last day

I am editing my project for the last time before I have to hand it in at 6pm today!!!!

it is coming out OK, I'm just excited to be finally done with this semester!!!

soooo

So I have been working on my project and it looks like I should be able to finish some sort of final product by the intended due date. When I am done editing the Cat Cafe piece as well, it should be smooth sailing to the end of the semester.

cate cafe and documentary update...

Filming in the cat cafe went so well! Everyone at the cafe was extremely nice and accommodating to our needs. They didn't even charge us for the coffee we drank! We interviewed the woman who ran the cafe as well as one of her employees. We were also able to grab a quick interview with a couple of customers. We plan on going to a couple of other cat cafes in the upcoming week so I will update our progress when that happens.

As for the documentary project. It is going slow. I feel that my initial vision is a lot harder to achieve than I had previously anticipated. It is quite hard to edit together the interview portions especially because I do not speak Japanese. Once I subtitle these clips it will speed up the progress and hopefully the final product will be something more complete.

shooting

Me Kailin and Rei went and shot for my documentary the other day and it went amazing! Rei and Kailin helped with interviewing people in Japanese, and literally, no one said no to them.

My footage came out good. Basically I achieved in shooting what I was trying to do all along so I'm really excited to start editing.

Here are some pictures (courtesy of Kailin)

ok soo...

well I have searched for that man who plays the saxophone..but I could not find him...I couldn't even hear him playing...

I think since the clock is ticking I'm going to have to revert back to my original idea of filming street performers/dancers in Yoyogi park...

I want to do this in a semi-experimental fashion.

this is the list of ideas I jotted down the other day...

• Cinematic Long Shots of people dancing in the park
• Interview Style (the whole group together)
• Voice Over on the shots.
• Many photographs, both black and white 35mm and digital
• Multiple formats. New camera that shoots 8mm
• Digital camera (video and photo)
• HD DV footage
• Very experimental. I want this to be more of an artistic documentary. The voice over will have a more general overview. I want many interviews.
• I will cut these together with all the different formats to create a splash of video formats.

I want this to sort of be a collage of different video. This will not be a traditional documentary but for something short I think this will work nicely...

baseball

After much deliberation I have decided to change my topic to documenting the training process of little league baseball (as suggested by Ron). After Ron had mentioned this topic idea the other day, it got me thinking about my previous topic. I liked both ideas still so I spoke with a couple of my friends to see what they thought. The conclusion was almost the same with all of them. They way they saw it was that you can see the people dancing in Yoyogi park any time if you live in Tokyo. But to learn more about the process of little league baseball in Japan and how it differs from American leagues can be a really exciting topic to explore. I have always been a huge baseball fan, but I have never really explored the Japanese leagues. I feel like doing this topic will be much more enjoyable for me because I will get to see a whole new side of a sport I already love very much.

I will plan on focusing on one specific baseball team and try and interview as many players as possible initially. I will find out from there which players are better at giving me the information I am seeking and then focus more on them.

I also want to interview the coaches as well as some of the parents.

I feel that exploring the psychology of these parents, coaches and most importantly the players will give me a chance to learn more about what it is like to be a youth in Japan.

Dancing in the Park

The main point of this is to explore the meaning of dance in Japan society. My sister has danced her whole life and although I have found it somewhat interesting to watch, the main style of dance that I most enjoy is what happens out on the streets. When walking around Boston back home, I see all sorts of types of dance, not only break dancing. Most of these people have either a hat or basket out asking people to donate so money, I usually comply with their demands. However, in Japan, the people on the street don’t do this. I want to explore further on why they don’t try to accept money from people and what they think of people in the United States that do. I may also expand my idea to not only dancing…I’m still working out all the details…Hopefully everything goes according to plan.