT company offices look like, that they don’t have a set time to come in, jokers don’t wear neckties and wear colored glasses and suspenders, desks are covered with presentation materials (many floor plans), most commonly used PCs are ThinkPads, etc.
For this assignment I had a friend in the IT industry tell me his experiences.

Back to Excesstreme. Scissors Jaguar, played by Taguchi Tomorowo, is usually a gentleman in a suit. When he transforms, he becomes a violent kaijin with giant scissors.

The Riders and Kaijin are designed with Izubuchi Yukat-san’s illustrations. With that as a base, we have the Rainbow and Takeda Dango-san’s costume teams make it a reality.
Oh, those who hasn’t watched “THE FIRST” may think that they say “Henshin!” and make a pose during transformation. However, in “THE NEXT” the Riders and kaijin either snap on a mask or put one on. This is how Ishinomori Shotaro sensei originally envisioned it. It is “Masked” Rider after all.

In any case, Excesstreme becomes a victim of Shocker’s plan. Tomorowo-san and Shocker breaks into the building and the employees are trapped inside. Tomorowo-san is wearing a protective mask and usually we use a boom microphone, but the audio technician put a pin microphone on him so that they could get a sense of being inside the cramped helmet. When I viewed it in the editing stages I figured out what they meant.

Nearing the end of the scene, we called for those who wanted to be “stepped on by Tomorowo-san!” 3 brave, masochistic souls volunteered. They were impressively stepped on many times in the final shot. Many extras hope to become an actor someday, so making a positive difference in the production is also happiness to them.

[Translated by Pal. Originally posted on 10/19/2007 @ Kamen Rider THE NEXT Official Blog]

3/6 (Tuesday) ~ 9 (Friday)
On the fourth day we were at the development site of Nikotama for a huge action shot!!
This is probably the most important action scene in “Kamen Rider THE NEXT.”

Bike action, car action, Rider action, elaborate explosions… it’s a barrage of action scenes. There are many things I could talk about, but I’ll talk about Scissors Jaguar since it had the most impact on me personally.

In “THE NEXT” we use a HD camera made by Panasonic called the Varicam. This camera can shoot in a way very similar to traditional 24P film, but we use even less frames for action. For example, the normal frame rate is 24 framer per second, but for action scenes we film at 18 or 20 frames per second. Do you know what would happen if you played that film at 24 frames per second? Since it has 4 or 6 less frames per second, the movements seem faster. Using these techniques enhance the speediness that make action scenes so exciting.

I got carried away on the introduction there, but the battle between Scissors Jaguar and Kamen Rider is impressive even at normal speed. I’m the one with the clackers, which means I’m really close to the actors, so it’s just amazing! So amazing! My head was so hot with excitement.

The bike action was handled by the Bushi Racing (Warrior Racing) team.
The scene where a car drives into the restaurant was also exhilarating. There were 2 cameras in the building and another in the car, a 3 camera 1 take battle. You can’t make mistakes on these kind of shots, so the staff’s nervousness is heightened. We thought through the shot several times and filmed once everyone was ready.

There are many more action scenes.
Please see these amazing scenes on the big screen!

[Translated by Pal. Originally posted on 10/15/2007 @ Kamen Rider THE NEXT Official Blog]