March 20th I took off LAX to Chicago International Airport. And I stayed in Chicago and Detroit for about 5 days. I was helping my friend’s project, Akari Monogatari. It’s 3 minutes Japanese TV show airing in Fuji Television. (It’s the largest TV station in Japan.) In this program, city of night view is introduced with narration.
This time, Chicago and Detroit was assignment. As you can imagine, the 3 minutes show doesn’t have much budget. So we have to film at least 4 shows in order to be able to pay up all the expenses.
Honestly, it’s crazy project; low budget, limited time, not enough people (normally one man crew), and night shooting. I was doing his assistant, but I couldn’t imagine how crazy sounds if I wasn’t there. From preproduction to post production, he has to do by himself.
To tell the truth, only thing I could enjoy was foods and looking at sightseeing passing. Chicago was cold and people drives like crazy. Detroit was not safe and have misleading signs (I accidentally went to Canada...which got us into huge trouble...no passport...you can imagine). But it’s all in memory now and I think it was worths being part of this project.