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THE CAMERA ALSO ACTS
THE WORLD OF ClNEMATOGRAPHER KAZUO MIYAGAWA
Concentrating every nerve in his body on his viewfinder,
he captures the subjects on film.
He has shot 350,000 feet of film so far.
A cinematographer japan can pride itself on,
Mr. Kazuo Miyagawa.
Mr. Miyagawa turned 85 this year.
The directors he has collaborated with so far include Akira Kurosawa,
Kenji Mizoguchi and Kon Ichikawa, just to name a few.
Forty-two in all, among them all the top directors of japan.
He has shot 134 feature films.
The sign used in 1950 in RASHOMON
is carefully preserved at his home.
RASHOMON is the film director Akira Kurosawa made
under a one-year contract with Daiei Kyoto.
Kurosawa collaborated with Miyagawa for the first time on this film.
ON THE SET OF RASHOMON
If you worked with Daiei, the cameraman was naturally Miyagawa.
Of course I wanted to work with Miyagawa. AKIRA KUROSAWA
That was one of the joys of RASHOMON for me.
I was stunned when I heard. The Kurosawa?
I never thought I'd get the opportunity.
Really.
RASHOMON won the Grand Prix at Venice.
Born of the collaboration between two men from different studios,
the production was full of an experimental spirit.
A film can labeled "RASHOMON Test Pieces. "
At his home,
Mr. Miyagawa has all 134 pieces of the work prints of his films.
These are the pieces of raw footage negative known as test pieces.
RASHOMON
It's something cameramen keep
in order to gauge the quality of the negative.
Using these test pieces,
they decide the amount of lighting and what lens to use.
The following is a montage of all the test pieces.
These test pieces are gathered from frames
cut before and after the actual footage.
These pieces are never shown like this.
Caught on a test piece is Kurosawa, age 42 at the time.
The collaboration with the 44-year-old Miyagawa
was one of passion colliding with passion.
I wanted him to shoot directly into the sun,
because I wanted shots of the sun itself too.
It was the first time anyone was doing that.
I think he was watching my skills,
the way I like to capture things,
but he kept silent.
He wouldn't say anything!
I would say, "How shall I shoot the action here?"
And he'd say, "just catch the action however you want."
"However I want?"
So I'd ask about the size of the shots,
and I'd say, "Do I go big here?"
He'd say, "It depends on the action, so let's just try it.
Just improvise and cut."
Shooting on RASHOMON began in July of 1950
in the woods of Nara prefecture.
The first day on location, in order to shoot the scene
where the woodcutter goes deep into the woods,
they prepared a long dolly rail.
The original story was In a Grove by Ryunosuke Akutaga wa,
in which a samurai is killed in the woods.
AH the witnesses recount the event to suit their own needs.
The truth is, just as the title says, "in a grove."
Kurosawa inserted the long walk of the woodcutter.
The deep forest symbolizes the mystery of the story.
Miyagawa, who was watching the rehearsals on location,
used the rail for the long dolly shot to capture the intent of the director.
There was only one rail.
I started with a long shot.
Then the camera went to the beginning of the rail,
and crossed over to the other side.
I took it to the side,
and then went to the end and turned around and followed him.
In one continuous shot,
the woodcutter is captured from a long shot to a close-up,
from the right, then the left, then from his back.
This shot was made possible by the fact
that the woodcutter walked across the rail,
while the camera moved along it.
On the first day of the shoot,
Miyagawa surprised Kurosawa with his camera work.
He was watching me,
expecting me to do something,
sol thought I'd entertain him from the first day.
He was very pleased, though it was a very complicated shot.
There was another experiment conducted in this film:
using a mirror to reflect sunlight
directly onto the actors.
There are some very dark parts in the woods.
So we used a mirror for those parts.
Reflecting sunlight from where it shone through
into the dark parts.
This method was very cutting-edge,
and it yielded an interesting effect.
It was Miyagawa who suggested using mirrors.
Usually, a reflecting board lined with foil is used for outdoor shots,
but after checking the test pieces, Miyagawa opted for the mirrors.
He borrowed a full-length mirror from the costume department.
I was very happy with the effect.
To avoid the harsh direct reflection of sunlight,
I put some leaves in front of it to soften the effect.
It worked because it was a mirror.
The mirror was the most successful lighting effect I've done.
We stole it from the costume department.
I didn't care.
It was for the shoot.
The hardest part was when they were in the woods,
or when they were acting.
I wanted to show the shadow of the trees on their faces.
But the trees around us were so tall
that the shadows were too soft to show up clearly as shadows.
We set up a wire mesh at the edge of the shot,
just outside of the camera's view.
We put branches on it to make the shadows show up.
That was a pain.
When Tajomaru wakes up,
those shadows were made
by bringing a branch very close to him
and using a mirror.
We created the shadows on him.
The movement of the branch in the wind was made up,
but that made it feel more real.
On the set of RASHOMON,
you see the white sky through the gate.
The rain disappears against the white background.
So we tinted the rain.
We worked *** that.
You just can't see it.
However much you poured it on, it melted into the background.
For rain in movies, even if it's a spring shower,
you have to create a downpour because otherwise it doesn't show up.
RASHOMON is a film
where the camera has a starring role
compared to other films.