"Hello, I'm the director, Aramaki." "I'm the producer, Joseph Chou." "And I'm Ishizuka from Sony Pictures." "And it has started." "Having the first scene take place in the subway makes the viewers wonder when the movie actually begins." "They don't really know what's going on." "They're confused." "I wanted to create an opening scene that would be a little disorientating." "So that's where I wanted to start." "Where did the idea come from for it to be a subway?" "That's a good question." "There's no subway scene in the original material." "The idea was that we wanted this to be a prequel." "So I wanted it to be set in a desolate environment." "But it would be boring if it started right there." "So I wanted the first scene to be a little buffer so when they got above ground, the desolation would be revealed." "And the idea of the subway came about." "I thought it would be good if we didn't know at the beginning." "Well, we set it in New York." "So we wanted to invoke some nostalgia." "I think it turned out great." "We wanted to make their situation unknown at the beginning." "That was the thought." "So the subway was suggested." "These were actually modelled on the real New York subway trains." "It came out looking very realistic." "Actually, I was the only one from our staff who's actually been to New York." "So getting the references was difficult." "I really wanted to go location scouting with everyone in New York." "But it didn't happen." "Still, it turned out well." "And the Times Square scene coming up is really astonishing." "It's hard to imagine they've never been." "It's something I'd like our American fans to know." "Please send our staff over next time." "I'll do my best." "I had a lot of questions." "Like how are they getting power?" "Considering the situation they're in." "You know?" "We decided that they do have some minimal power generation." "We thought about having them run on diesel engines since there's only two cars." "We also talked about using horses." "That was a joke." "What about cows?" "Good one." "What's interesting about this scene is Aramaki's camera movement to follow the action." "It feels different." "Yes, as a producer it felt really new and exciting." "Actually, Matsumoto was the one who storyboarded this action scene in the tight space of the subway." "But the storyboard was lacking in action." "During the motion capture, we asked Miyagi our action choreographer, to up the action." "So we had him include these little movements." "And on top of capturing that action with actors we then after recording the motion capture we had Matsumoto make an animatic with the timing blocked out." "And we used those timings and asked Katsuki, in charge of the layout to use these timings to add some really quick action beats." "We had these quick cuts to go with it." "We used many movies for reference." "I had a lot of fun doing this." " It's very Hollywood." " Yes." " Is Matsumoto our CG director?" " Yes." "Yes, Masaharu Matsumoto." "He really was a lifesaver." "He did about half the storyboards." "And he insisted on really realistic camera work." "Even though he's a CG director." "We've been told that the lighting was really realistic." "It's really all thanks to him." "And this goes perfectly with the music Skrillex did for us." "Joseph was the one who suggested that Skrillex would be great." "When we got him to do it and convinced the music director..." "I'm really happy how it all came together in the end." "I mean, basically what it was was that he had a song called "Kyoto."" "So I thought he might like Japan and be an anime fan." "That's where it all began." "You felt a kindred spirit." "Someone like you." "Yes, he told us he was familiar with the material." "Yes, that's right." "Yes, I was happy to hear it." "For you, Ishizuka I mean, for Aramaki and I we've worked on Appleseed together before." "But for you to participate in this movie, Ishizuka could you tell us what significance it had for you?" "Well, to be part of this film the style for the CG has changed." "We wanted a different feel." "To have a fresh start." "That was the feeling." "And watching the previous films and seeing Aramaki's work there were many cool scenes that I loved." "But in this new day and age we were thinking about how we wanted to revisit the material, and we wanted a different style." "How to revisit Shiro Masamune's work." "And this is what we arrived at." "And we had this different new style." "But I love how faithful we are to the original work." "Yes." "I'd be worried if you didn't like it." "I was really insistent on these scenes in New York." "I wanted as many as possible." "At first, we weren't going to say it was New York." "Just somewhere in the U.S." "But we wanted a symbol." "It was really hard to convey what I wanted but our background staff really came through." "What's more, we were worried about licensing if we called it Times Square." "There were a lot of issues." "But we got the okay." "I mean, it's set in the future." "In Starship Troopers:" "Invasion, the previous film the three of us worked on we forced Paris as the setting." "That was my request as well." "Sorry." "I thought that it was just Ishizuka's personal preference." "Well, that's not entirely the case." "Oh, sorry." "Was I not supposed to bring that up?" "Oh, it's fine." "But really I've actually lived in America." "So I was used to the scenery." "But for people who have never even gone before I was so surprised how closely they re-created it." "It's all thanks to the Internet." "Times sure have changed." "Our staff is really dedicated." "It's not about re-creating it building for building but the distant scenery as well." "Every little piece of debris as well." "I'm really impressed that they've re-created something so completely." "And New York's main streets are famous for their narrow alleyways." "These alleys are really..." "I mean, for those living there it's obvious, but if you've never been, you really don't know." "I was really impressed by it." "Yes." "There were many new challenges we were able to meet this time." "I thought the work was worthwhile." "Yes." "Going with this look our staff was really on board." "But Marketing was troubled because there aren't many precedents." "And there were a lot of sets we had to build." "There was worry." "Yes, it's quite different from the original work." "So everyone was a little worried until we were finished." "I mean, I was too." "But the staff really wanted to try something realistic." "I'm really proud of their work." "In the beginning, I was worried too." "I thought, "Are we going to be okay?"" "It was like an extension of our previous film, Ex Machina." "I thought we could stick with a more cartoon style with a slightly updated look." "I mean, that was my thought." "But our director really tricked me into this, and I'm glad he did." "All's well that ends well." "You can say whatever you want now." "Sokaku is a character I wanted to use for a long time." "I changed his look from the original but I'm happy I was able to use him." "When I first heard that you wanted to include Sokaku I didn't know the character you were talking about." "But I looked back and found him in the original work." "He didn't seem too popular, but I understand he was special to you." "The setting for the character changed a bit." "And we changed his look." "The only thing that didn't change is that he has two horns." "But he gained a little weight." "We changed his body-type, but it worked for this role." "He's different from the original." "The question comes up why a cyborg is overweight." "But I thought it would be funny." "Well, in the end, even Masamune Shirow told us that he liked what we did." "He told us we can use him again anytime." "And that really made me feel good about it." "In the beginning, we didn't mean to make him so expressive." "When we first designed him." "But our staff member, Moriya, who set up the facial animation he said that he wanted to make him laugh and get upset." "So he changed the model himself." "And made it so he could be expressive." "I'm really impressed with how it turned out." "And this room, especially the floor really came out well." "I'm sorry that we're acting so impressed by our own work." "We're just so proud." "I like his lackeys as well." "They have a nice flavour to them." "Yes, that's right." "We have to have a lot of them." "But if you watch carefully, one of them makes it out alive." "And nobody knew who anybody was during the voice recording." "So we had a hard time distinguishing individuals." "How was it, having the script written in English?" "And the actors..." "I've said it before but the body language is different." "And as director, you made the call to use American actors." "What was that experience like?" "Well, about that  when I was working on Starship Troopers I worked with American actors." "And with games before that." "But I learned that having Americans act out our motion capture made a big difference." "So I thought that we'd really do that as much as we could." "The script was in English as well." "And I feel like it all turned out really well this time." "Since the style was more realistic." "I mean, looking at it from our perspective, having foreign characters acted by Japanese motion capture actors can turn out to be jarring." "And I think doing it like this creates more cohesion." "It's the body language." "Even without dialogue there's a lot being told through just body language." "And you can tell the difference having it done by an American versus a Japanese." "Your movements can't help but match your dialogue." "And we recorded the voices in English." "We went back and forth to Houston." "You were working there a lot as well." "What was that experience like?" "Well a lot of people assume that Americans are like this, and Japanese are like that." "But the Americans' reaction and our image of them was quite different from our expectations." "I thought it was interesting." "I see." "Of course." "For me when we're working on adapting a Japanese work we work hard to try to match the mouth movements." "But American fans are really particular about the lip-syncing." "Whenever I see Amazon reviews they always mention if the lip-syncing is bad." "So we try." "But for this, including the facial capture I felt like it turned out well." "The more that we do it the better we get at it." "We can see what points are important." "The more experience we get, the better we do." "You know, I have a thought." "I've talked to Ishizuka about this a number of times but it's the motion capture." "I mean, we touched on it talking about body language but the acting ability is important." "So the movie we did right before, Space Pirate Captain Harlock when we were doing press with director James Cameron he mentioned in the making of Avatar he said how important the actor's performance is." "Yes, so I was wondering if you could expand on it." "Well, about motion capture it became prominently used in Japan games." "Basically, "Hey, this would be easier than having animators do it by hand."" "Many thought it would be more convenient." "And I was one of them in the beginning as well." "But the more you do it, I mean the technology has really improved." "And it expands the possibilities." "Now we can record facial expressions simultaneously." "So now we basically can capture an actor's entire performance into data." "And if you get to that level it's not like you can just have anybody moving around in a suit any more." "It has to be someone who can really act." "Or you won't capture any performance." "And this is the day and age we're at now." "So, how can I put this?" "It's not some animation support tool any more." "It's something that's for digitizing an actor's fantastic performance." "That's how I feel, anyway." "Which makes auditioning important." "And now great actors are in such high demand everywhere." "And even the actors, in the past thought that with motion capture anybody can do it." "But now you have to be a great actor to be able to do motion capture." "And they're beginning to feel that way, like me." "Yes, and I feel, looking at recent Hollywood movies half of it is CG." "I mean, looking at the blockbusters." "And that's just animation, right?" "So to me, the line between live-action and animated is getting blurred." "And I feel like we're at a peculiar sort of crossroads." "I think it just comes down to whether or not you can see the actual actor's real face." "But on the other hand, if we're doing it all in CG you have more freedom in your expression." "And if you use too much CG in a live-action film it takes something away from it." "But we're creating a CG world that's getting closer to the real one." "So we're coming at it from the opposite end." "Yes." "There are many different approaches these days." "So with my work it's often categorised as anime or CG animation." "But to me, it means nothing to label it as a certain genre." "Yes, I see your point." "I mean we could say this was an entirely new genre." " Yes." " At least that's how I feel." "But with software becoming easier to use, the times are really changing." "And with devices like Kinect having motion capture capable cameras in households..." "The quality in games has really gone up." "I guess we're competing most closely with the gaming industry." "The more they raise their quality, we have to answer in kind." "I'm happy game quality is rising because I like video games but I see your point as a fellow creator." "But unlike video games it's a movie." "So viewers can sit back, relax and enjoy the story." "And enjoy it emotionally." "I believe that's important." "I mean, that includes myself as well." "As forms of media, they are quite different in that aspect." "I wanted to ask you about Briareos' gun." "Briareos has always been conceived as a sniper and I knew you wanted to do it for a long time." "Yes, I wanted sniper rifles." "So, yes, actually in Ex Machina, Briareos was supposed to have a sniper rifle." "I even had it in storyboards, but they were all cut." "I had all these sniper rifle scenes and they had them with the action figures but not in the movie." "Oh, I remember that." "So this time around, I wanted to make sure Briareos had a sniper rifle." "We had so many storyboards for Ex Machina." "We had to cut a lot." "Yes, but this time around we were pretty economical about it." "What I noticed as a producer before, we had all these really detailed storyboards that we based our production on." "But lately, with motion capture you're not so beholden to the storyboards anymore." "You make your decisions during motion capture and make changes." "Yes, you're right." "It feels like it's getting closer to live-action directing." "I know that I'm changing the way I handle the motion capture process." "I found that it's best to give the actors a lot of say." "We try to give them a good stage that they can work with." "I like to ask my actors what they think and have a discussion." "And I'm having fun creating scenes like this." "And angles can be changed later." "Yes, the camera is dynamic in this process." "And this method is very fast and easy to do." "It's not like we're skimping on the storyboards." "But we just make clear what we want to do." "And we can worry about the camera later." "That's how we're working right now." "It really suits my pace of working." "It's what makes CG easier to work with." "At first, I just thought you didn't have the time." "I mean, that's also true." "Of course, of course." "But you did them so quickly." "We had a schedule to stick to." "I could step in." "Oh, boy." "You're scaring me, Ishizuka." "We see Iris here." "And an iris, in the English language, is a part of the eye." "And "hitomi" is the word for iris in Japanese." "What designs and concepts did you have in mind for Iris?" "Well, Deunan, this time well, I have to start a little further back." "I wanted the story to focus on Briareos and Deunan." "And the thing is Appleseed's setting is really grand." "So the story has to be grand too." "Like protecting Earth." "Save humanity." "But I wanted to try to keep it smaller." "I wanted to limit the scope a bit." "I guess it's strange to call it a small story." "But I wanted to tell an emotional story." "So I thought it'd be good if we created a character for Deunan and Briareos to protect." "And that's where Iris comes into play." "She starts out as a mysterious girl." "In the beginning, she really she rejects Deunan and Briareos." "But she gradually connects with them." "It's kind of like a road trip movie." "Well, I assume everyone listening to our commentary has seen the movie." "Of course." "If you haven't, stop now." "Of course." "We've spoiled it already." "If you haven't seen it past the credits, go see it again." "We added something new there." "So, as for our thinking there was a character named Hitomi from the original work." "She was a bioroid." "Bioroids are clonable." "And she was one of the clones." "We didn't use Hitomi, but used her story background." "It's something we aimed for." "Yes, so people who know the original work would be able to grasp that." "So we gave Iris all of this mysterious back-story." "But she's a little calmer than her character in the original." "Yes, she's a little touchy in the original." "But that goes for Deunan as well." "But along with giving her something she needs to protect we wanted to start the story right after the war, when hopes are down." "I think the tone, from that aspect is different from the original." "But their relationship is the same." "We just saw Briareos' body." "We saw his repair." "But unlike the previous movies we gave him a sturdier body." "Yes." "What was the reason for that change this time around?" "It's the same case with Deunan as well." "Before, she was like a supermodel." "Really thin, tall and sharp." "But with this future setting it's not a utopia." "It was a gritty world we created, one that you could really feel." "It was a world that has been desolated." "So we wanted to give Briareos a really warrior-like body." "Something a little more realistic." "So we didn't give him these really long legs." "We gave him more weight." "Something to show him off." "And that was the thought behind it." "I see." "The head design as well is more realistic." "I know we were going for photorealism." "Yes." "We made sure Briareos was still recognisable instantly." "But we wanted to add more detail and show more of its construction." "We wanted to give him something that could stand up to this quality." "Which is the biggest reason his design was changed." "And here Nyx is introduced." "And there's an interesting story behind her creation." "There was supposed to be three of them." "There were a lot of things involved, but we wanted three female cyborgs." "It was a slight homage to a previous creation of ours." "We thought it might be an interesting idea." "But the actual first design was by our designer, Yamada." "And it was a great design." "Then we had Usui flesh it out some more." "It turned out to be really interesting." "We thought we might cut all three, actually." "But we really dug deep, and decided to keep Nyx in." "We tried really hard." "I guess when you consider all of that it took courage." "Normally, you wouldn't do it." "But we lost two and went ahead anyway." "The process was really backwards." "Hollywood usually gets the script solidified and works from there." "But not us." "Yeah." "We drew our pictures and changed the script to accommodate it." "It's what happens when you have a selfish director." "We constantly got in trouble with our writer, Marianne." "But she really was cooperative, making the changes when we asked for them." "Yes." "She was a lifesaver." "It was hard work." ""What, you changed this scene?"" "Yeah, we were difficult." "We've done it before but this time around, the dialogue was..." "I mean, there was the lip-syncing." "But there was so much fine-tuning." "Yes." "We were fine-tuning it to the very end." "We kept discussing if dialogue in each scene would be best or not." "Yes, having too much dialogue would make it cheesy." "Not enough and things would be confusing." "You have to find the right balance." "But I think it was a fun process." "Although, the key was that we've worked together on several projects." "And being able to make all these postproduction changes was a real luxury." "Absolutely, something a Japanese would not even consider." "And we even did all the sound design in America." "Yes." "This was the first time we did that." "It was a little bit of a challenge." "But was there a difference doing the sound design in America versus Japan?" "Well I wanted to keep it in America since we used American actors for motion and voice and the postproduction was done in America." "So when it came to sound I wanted the sound to be influenced by America and to be done there." "I just let them know what I was interested in." "And they went out and recorded all these different sounds." "I think it really comes out." "Yes, I mean, the humvee is straight from a real one." "Yes, they just did it in their parking lot." "And the gun sounds were from real guns." "Are you talking about Briareos?" "He's a nobody." "A hired gun." "That's all." "Is that what this is about?" "It's about the girl your cyborg kidnapped." "This scene was about..." "Well, we thought we'd create this Triton organisation." "There was something called "Poseidon" in the previous movies." "It's in the original work." "Okay." "Well, we thought Triton would be related to it." "We didn't specifically say that." "But we wanted to leave it to the audience's imagination that they were." "In the myth it's the son." "Yes, anybody who read the original work would see a connection." "And if you look closely, we had "Poseidon" written." "Yes, if you look closely." "It's on Talos' suit." "Should I call you a cab?" "I was hoping it wouldn't go down this way." "Hope." "What a concept." "In the scene with Nyx and her laser beams it was from Usui's really complicated hand designs." "Ah, yes." "It was so complicated, Modelling had an issue doing it." "When they simplified it, Usui got really upset." ""This isn't what I designed!"" "I'm sorry, Usui." "I will apologise for us all." "We just updated her a bit." "But it's difficult when you create a CG animation when you have these things you only use once." "It's not worth the time to implement." "We do it more than we should." "Yes." "It can be a waste." "Yes." "From here, they go on a trip in the humvee." "The scene was really simple." "Just sitting in the car talking." "But humvees are really wide." "The driver's and passenger's seat are far apart." "It's actually hard to put a camera in there." "And even if it's a CG movie, we can't really overlook that." "So scenes with Briareos and Deunan talking, we had issues figuring where to put the camera." "Although, you can't tell by watching." "It actually was quite a challenge." "It's large like a limousine." "There's like a whole metre in between them." "When you make it photo-realistic these kinds of issues pop up." "If you made a humvee with seats that are close together people would complain it wasn't a real humvee." "It's a hard thing to balance." "And the humvees are so huge." "I never thought they were so big." "And to adhere to photo-realism we got a military consultant." "Hosokawa." "He was hired to help." "Yes." "How a gun is held always pointing it down, never up." "And I believe he was in the French military." "We try to adhere to realism when we can." "But in the end, it's science fiction." "And we got a lot of cooperation finding that right balance." "He came and helped out during the motion capture recording." "I even had him put on a suit and recorded him." "We took a lot of his footage." "Yes, Deunan running was actually all him." "I'm sure we have disappointed fans now." "I guess it's not very feminine." "Yes." "I'm sorry to spoil it for some of you." "About that cable news footage just now some may be surprised to learn it exists." "Of course." "It's like an American cable news broadcast." "It's easy to understand." "Talos thinks he's dead." "It's easy to recognise." "And Matthews here there is a doctor called Matthew in the original work." "He has round glasses and their faces look similar." "Some may wonder if they're one and the same." "Fans of the original may be thinking that." "And we pitched the character with that in mind." "In the original, the character got weirdly giddy working on cyborgs." "When Briareos gets hurt here, Matthews grins." "So we incorporated some of those traits." "We gave him a weird personality." "He is very human-like, but maybe he's not human." "Yes, something cyborg about him." "Ah, this scene." "This is from when Aramaki wanted some sort of origin story." "Yes, yes." "You wanted to do that scene from the manga." "Yes, yes." "And this cooking scene Briareos comments on the smell." "Straight from the original work." "Deunan is a bad cook." "So we incorporated that." "The scene from the original where a tank comes..." "Deunan comes in driving a jeep." "We wanted to put it in, but couldn't squeeze it in." "We tried." "Fans of the original would recognise some of the lines taken from it." "We tried our best to get it close." "We sprinkled it in throughout." "Regarding the music we had the same music producer  for Appleseed 1  Ex Machina and this one." "Yes, Yasui." "We had him create the music for us." "What was that experience like?" "We actually first asked someone else to do the music for us." "But in the middle of it we just coincidentally came across Yasui's contact info." "And it came up that we asked if he could help us out on this." "At first, we just wanted maybe three or four action pieces." "But then it got bigger and bigger." "And he ended up wanting to do 10 or more." "He wanted to come out with a soundtrack." "And it was just really awkward timing." "But we just went with it." "We decided to get all new music." "Which was great." "It was hard work and hectic, but worthwhile in the end." "Having all the variation in the end highlighted what was distinctly Appleseed." "Because of that the release date was pushed back." "A lot happened." "Yes." "It really delayed our opening." "It wasn't just that." "There were other factors." "There's a lot more music that you haven't gotten to hear yet." "There are just so many people I'm thankful for." "Yes." "I really only expected three or four pieces from Yasui." "But he did twice that." "Yes." "But from the very first Appleseed the music left a very strong impression." "Yes." "The soundtrack was a big hit." "Same with the second." "But this time I didn't know what would happen, even getting Skrillex's song." "And Nakata's as well." "Nakata's collaboration with Skrillex is amazing." "Yes, it was very surprising." "It's great." "It really enhances the movie experience." "We had a lot of great musicians work on our soundtrack." "I'm looking forward to hearing the whole thing." "I never get tired of watching Iris' expressions." "These expressions are really great." "It's Moriya's work." "Deunan's too." "We got notes because there was so much dialogue from the script." "It's not like I had a clear idea, but I felt the facial expressions could really sell this scene." "It was just a matter of how." "It was pretty challenging." "But it turned out well." "But, I mean, of course." "Reading it from a script it seems really dry and cheesy." "But when you get an actor's performance involved it comes together with everything else." "Yes, the script made it seem like it could be an issue, but it turned out fine." "At the time you have a vague idea how you'll work it out." "And it's a testament to a great staff." "They really just pull through." "You can really tell that they're having fun." "And Deunan checking the gun here took a lot of detail." "Our consultant pointed out that checking the slide twice was key." "I wanted to mention their uniforms." "I actually liked the uniform that you designed with Yamada." "Ah, yes." "I really liked it." "Deunan originally had a sleeveless shirt and she had nothing to cover the butt." "But Masamune got cross with us." "But in the end, it works out since we're being realistic here." "It would work for an anime." "But when you make it so realistic it doesn't work." "I mean, you can't squat in it." "We'd have to get creative." "Our female fans would send in all their complaints." "But Masamune wanted us to make sure to cover her breasts." "So I wanted to add some shoulder pads or something." "I'm not really remembering too much of the specifics right now." "Oh, this scene." "Very famous from the manga." "And one that you've interpreted." "It was important to me to include it." "But I mean, it's an iconic image even from Appleseed 1." "It's actually the cover from the manga's first volume." "That's right." "It's Briareos landing hard carrying Deunan in his arms." "Looking at this scene and reflecting on the manga it really is interesting." "Briareos can jump really high because he's a cyborg." "This scene is directly from the CG director Matsumoto's storyboard." "He's a gamer friend, and we play a lot of FPS's together." "Wait, Ishizuka's here." "You have to make it seem that all you do is work." "You can't tell him you game." "Only occasionally." "Only when we get together." "We play as a team." "We're not very good though." "Aramaki and I worked on a project called Halo Legends." "And at that time we went to the offices of the Halo developers." "Remember that?" "You fired up the consoles and played." "And you wanted to make an office team." "We haven't done that again yet." "My goal is to make a game room." "If we made one for our offices now, nobody would work." "So maybe we shouldn't." "Yeah, we'd get so behind schedule." "And we'd lose the client as soon as they saw it." "Yeah, they couldn't trust us to keep to the deadlines." "And Olson..." "There's an origin for Olson's name." "So we had to create a new character." "And I'm really bad at naming characters." "So I flipped through the manga furiously looking for any name I could use." "And there was this really minor character just in the background." "And he gets called Olson." "So the character technically came from the manga." "Well, that's interesting." "I'm not sure Masamune would remember him." "Naming characters is difficult." "Even in Ex Machina with Dr. Kestner and Xavier." "Let's see." "I think all of these movements for Deunan were acted by Hosokawa." "Right here, if this were a regular anime Deunan would take them all out." "But since it's more realistic, she doesn't." "Maybe it's the influence of being more photo-realistic but Deunan doesn't get all of the limelight." "She's not too overpowered." "I think that aspect is different from, you know just having her take everyone out in some slow-motion action scene." "I just felt that it wouldn't be right for this project." "And that really directed a lot of the story this time." "I wonder what it is." "Maybe it's because of all the FPS games you've played." "Maybe so." "It's not that easy shooting people." "You can't do it alone." "And I shot some guns while in Texas." "You can't hit anything aiming with one hand." "So you may have a point." "Reality hit you." "I've become too plain." "Action these days has moved away from the Hong Kong-Matrix style." "It's more realistic." "You're not going to hit your target if you jump while you shoot." "Quite an offer, but I'll have to pass." "And this tank was designed by Usui as well." "It's modelled from the tank in the first manga volume." "That's right." "We wanted it in." "And this revolver-style grenade that gets shot soon is straight from the original work." "Shirow is so amazing." "Yes." "He was so ahead of his time." "He imagined this 20, 30 years ago." "When I met him he had already foreseen issues that came up with the Internet way back in the '80s." "It's right there in his work." "And now in this Internet Age I just wonder what he's going to think up next." "And I asked him about it." "I'm really looking forward to his next work." "Not sure if it can be requested here." "I always say it but I can't ask him directly." "What is this thing exactly..." "Well, that is I mean, in the end it's revealed she's a bioroid." "She's a clone." "So I wanted some evidence that she was experimented on." "It also gave us a sense that she came from the future." "Which is what we wanted to go for." "So it was a number of things." "It gave her a sense of intrigue that was conveyed visually." "Is that an Osprey?" "It's not, but it's a twin rotor as well." "Deunan." "Deunan." "I see." "Wait, Ospreys still look like that?" "I mean, yeah." "They're basically the same as that." " What about them?" " Send them a gift." "You can't make movements like that without a propeller." "Yes." "It was the same in Starship Troopers." "There was a jet." "I thought we could just use it again." "But I figured we'd get in trouble if we did." "You know, we have to actually make new models." "But Usui designed it as well." "You know, this makes me wonder." "When it comes to future military uniforms and such and power suits or I mean, the helmets." "Yes." "Looking at recent video games there are a lot of designs like this." "I feel like it's getting a little monotonous a bit." "Is it hard trying to design these things?" "Well, on one hand, I don't mind following a trend and trying to find something fresh with the design." "But it's true looking at the Triton soldier's uniforms and such." "I really like how it turned out." "Where are they?" "But, you know we were able to really visualise it so realistically." "Being able to distinguish between cloth and carbon fibre." "And visualise it more completely." "Technology allows us to express that clearly now." "But on the other hand, there are so many examples where it's true that they begin to look similar to each other." "It's difficult to try to distinguish your designs from others." "It makes you wonder if anybody can come up with anything new in this day and age." "I mean, everyone's trying to figure out how they can make an impact." "And we've asked Usui to consider that." "It looks very contemporary." "But Briareos still stands out as a main character." "He has a look about him." "And it goes back to Masamune's original vision and how amazing it is." "Maybe not." "Taros' chest opens up and uncovers a gun." "Which I thought was unique." "Yes, Usui did a good job designing around the parameters for cyborgs." "He's really good at it." "Although we haven't gotten to do everything we wanted he really gave us some great, unique designs." "I guess this will go on forever if we keep listing what we wanted to do." "I mean, we did get a lot that we wanted." "Most of it." "But I know you wanted to avoid any comparisons to cyberpunk." "I mean, we just saw a little." "But only this character has that function." "Briareos doesn't really have that kind of functionality." "So having this take place right after a big war there's no Internet or phone." "Which in turn lets us make a more unique story." "I mean, we really struggled with Ex Machina having all this convenient technology around." "But the..." "You know what was it?" "Connexus." "Isn't that a lot like?" "It's close to Google Glass." "And I had a moment thinking about that." "Yes, modern technology has really come about." "It's hard to predict the future." "So creating this world that has lost everything was easier from a story standpoint." "I got to do more of what I wanted and I feel that it's a more interesting setting." "But right now, zombies are big in apocalyptic stories." "Well, maybe not in Japan." "But certainly in Hollywood." "It's the trend right now." "Why do you think that is, Ishizuka?" "I mean, Americans have always enjoyed the apocalypse." "And I guess you could say reality is getting nearer to it." "We can see it around us." "I mean, that's my thought." "I guess the world these days has become really polarised, many deadlocks." "Feelings of being trapped." "And I suppose an apocalyptic setting helps escape that." "Makes people want to see war and destruction." "But that's always been the case, now that I think about it." "It's really true." "When it comes to high-technology and stories based on them, even in Hollywood and Japanese anime as well the theme of high-technology and the cyberpunk genre has been done a lot." "Yes, that's true." "But for us we wanted to focus on the human element." "I wanted to express the story from the character's point of view." "And with this movie, the emotional component is really important." "It doesn't go to the extreme like a regular anime." "In order to really express a truer human emotion we really worked hard on the script." "And I believe the acting performances really turned out well." "We had the music rewritten so many times for this scene." "We worked him really hard." "I'm really happy with the scene." "The lighting of this scene is really interesting." "The night is just breaking, and you have that early dawn glow." "It really showcases the lighting." "That was Matsumoto as well." "He did most of it himself." "And maybe we don't find Iris." "Maybe we'll be killed in the effort." "And this scene takes place on some plain-looking American field." "And I figured something so simple and common would be easy for our artists." "And I went in thinking that." "But then I watched our staff create it and I was so surprised how much detail went into it." "And it really shows on screen." "You can see the scenery from the car but it seems like you can actually walk through it." "What's your thought on that?" "Every time you make a movie of course you have to make character models but your background scenery is important." "But we've recently been talking about taking pictures and scanning them into the computer and generating models from them." "I mean, our work looks photo-realistic." "But if it comes to it what's the difference between that and live-action?" "True." "Which is why I don't really think about the difference with live-action." "I tried to leave some comic-book elements in there." "But I do like that there's more of a serious edge to work now." "But if software technology developed that far and included motion capture individuals or small teams could have the ability to make a movie of this scale." "Or at least I wonder if it will happen." "What are your thoughts on that?" "Well, as an option the tools are getting more and more affordable." "And you can use them to make some stunning work." "I know the opportunity is there." "And for this work, you might be able to tell looking at the end credits but we made this with a smaller team  than the one we had for Starship Troopers." "But we've worked together many times." "So I know how much each team member can do on their own." "And it helps having it all optimized from the beginning so we can work very efficiently." "And it saves me from giving out additional instructions." "It was very easy from that standpoint." "I was able to express what I wanted with the least amount of words." "Which allowed us to make a long form movie with such a small team." "And I think it's really fun." "As a producer, I hope for more waste." "Oh, sorry." "You want some waste?" "He's hard to please." "But we had fun making it." "I mean, this isn't some PR or anything but I believe that is the most important reason you decided to start your own studio." "Yes, having a team I would keep." "And having us all improve as a studio." "Yes." "And working on this second film really made it clear how much we improved as a team." "I'm looking forward to our next project." "Yes, you really had a small team this time around." "She's not the one who's gonna get hurt." "Ishizuka's been quiet." "I thought you wanted a smaller team." "Oh, no." "We've finally come to this scene." "When we were coming up with the plot of the movie we knew that after finding Iris, they would be looking for something." "But we didn't know what exactly." "We were thinking that something would be in New York." "But in the end it just seemed obvious." "We just had to do it." "Our staff couldn't believe it." "We tried so hard the whole time to keep the story small, but at the very end we went so big." "We got in trouble with our staff." "I didn't get upset." "You knew it was going to come to this." "I remember you saying that when I was writing." "You wanted us to avoid it because it'd be a lot of work." "But you did it anyway." "But it really makes it exciting." "We just couldn't avoid it in the end." "But I guess we only have ourselves to blame." "We wanted to put more in." "But, you know giving that sense of scale was really impressive." "Looking at our budget, I figured it'd be flashy." "I was worried that we couldn't get the old Appleseed vibe with this realism." "But having it grounded in this reality it gives it legitimacy." "Yes." "Indeed." "I think about this every time, but when I went independent as a producer I had these ideas and goals." "I don't think it would be possible to be able to do this in a foreign country with such a small team and make visuals on this level." "I don't think you're wrong." "I really feel that this is unique to Japan." "Maybe it's the artists." "But something is different." "Although it's different, having hand-drawn animation on this level I believe it's the same principle." "I don't think the work attitude is very different." "It really impresses me." "The skill and determination." "It's hard to try to express." "Oh, we missed it, but Deunan and Briareos arriving in the humvee was not very clearly written in the script." "But we got a suggestion from Shirow that having them snipe them from a distance and coming in directly would be best." "And I thought it was a good idea." "I mean, we wanted to be careful on the length but it's still a very tight film." "It still remains dynamic." "We kept the Hollywood pacing." "Yes, you're right." "I think we were able to fuse Hollywood and Japanese storytelling well." "We want to try to give audiences something new every time." "This scene in particular it looks like a factory." "Yes, or a storage facility." "I just marvel at how they can construct such a set." "Regarding this particular scene I believe that we have to apologise." "Right around here." "Oh, we have to apologise?" "There was supposed to be a sexy scene right here." "Really?" "I didn't know that." "Maybe I shouldn't have mentioned it." "I don't know what you're talking about." "She was supposed to get changed there." "Yes, Deunan was supposed to get dressed here." "But we got an e-mail from Sony apologising that it had been cut." "But actually, we didn't have any design work for the warehouse." "Nakada, from our background team, did this all by himself." "I gave him some vague ideas." "And he worked hard by himself building all these details." "But the file size for it was massive." "That's why they couldn't fit the sexy scene in." "I'll ask the viewers which they would've preferred." "We'll save it for our next project." "We had a lot of those scenes in the previous work, so we held off here." "We'll have two sexy scenes next time." "Maybe they'll forgive us then." "I don't dislike them." "This is it." "We can see the background in this action shot as well." "It actually wasn't in our initial plans." "We did have this sequence of Nyx jumping in and attacking." "But it just cut quickly to the end without anything in between." "This wasn't in it as well." "It was an added scene." "It was added after we completed the initial shots." "They brought up how little Briareos did." ""Nyx showed up, but she gets beaten pretty swiftly, huh."" "They thought it was a bit of a waste." "Nyx turned out looking a bit like a dominatrix." "Maybe we should've given her a whip." "I really thought Nyx's costume and design was very cool." "I didn't think we could re-create it." "But we did." "Thank you everybody for your hard work." "We had a lot of fun making it." "You can tell." "When she's moving." "All the monitor and UI designs I mean, we have to come up with them every time but is there something you're specifically after?" "In Japan, designing these screens gets pretty detailed." "Well, shots like that are necessary, and the specific look we had I had one of our designers who does a lot of mechanical design Matsuda, do all of it." "I just told him that he was in charge." "And he took the opportunity to heart." "And the displays are all in English, right?" "And making corrections was a task." "I helped with that." "We told him he got a number or spelling wrong or something." "And he'd just get this defeated look." "Maybe our office needs English lessons." "I need to brush up as well." "We had a lot of checking done with Ex Machina." "In our first one, I actually noticed a mistake at our premiere." "It was entirely my responsibility." "It happens a lot." "I mean, the cuts in between scenes are so fast but our viewers always catch our mistakes." "Yes." "We have to get it right." "And with the Internet, it's easy to read about all of the mistakes." "We're entering some trying times." "Ah, this scene." "It's the money shot." "I did learn about that in English." "I found it interesting when making action scenes that we had an action choreographer." "But we had some really rough storyboards and I was wondering if we were going to be okay with it." "But you talked and coordinated with him and had all these video samples ready." "I thought it was interesting." "Well, for me I might be making it easier for me, but we have a team of people." "So I think it's better to discuss it with them than just working out all these detailed storyboards alone." "Your storyboards were sent to us and we had no idea what was going on." "I guess I didn't spend too much time on them, sorry." "There he is." "But when we have Aramaki as a director a scene like this is almost to be expected." "Including the previous action scene." "But they have to be there or we'd miss them." "You say you're tired of them." "But you're actually happy to see them." "Is that the general attitude?" "Do you deliberately change camera angles or anything?" "Well, actually this is more Matsumoto's sensibility than my own." "He wanted to express it as close to live-action as possible." "I might get a little liberal with the camera, this being a CG project but he kept things more fixed and traditional." "But because of that, all of it was in his head and he used a lot of static camera work which when you start moving it for the action scenes, it leaves more of an impression." "So we make the camera more dynamic in that case." "It does leave an impression during the action scenes." "Yes, we wanted to make sure the camera didn't move too much." "The camera work isn't as busy as before." "Doing an action film there's a formula you have to follow where there's action every 20 minutes, or give them a new action piece." "But I feel that we kind of broke that this time a bit." "I feel it's a fresh take on it." "It's hard for me to view it as an audience member." "I always worry I made something weird." "I mean, maybe not weird." "But I guess unique." "Something nobody else is doing." "I really wanted to make a great chase scene here." "Right on this bridge." "Didn't want to waste it." "Our CG producer, Kawada, wanted us to get back to the train since we worked so hard to create it in the first place." "That's right." "We talked about going back to the subway." "I remember that plot." "But it's good we came back here." "It's more like the previous scene exists because we had this." "It's kind of backwards." "They did a lot of work creating this." "We have the missiles flying everywhere too." "It's to be expected." "People would miss it if it weren't there." " Are you on?" " Kind of." "Where's Two Horns?" "We made it so the screen for Deunan moved along with her head inside the suit." "We did a lot of good work keeping everything internal." "Yes, we did most of it internally." "Everybody worked on multiple fronts." "It was fun to be in charge of that." "And this landmate's design was very unique." "It's mostly an Usui original." "We were torn on what direction to go with." "It was in the early script and the model was done with such great care." "He's a very talented modeller." "We wanted to add even more detail but our computers couldn't handle the load." "But the concept is that it's an early model." "But in the end, this is an origins story." "So we get a landmate, but it won't fly." "We made these decisions, like to not bring bioroids out in the forefront." "I wish the landmate was just a bit more primitive." "Oh, I like this shot." "Thanks for dropping in." "It's a nice sequence." "In the script we had Sokaku really like Deunan." "And he was jealous of Briareos." "But most of that got cut from the script." "But he actually loves Deunan." "He actually was jealous in the script." "Talos was a mysterious figure." "I had trouble figuring out how to tie everything together." "There was actually supposed to be more action around here." "Well, originally there were three Nyx bots." "And the third was waiting here." "And it fights with Deunan." "That's right." "It didn't even make the storyboards." "It got cut from the script." "It just all looks so realistic." "The camera movements are so realistic." "Motion capturing this scene was a challenge." "Yes, yes." "Their height was the opposite." "Iris' motion actor was actually taller than Deunan's." "How did that work out?" "It was a challenge when they were hugging." "But we had them obviously adjust it in animation." "Their eye line gets skewed as well." "Any way to stop this thing?" "I'm trying." "Where is this supposed to be?" "New York, but..." "Matsumoto and I actually got out a map and tried to figure out where everything was, but we abandoned that idea pretty quickly." "We'll just leave it to your imagination." "This is future New York, so the landscape has changed." "I mean, the scenery looks like California." "And Deunan looks like a California girl." "I mean, it almost looks like Las Vegas." "But it's supposed to be Manhattan, I guess." "We'll just say it's New York." "And not Nevada." "They didn't travel thousands of miles." "But feel free to make the jokes." "We went in and wanted the existence of Olympus to be questioned." "Something that we wanted to save for a sequel." "Do you have a story in mind to introduce Olympus?" "Well, I had fun doing this." "It might be fun for them to look for it every time but never find it." "More about it gets revealed little by little." "They think they've finally found it, but it's not it." "I think that could be interesting, and in the end it didn't exist." "Shirow wouldn't approve." "And he'd have every right not to." "The fans too." "I suppose if we did it every time." "They need to get closer." "There needs to be that possibility." "They see it in the distance, but it's not it." "But it's hard to imagine how Olympus would look with this visual style." "Maybe it's a virtual world." "They went and it was just a billboard." "Or perhaps it was in orbit." "That would be an entirely different story." "Yes." "And there it got crushed." "We struggled with how graphic we wanted to be." "We wondered what rating we wanted." "But since it was oil and not blood..." "So we thought we'd get away with it, being a cyborg and not human." "Appleseed 1 got an R rating in America." "Which is a high rating." "And the reason was simple." "A head gets crushed in the very first scene." "And that gave it the automatic R rating." "We got the PG-13 rating for Ex Machina." "We made sure to be careful about it." "We made sure that any potential gore would be only mechanical." "That there wouldn't be any blood." "We always struggle with the rating." "In Japan, they're a bit more lenient." "Our first movie didn't cause much of a fuss." "But having been raised on Japanese anime and having friends who did so as well growing up in Asia and looking back on series like Galaxy Express 999 and others it can be a little disturbing." "They were very adult stories." "And none of that really registered when I was watching them." "But I guess in the West, it's just a cultural difference." "Like in Galaxy Express, the mother is killed in the first episode." "And the story is about the child getting revenge." "That's probably not too common." "Maybe they're just a little more sensitive to violence?" "There are no guns in Japan." " I wonder what it is." " It's the themes as well." "For example, with Hong Kong movies Asia has no problem watching that kind of violence." "But in America, it would be more regulated." "So there's this difference." "Yes, we're left to just chalk it up to cultural differences." "It's not a matter of which is better." "We're at the final scene." "We adjusted this dialogue so many times." "But these dramatic scenes are the toughest." "Yes, because it becomes cheesy if you're not careful." "And for me, I had no idea what the American sense of "cheesy" was." "You'd think that Americans would be fine with anything that's over-the-top." "But it wasn't the case at all." "We were told to keep it really simple." "Make sure not to have too many lines." "But we need to still get our message across." "But we did it the opposite way this time, recording in English first then dubbing it over in Japanese so it was nice making the adjustments later." "It's harder to go the other way." "It might just be easier to base it in English." "Just my way of saying thanks for getting my city back." "There's a lot of that lately." "Creating a plot in America then make a Japanese script, and shoot it in Japanese then dub it in English." "We did the exact opposite." "But it really worked for me." "But considering our story's setting..." "Yes, that's true." "It's important to note what language the characters are thinking in." "If the story was set in Japan, that would be different." "But, you know, CG animation always has the world market in mind." "So the English becomes really important." "If your lip-syncing is off, it will affect your ticket sales." "For my past three films, English was really important." "I participate in the English voice recordings." "Not that my English is good." "But the nuances become a bit clearer the more you see." "Well, that was our last scene." "And here Nakata's main theme song is played." "And after the credits we have an important scene." "Indeed." "Everyone please don't turn your TVs offjust yet." "It's a very important scene." "It's the essence ofAppleseed." "Yes." "Please watch it through." "Well, I guess that wraps it up." "I believe so." "Thank you to everyone listening." "We'll work hard on a sequel." "I'm sorry I talked about all the important parts." "Please be sure to watch our next project." "We'll do our best on it." "Thank you very much." "We lost Iris." "I know she was your bioroid." "I'm sorry." "She died in service of Olympus." "It was a noble death." " And her mission?" " It is complete." "The prototype is destroyed." "And the humans who helped, should we retrieve them?" "No, not yet." "They are like appleseeds." "Wherever they go, hope will sprout." "Others who are worthy are sure to follow."